Sous Vide Lamb Chops with Cherry Rum Gastrique

A gastrique is a French-inspired sweet and sour sauce.

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar

dash sea salt

¼ cup water

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup apple cider vinegar

2 cups pureed cherries

¼ cup spiced rum

Instructions:

1. Place the sugar and water in a saucepan.  The sugar should have the consistency of wet sand.  Heat on high and continue to move with spatula.  Add butter.

2. After 20-30min the sugar will begin to brown and caramelize.  Don’t allow to burn, but darken to the desired effect.

3.  Add the vinegar.  This will cool the sugar and it will look like dog poop.  Continue to heat until the sugar has dissolved into the vinegar.

4.  Add the pureed cherries and the rum.  Stir and allow to reduce on low heat.

That's the sauce, which I set aside until it was time to remove the lamb chops from the water bath.

The lamb chops were cooked with my Anova at 130 dF, which I changed to 132 dF for the last hour. I'm not sure that had an effect, but they were perfect.

Instead of searing, I placed the wet chops in a mixture of whole wheat flour, freshly chopped parsley, and salt and pepper and then seared them in a pan of hot olive oil.

The results were amazing.  The presentation did look a little like a murder scene, and I was expecting the gastrique to be less viscous, though it did not detract from the flavor.