Ginger Marmalade

Last week’s Rio Hondo featured Maureen McHugh’s Anova sous vide precision cooker and some short ribs that had been cooked for 24 hours in a water bath until unbelievably tender.

I watch enough cooking shows to have seen TV hosts swooning over sous vide cooking, but for quite a few years a setup cost thousands of dollars.  I found an Anova online for under $150, so I got myself one.

Sous vide is particularly recommended for red meat, but I wanted to experiment on better-flavored beef than is generally available locally, so for my first experiment I opted for poultry, and I made ginger marmalade chicken, which I cooked for 4 hours in a water bath of 170 degrees.  The result was flavorful and (mostly) moist, though a bit tougher than expected.

The store was running a special on racks of ribs— three free if you buy a fourth!— so clearly the next experiment will be pork ribs, cooked for something like 20 hours and finished on the grille.  I hope this works, because I bought a lot of ribs.

Wish me luck.