Cooking For Engineers

[Enrico]

Well, this is my 4th time. I buy quality ossobuco. $19/lb. It is beautiful.

I sear it with high heat first, on the grill, 600 degrees. Give it 3rd degree burns, nice and brown.

put it in the crock pot for 6 hours. covered 3/4 s of the way with chicken broth. (The crock pot registers 160 degrees F)

And the meat does no fall off the bone. I is not tasty. I is rubbery.

Do I need acid (tomato sauce) in there?

Do I need more heat ?

Any suggestions ???

Enrico

[Michael Chu]

You might need more time. I generally braise at higher temperatures than that to hydrolyze collagen into gelatin as quickly as possible. Even then, it takes a couple hours. At 160F, collagen will turn into gelatin, but some of the tougher connective tissue might take a long time. I suggest braising at 180F or higher.

[bbeeman]

When you barbeque a relatively tough piece of meat, the general rule is to aim for 190 degrees to really cause the collagen to break down. I'm sure that there is some degradation of collagen at 160, but it will take forever.

I strongly prefer to braise osso buco or lamb shanks in a cast iron dutch oven in the oven, where I can control the temperatures better.