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For pork, does it matter if you marinade first, then sear + braise vs sear + braise first then marinade?

More details: I'm trying to cook pork chashu using pork butt. The marinade is mostly soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar. So far, I sear it then I either:

  • Braise for 3 hours, then marinade for 12. Or...
  • Sous Vide in marinade for 12 hours at 170ºF (not vacuum sealed)

It turns out dry :( So I am gonna try with lower temp next. But I am also curious if the marinade could be the cause (because of the curing effect), and if doing it before or after matters.

SAJ14SAJ
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pixelfreak
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    It is not usually called a marinade if it is used after cooking.... but is there some particular recipe or technique you are trying to ask about here? Why pork and not chicken or beef or lamb or.... – SAJ14SAJ Mar 05 '13 at 21:25
  • [Char siu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_siu)? As described in the wikipedia article? – SAJ14SAJ Mar 05 '13 at 21:48
  • Yes, sir. Japanese style, not Chinese – pixelfreak Mar 05 '13 at 21:52
  • Are you sure it's dry, and not undercooked? Many people equate toughness in pork butt, from being undercooked, with dryness. If it was not falling apart, then it was also probably not dry. – Sean Hart Mar 05 '13 at 22:30
  • @SeanHart 12 hours at 170ºF shouldn't be undercooked, right? It is not tough, it's tender, but not juicy. – pixelfreak Mar 06 '13 at 02:53
  • I recommend the excellent "building Marinades" recently in Saveur, really helps understand how Marinating works and how to create good Marinades. http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Building-Marinades –  Sep 04 '13 at 16:36

3 Answers3

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If your issue is with the meat being too tough and dry, then your best bet is to marinate beforehand. Marination is the process of soaking food in seasoning before hand to flavor meat and also to cause the marinade to break down some of the tissues in the meat. This will cause more moisture to be absorbed into the end result. This will likely solve your too dry issues rather than cure your meat and dry it out.

If you "marinate" it afterwards, it will likely only flavor the meat but not have the secondary effect of making the meat more moist. The proteins in the meat have already denatured so the marinade will not be able to break down the tissues that it would in a raw product.

If you want to sous vide the meat, I would suggest a lower temperature. 170 degree F is beyond the well done temperature. If you are cooking your pork sous vide at 170 degree F, then the pork will reach a internal temperature of 170 which will result in dry tough meat. Try between 150-160 degree F.

Also traditionally it is marinated before hand rather than afterward.

Jay
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    And in the US, marinate as a verb, marinade as a noun :-) – SAJ14SAJ Mar 05 '13 at 22:03
  • @SAJ14SAJ noted, corrected. TY – Jay Mar 05 '13 at 22:04
  • Thanks, that was a finger on chalkboard one for me... don't know why it gets me. In Britain, I am told they use marinade as both the noun and the verb, but who knows what is up with European orthography :-) – SAJ14SAJ Mar 05 '13 at 22:08
  • What is the effect of cooking and marinating at the same time? Because I always thought marinating is a function of time, it doesn't matter if it's before or after, or whether it's sitting in a fridge or slow-cooking. – pixelfreak Mar 05 '13 at 22:12
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    @pixelfreak It wouldn't be called marinating anymore. It'd just be braising. At that point, the marination process probably won't have much effect since you are already denaturing the meat through the braising process. – Jay Mar 05 '13 at 22:15
  • @Jay So you don't think slow-cooking (sous vide) in marinade could be the cause of the dryness. It's more due to the temp and time of the cooking. – pixelfreak Mar 05 '13 at 22:21
  • @pixelfreak yea I believe the temperature is the culprit. If you are going to sous vide at 170 for 12 hours, The internal temp of the meat will reach 170 which is beyond well done and will cause your meat to be tough. – Jay Mar 05 '13 at 22:27
  • I think Kenki Alt's 36 hours at 155 F was chosen with this constraint in mind--long enough for the collegen conversion and pathogen killing, while still being under 158 F which is the temperature at which the last of the major meat proteins denatures, squeezing out water and causing dryness. – SAJ14SAJ Mar 05 '13 at 22:39
  • @SAJ14SAJ So what temp would you recommend for 12 hours? 36 hours is a bit extreme :P Also, Kenji is cooking pork belly which is a lot fattier than butt. I'm thinking probably 160ºF, which if I am not mistaken is also the safe temp to kill all pathogen. – pixelfreak Mar 06 '13 at 02:55
  • @pixelfreak I am not personally expert enough at sous-vide to give you a recommendation--if I wanted to make this dish, I would do it as a traditional braise, or use Kenji Alt's recommendation. You have two concerns for time and temperature, which are interelated: making sure all pathogens are killed; and holding temperature at a given level for long enough for the collagen to gelatin conversion (it is faster at higher temperatures, but anything above 160 F is fully heat denatured, so you might as well just braise.) – SAJ14SAJ Mar 06 '13 at 03:01
  • Every recipe I just surveyed except one was 36 or more hours long. The 12 hours recipe recommended at 175 F temperature, but was in an oven and not really trustworthy. I suspect that for shorter times, you would need a temperature high enough that you might as well just use a traditional braise. – SAJ14SAJ Mar 06 '13 at 03:10
  • If you want it to take less time to reach the temperature of the surrounding water, try cutting it into smaller sections. From what I understand, the point of the sous vide method is to cook the meat at the exact temperature you want it to reach until the meat reaches equilibrium with the surrounding liquid, so if you're on a time crunch, you want to reduce the amount of time that takes, not up the heat. – Yamikuronue Mar 06 '13 at 13:47
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Marination can only happen before cooking, after cooking it is simply adding a sauce. A marinade is generally used to help flavor meat and make it more tender by chemically breaking down the meat. Marinades tend to be strongly flavored and acidic, so adding them after may overpower the flavor of the meat.

If doesn't sound like marination is your problem though, if your meat is tender but not juicy then you've cooked it too long, marination isn't going to solve that.

GdD
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Here is Kenji Alt's version of Japanese style chashu (his spelling). He says:

Cook your meat at, say, 155°F, and you'll get extraordinarily moist meat, but it'll take up to 36 hours to tenderize. If you happen to have a sous-vide water cooker, this is, indeed, the best way to cook pork belly (see my post on Deep-Fried Sous-Vide 36-Hour All-Belly Porchetta for a discussion of the process)

He cooks the pork belly (in his version) with the seasoning mixture when doing it stove top--I believe you could do the same thing sous-vide.

You would then crisp it afterwards.

SAJ14SAJ
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    The OP is using pork butt which is quite different from pork belly. Actually on the completely other end of the spectrum: pork belly being one of the fattest part of the pork and pork butt being one of the leanest. – Jay Mar 05 '13 at 22:02
  • Pork butt is far, far, far from lean. I take the references where I could find them, though. There are not a lot of credible sous-vis versions of char siu or charshu on the web. Most recipes assume traditional oven or grill (barbeque) cooking methods. It is obviously intended to work as a low and slow technique converting collagen to gelatin, so the technique will still work with pork butt, although it will never be fully as tender as pork belly. – SAJ14SAJ Mar 05 '13 at 22:06