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Mina Group concepts praise protein-poaching method

Mina Group concepts praise protein-poaching method

Blazing broilers have long been the go-to method for steakhouses when it comes to cooking beef. However, Bourbon Steak in the new MGM Grand Detroit hotel claims to get more tender and succulent results from a high-tech cooking method that’s much lower in temperature: poaching steaks to juicy rareness in pans of butter heated beneath a simmer by thermal circulators. It takes only a brief spell on the wood-fired grill after that to reach the desired doneness, flavor and color.

“I think we’re coming out with a better product,” says Anthony Carron, corporate chef of the Mina Group, the San Francisco-based multiconcept restaurant company led by celebrity chef Michael Mina, with 10 upscale eateries.

With the kitchen turning out 300 to 500 steaks per night, customers seem to concur.

At first glance, the 11 countertop-mounted thermal circulators in the Bourbon Steak kitchen resembles an ordinary steam table. However, each one is a precision heating device developed for scientific use, capable of controlling the temperature of a liquid to the tenth of a degree. Bourbon Steak is the second Mina concept, along with StripSteak in Las Vegas, to use the setup, Carron said, and future openings will follow suit.

For example, an 18-ounce, dry-aged, all-natural certified Angus rib-eye steak sits in a hotel pan of clarified butter, shallots and fresh herbs set in the internal well of a thermal circulator. The well is filled with water heated to about 130 degrees Fahrenheit, which heats the pan of butter and the steak to that temperature in about an hour.

“It cooks really slowly, so it’s very, very tender,” Carron said. “Then we put it on the wood-burning grill to get all the flavor and smoke and char that you want.”

The rib-eye sells for $46.

Other steaks, like a porterhouse and bone-in Kansas City strip, are cooked in similar fashion, while the remaining circulators poach other proteins in other fats, like lamb racks in olive oil and racks of pork in bacon fat.

Carron noted that tossing a cold steak on a hot broiler toughens proteins and creates bands of varying doneness on the interior, “but with [fat poaching], if you order medium rare, it’s medium rare throughout.”

Moreover, the steady temperature permits steaks to stay warm and moist in the butter bath for long periods without overcooking.

Mina Group got the idea from cooking steaks in individual vacuum-sealed sous vide bags in the circulator.

Poaching in fat at low temperatures has two distinct advantages over sous vide cooking, said Dave Arnold, director of culinary technology at The French Culinary Institute in New York City.

“First, poaching in butter has a romance for the average diner, whereas cooking in a bag doesn’t,” he said. “Second, because it’s not vacuum-sealed, it doesn’t currently fall under any extra health department rules beyond the normal food code.”

Despite its modern associations, low-temperature fat poaching has an esteemed place in culinary tradition, notably the French confit method of cooking duck in its own fat, said Michael Schlow, executive chef and co-owner of Radius, Via Matta and Great Bay in Boston.

Schlow said that although he doesn’t own a circulator, he has been making flavorful butter-poached lobster and olive-oil poached fish in pans on the range for years.

Will other steakhouses follow Bourbon?

“There’s a capital outlay for this,” said Carron, who pegged the cost of a circulator at about $1,000. “Obviously, you’re not going to retrofit older steakhouses to do it. But I think you’ll see it in some new places, although I don’t know if anyone will do it on this scale.”

TAGS: Operations
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