Post by changomarango on Feb 12, 2015 11:00:32 GMT -5
So what are opinions here regarding pre-searing SV lamb with the Searzall? The folks over at ChefSteps recommend against it:
A few years ago I had a terrible experience with an SV lamb breast. It was not pre-seared; after cooking it had a foul, sour aroma that rendered it inedible. I assumed that some kind of contamination on the surface thrived during cooking. So since then I have been pre-searing all lamb with no "mutton" aromas. Here are some lamb shanks I pre-seared with my Searzall. They were later cooked SV for a couple of days and could not have been better. Maybe the use of an acidic marinade helped.
We generally don’t recommend presearing lamb. The searing step destabilizes fatty-acids in the cell membranes of the muscle tissue in lamb, which can trigger a cascade of aroma-creating reactions that can lead to a mutton-like aroma during cooking, which is only great if you like mutton.
A few years ago I had a terrible experience with an SV lamb breast. It was not pre-seared; after cooking it had a foul, sour aroma that rendered it inedible. I assumed that some kind of contamination on the surface thrived during cooking. So since then I have been pre-searing all lamb with no "mutton" aromas. Here are some lamb shanks I pre-seared with my Searzall. They were later cooked SV for a couple of days and could not have been better. Maybe the use of an acidic marinade helped.
