If you are familiar with cooking sous vide, you would have experimented by now with slow and low SV cooking of tough but flavourful cuts like short-rib beef. If you have well-marbled cut to start with, your can be sure that the results will be spectacular after 36 or 48 hours of cooking at anywhere between 55˚C to 60˚C. Check out my previous post here.

I use it to make a Japanese Rice Bowl recently for a party of 80. I will share with you my cooking notes.

Estimating at 50gm of beef per pax, we started with about 5 kg of Angus short-rib beef, cooking it at 56˚C for 36 hours. This was of course prepared a few days before.

After it has finished cooking, cut open the vacuumed beef packs and drain the juice into a cooking pot. Heat up the pot and when the juice heats up, the scums will turn solid. Strain and keep the juice.

Fridge the beef. It will be easier to trim and cut if the meat is chilled. To prepare, trim and cut the beef into small blocks.  Some short-rib cuts have tough tendon and fats which you need to trim. And yes, keep the fats (good for "heart attack fried rice", I heard!)! Next, coat it with soy sauce before you pan sear as it will make browning easier. See photo below.


Meanwhile, prepare a the salad of cucumber, tomato, silken tofu and lettuce. Slice it into small pieces for easier eating off the bowl. Prepare a lemon and ginger dressing. Keep chilled and dressed the salads before you serve.

As for the eggs, cook it at 62˚C for 45 minutes. Keep warm till your serve it.

For the sauce, we used the remains beef juices, mirin, soy sauce and cooking sake. We added sugar to sweeten it and beef bouillon to make it more intense. Then we add the slurry of corn flour to thicken it.

Cook the Japanese rice. 6 kg will feed 80 pax nicely.

Nearing the time of the dinner, we started to pan-sear the beef blocks. Season it and then  sliced it at a thickness of about 3-4 mms.

After this, it should be easy. Plate the bowls in this order: rice, beef, egg and drizzle some of the beef sauce. Garnish with furikake - mixture of seaweed, sesame seeds and other flavouring seasonings. Some diced spring onions will be good too.

Then placed dressed salads on the side.

Lay out the bowls on a serving table. Serving dinner in a bento bowl is fast and efficient.

Cost? About $4 per bowl and it looks pretty and taste gourmet :)

Slicing the "twice-cooked" Sous vide cooked and pan-seared beef