Sous Vide Beef Shogayaki
Speed - 97%
Simplicity - 100%
Tastiness - 99%
99%
Tasty!
The beef came out really tender and succulent. The fresh and simple flavor of ginger was surprisingly excellent.
Ingredients
- 500 Grams Beef Stew Meat
- 3 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
- 3 Tablespoons Mirin
- 3 Tablespoons Water
- 1 Thumb-Sized Piece Ginger grated
Instructions
- Combine the soy sauce, mirin, water, and ginger.
- Toss the beef in the soy-ginger mixture.
- Transfer the beef and marinade in a sous vide bag.
- Cook at 140F for 12 hours.
- Drain the beef out of the cooking juices and sear for a minute in a hot pan.
With ‘shoga' meaning ginger and ‘yaki' translating to cook or fry, this popular Japanese meat dish means exactly ‘to cook in ginger'. Think of it simply as a less sweet version of the very popular Teriyaki, that lets much more of the ginger flavor to stand out. Though popularly done with pork, the flavors would work very well with beef, chicken, and even fish.
Let's start with our flavor base. It's nothing but a mix of soy sauce, mirin, and water in equal measure, then spiked with some freshly grated ginger – again, very similar ingredients for a teriyaki sauce. Some may add sake to this mix, and would totally be fine if you have some available in your kitchen. Otherwise, doing without would work just as well.
I would rather strongly suggest that you use a Japanese brand of soy sauce for that distinct fermented flavor which just translates into so much more umami in the final dish.
Toss your meat into this mix and leave it to marinate for at least overnight for optimum flavor. This recommended marination would, of course, be different if using pork, chicken, or fish, or if going for thinner slices of meat, which would allow for shorter times.
Get the meat and the soy-ginger mixture into a sous vide bag. This would also be a good vessel for overnight marination.
Cook the beef in a water bath preheated to 140F for about 8-12 hours. This cooking time would again depend on the specific type and cut of protein that you'll be using. If you have to leave the house, check out these devices with wifi-connectivity so you can monitor your food remotely.
We'll be finishing these pieces of beef in a pan to give it a more flavorful crust. But first, we need to dry-up them up a bit so they instantly caramelize as they hit the hot pan.
Drain the beef out of the cooking juices(saving it for later) and give them a few minutes to air-dry.
A minute would be enough to give these pieces of meat a good sear. Refrain from moving them too much around your pan. They'll brown better if you give each side a couple of seconds to sear, undisturbed, flipping them with tongs to get all sides done.
What about those flavored cooking juices left from draining the beef? That would be excellent to flavor a quick side of stir-fried vegetables. I went for a mix that's most likely served in a Japanese restaurant – bean sprouts, green beans, and carrots. Go for anything else you have – cabbage, bok choy, mushrooms.
It would be unusual to see the use of tough cuts of meat, beef especially, for this recipe because of the relatively quick cooking method that is typical to the preparation of this dish. I would have to totally agree with that, at least prior to the introduction of sous vide cooking.
The low temperature and long cooking time combination that sous vide has made possible makes even this tough stew meat an excellent choice for a dish of shogayaki.
These beef cubes ended up really flavorful, tender, and succulent.
Ingredients
- 500 Grams Beef Stew Meat
- 3 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
- 3 Tablespoons Mirin
- 3 Tablespoons Water
- 1 Thumb-Sized Piece Ginger grated
Instructions
- Combine the soy sauce, mirin, water, and ginger.
- Toss the beef in the soy-ginger mixture.
- Transfer the beef and marinade in a sous vide bag.
- Cook at 140F for 12 hours.
- Drain the beef out of the cooking juices and sear for a minute in a hot pan.
If you put the sauce mixture in the bag, you will not be able to use a vacuum seal machine because it will suck the juice out with the air; you will be limited to the use of a zip lock back. However, if you freeze the liquid sauce and then put everything in the bag, you will be able to seal it and marinade the meat in the bag.
Oops! I could not freeze the sauce because it has alcohol in it. It did get thicker, and so I put half of it in the bag, vacuumed it and sealed it up. Lots of sauce came out, but some stayed in, so I went ahead (after cleaning up the sealer!) and sous vide-d it for the 12 hours, and then marinaded it until dinner time. It was excellent, very tender although a cheap cut of beef.
I find that if I press most of the air out before I start the vacuum sealer, I can just hit the seal button as soon as liquid is about to escape and get both a vacuum sealed package and the majority of the liquid still where it belongs. A tiny amount of air will not be a problem, especially with a long cook.