Kitchen Assays: Sous Vide Lamb Chops

This past weekend we embarked on another experimental cooking adventure involving our trusty camping cooler. We attempted (and succeeded) to cook lamb chops sous vide without any fancy equipment. Hot water, a zip lock bag, a thermometer, and a cooler is all you need to get perfectly cooked meat!

We saw this recipe on the food blog Serious Eats and adapted it using lamb loin chops instead of the more expensive rack of lamb. We started off with about a pound and a half of lamb loin chops we picked up from Whole Foods on sale and trimmed most of the fatty parts off.

From Kitchen Assays

Lovely meat!! (before trimming)

After giving them a proper salt and pepper, we threw them into a quart-size zip-lock bag along with a bunch of fresh rosemary and thyme from our herb garden, roughly chopped garlic, and minced shallots for aromatics. Before sealing the bag, we filled a pot of water and submerged the bag up to the zipper to expel all of the air essentially making a vacuum. After sealing the bag, we took it out of the water and set it aside to prepare the cooking vessel (aka, the cooler).

From Kitchen Assays

Submerge to vacuum-pack.

From Kitchen Assays

Nice and sealed.

From Kitchen Assays

Meat in the cooler.

From Kitchen Assays

Blanket for extra insulation.

We began to warm up around 2 gallons of water in our stock pot to 135 degrees Fahrenheit (an instant read thermometer is vital) and filled our cooler up. 132 degrees is medium rare, but we decided to overshoot our goal because we figured we would lose some heat in the transfer. As it turned out, we still had to heat up a few more small batches of water to get the temperature to 132 degrees.

Once the temperature in the cooler stabilized at 132 degrees we added our bag of lamb chops (which stayed submerged due to the vacuum), closed the lid, and then insulated the cooler with a blanket to make sure it lost as little heat as possible. We kept it in the cooler/cooker for 3 hours (though you can cook it for a minimum of 45 minutes, but a longer cooker time will tenderize the meat). We had to check the water periodically to make sure the temperature stayed around 132 (and had to add more hot water a few times), but all in all it was a pretty easy process.

What came out were gloriously tender pieces of lamb, albeit a little pale in color. The next step to finish off the cooking process is to get a nice brown sear on each side. We patted the lamb down with paper towels to dry off the surface so it would sear well. We heated up some vegetable oil in our stainless steel skillet and cooked until each side was well browned (about a minute and a half on each side). We decided to try to make a pan sauce with the juice drippings leftover from our plastic bag by reducing it with some heavy cream and dijon mustard. It didn't look that pretty, but it sure tasted good. We served the lamb with a side of green beans. The meat was so tender and a perfectly cooked medium rare--well worth the wait!