THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SOUS VIDE PORK SHOULDER

Introduzione

The Basics of Sous Vide Pork Shoulder

The appeal of sous vide cooking seems obvious for lean, fast-cooking foods like steak and chicken — tender results without the risk of overcooking. So why would you want to use sous vide cooking for meats like pork shoulder that require less precision and are far more forgiving in terms of overcooking?

There are a few reasons. First is convenience. Whether you’re slow-roasting pork in the oven or on the grill, babysitting a large piece of meat for half a day is a commitment. Sous vide, on the other hand, is a set-it-and-forget-it affair for the bulk of the cooking.

Sous vide also makes it easy to break down tough connective tissues like collagen into tender, lip-smacking gelatin at any temperature. This is a slow process that takes both heat and time, and the cooler the temperature of the pork, the longer it takes. On the flip side of this coin, meat cooked at higher temperatures will also expel more moisture than meat cooked at a lower temperature. Sous vide cooking allows us to cook at temperatures that are significantly lower and more stable than is traditional, which means we can achieve tender results with relatively little moisture loss.

Traditional sous vide pork shoulder consists of an easy, two-phase cooking process:

1. Sigillatura the meat in a plastic bag using either a vacuum sealer or the water displacement method and cottura alla temperatura finale desiderata in un bagno d'acqua a temperatura controllata.
   1. The temperature of the sous vide bath during the initial cooking phase is what determines the final texture of the meat.
2. Browning the pork shoulder to develop color, flavor, and textural contrast.

If you’d prefer to introduce new sous vide techniques into your arsenal, you can also use the Anova Precision™ Oven to prepare sous vide pork shoulder. Because of the way we’ve designed the temperature sensors and humidity control, the oven will precisely maintain the cooking temperature you set.

You can choose to bag and cook your meat in the Precision™ Oven just as you would with a Precision® Cooker, or you can cook the pork shoulder without a bag.

Just like traditional sous vide, using Sous Vide Mode in the Anova Precision™ Oven typically is a two-stage cooking process: First, bring the pork shoulder to your desired internal temperature, then sear it in the oven or on the grill to create a flavorful crust.

Temperatura e tempistica

At an internal temperature of 200°F (93ºC), pork shoulders take only a few hours to become fall-apart tender. At 145°F (63ºC), this same process can take over a day. The end result of pork cooked at these temperature extremes is wildly different:

145°F (63ºC)

At 145°F (63ºC), the pork has a firm, almost steak-like texture that can be easily sliced but not easily pulled apart. It is also very juicy.

200°F (93ºC)

At 200°F (93ºC), the pork shreds at the slightest touch but is also quite dry — most of the internal moisture leaks out into the bag and can’t be re-absorbed.

165°F (74ºC)

Halfway in between, at 165°F (74ºC) for 18 to 24 hours, yields pork that is pull-apart tender, but still extremely moist.

While there is a very wide range of cooking times for pork shoulder, it is still the case that you can overdo it. Cooking pork shoulder much longer than 24 hours will cause it to break down to the point where individual muscle fibers begin to soften, giving the pork a soft, almost mushy texture.

We do not recommend sous vide express for pork shoulder, as it does not give the meat enough time to tenderize.

Sous Vide tradizionale

How to Cook Sous Vide Pork Shoulder, Step by Step

Passo 1

Attach a Precision® Cooker to a water bath and heat to your desired final doneness temperature or preheat the Precision™ Oven to your desired temperature.

Season the pork shoulder generously with salt and pepper on all sides or season with a spice rub of your choice. If vacuum sealing, add to a bag and seal the bag with a vacuum sealer.

Passo 2

Drop the bag in the water bath or place the pork shoulder into the oven. Cook according to your desired time and temperature.

Fasi di finitura

Remove the pork shoulder from the water bath or oven. Remove from the bag and place on a paper towel-lined plate. Pat dry very carefully on all sides. If desired, coat with additional spice rub.

Passo 1

Adjust oven racks to upper and lower middle positions and heat the oven to 300°F ( 150°C). Place the pork on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet with a wire rack placed in it. Transfer to the oven and bake until the exterior achieves a dark, mahogany bark, about 1 ½ hours.

Passo 2

Remove the meat from the oven. Shred or slice, then serve with buns and sauce of your choice.

Passo 1

Adjust the oven temperature for Air Frying: Turn sous vide mode off and set the oven to 475°F (246°C) with 0% steam using the Top+Rear heating elements.

Passo 2

While the oven is heating, place the pork shoulder on a clean sheet pan, fat cap-side up.

Passo 3

When the oven has reached temperature, return the pork to the middle rack. Air fry until the pork is well browned, 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board. Shred or slice, then serve with buns and sauce of your choice.

Passo 1

Light a smoker and set it to 300°F (150ºC) or ignite a half chimney of coals, and spread them out over half of the coal grates. Add a few chunks of hardwood (no need to soak it).

For a gas grill, light up half of the burners and leave the other half switched off. Place the wood chunks in a foil boat directly over the hot side of the grill and place the pork over the cooler side.

Passo 2

As soon as the wood begins smoldering, place the pork on the smoker or grill, away from the direct heat. Cover and cook until the pork has achieved a deep, dark, mahogany crust and pulls apart when you pick at it, 1 ½ to 2 hours. Add a few pieces of wood and coals as necessary and maintain the air intake valves to try and keep the smoker or grill hovering at around 275°F to 300°F (135°F to 150ºC) at all times.

Passo 3

Remove the meat from the oven. Shred or slice, then serve with buns and sauce of your choice.

Getting Smoke Flavor into Sous Vide BBQ

Whether we finish sous vide barbecue on a grill or in the oven, it needs some time post-water bath to achieve a dark, crispy, mahogany crust. But no matter how you finish it, sous vide barbecue will lack the one thing that really distinguishes slow-cooked traditional methods: the smoke. Here are two ways to add it.

Liquid Smoke

Liquid smoke gets a bad rap, but high quality brands such as Wright’s or Colgin are in fact nothing more than smoke and water. They’re made by running moist smoke from smoldering wood chips through a condenser and capturing the liquid that drips out. The water contains the exact same chemical compounds that are transferred to meat during the smoking process, and it is a completely natural product.

A small shot of liquid smoke added to the bag before cooking the pork shoulder sous vide will give your food a mild smokiness that captures most of the flavors of real outdoor cooking. The liquid smoke approach is great if you are finishing your barbecue in the oven, but it will also work if you are finishing outdoors. Adding a smoked product like smoked salt to the rub can also give the barbecue a smoky flavor without any actual smoking in the process.

Live Smoking

If you’ve got yourself a kettle grill or smoker, then you can enhance your sous vide barbecue through a bit of honest-to-goodness smoking. We find that by letting the meat cool a bit (or even refrigerating it for up to a week), we can place it on the cooler side of a 300°F (149°C)-degree kettle grill or smoker let it smoke for a good three hours or so before it starts to dry out at all. This is ample time to develop a deep, dark crust and to get some smoky flavor in there.

Is it better to apply that smoke before or after cooking sous vide? According to folks like Meathead Goldwyn, author of the eponymous book on the science of barbecue, “Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling,” the flavorful compounds in smoke will adhere and penetrate to raw meat much better than it will to cooked meat. This is true, but we find that the amount of smoke flavor we get out of a post-sous vide session in the smoker is ample, and smoking at the end makes the process so much more efficient.

What about the smoke ring?

A smoke ring is a pink ring of meat that appears around the edges of a well-smoked rack of ribs or brisket. It’s purely cosmetic and does not signify smoke flavor or proper cooking.

The smoke ring appears due to the interaction of carbon monoxide (CO) and nitric oxide (NO) with myoglobin, the natural pigment that makes meat red (a close relative of hemoglobin, the red blood pigment). As meat cooks in a carbon- and nitric-oxide-rich environment, its pink color becomes “fixed,” preventing it from oxidizing and turning into metmyoglobin, the brown pigment you see in cooked (or old) meat. A red “smoke” ring will appear in any environment in which meat is slow-cooked in the presence of CO or NO, whether or not any smoke is involved in the process at all.

All that said, you can replicate a smoke ring in sous vide barbecue by using pink curing salts, a.k.a. sodium nitrite. The reaction between sodium nitrite and myoglobin is very similar to that between myoglobin and CO/NO, and it has the same end effect: fixing the pink color. By adding a small amount of sodium nitrite to the spice rub and letting the meat rest in that rub overnight, you end up with a nice pink “smoke” ring after it’s done cooking — no actual smoke involved!

Tips for Long Sous Vide Cooks

A long sous vide cook may not be the first method you start with when you purchase a Precision® Cooker or Precision™ Oven, but it’s an important technique to have in your arsenal. There are, however, additional considerations to keep in mind:

Meal Prep and Make-Ahead

Pork shoulder cooked sous vide can be stored in the refrigerator for up to five days directly in its sous vide bag. Make sure to chill the shoulder thoroughly in ice water before transferring to the refrigerator. Pork shoulder can also be frozen after cooking directly in its sous vide bag and stored for up to three months (or longer, if you have heavy duty made-for-the-freezer vacuum bags).