First the wine, a birth year wine for my son’s belated birthday. Surprised by how good this is. Slight browning at the edge, the wine is in a perfect place. Cassis fruit, spice packet, and mushroom. All nicely integrated, with a solid finish. 93
The steak off was a bet with my son. His sous vide or his reverse sear versus my boring sauté and finishing in a hot oven. Judge Nancy, my wife an impartial bystander, tasted them blind.
In third place, sous vide. Not bad, but texturally there was a slight mushiness to it.
Nothing to separate the top two. In the end, the traditional sear and oven was just beaten out by the reverse sear. Not on taste, but the reverse sear was more uniform in color.
Love to hear that kind of passion! Glad you enjoyed the event. Wondering about his sous vide technique because I’ve been using it for a while with nothing but stellar results.
The steak was a bone in strip.
My son is just about to go onto his third year of law school. Over the last couple of years he has been experimenting as a chef, and I think he overtook me about a year ago. Sad as it is, it’s fun to eat some of the things he has been coming up with. Unfortunately he is going back to college on Sunday.
Oliver has done really well lately. As well as steak, he has eaten a few tiny scraps of lobster, salami, kielbasa (his absolute favorite). We have been indulging with my at son home for a week. Yesterday he actually burped with contentment. (Oliver, not Philip)
Reverse sear is my preferred choice to cook most steaks. Pretty dummy proof and they always turn out great/consistent. Never been a fan of sous vide red meats.
Against sous vide steaks unless you like your steak to taste like roast beef. Also against the trendy reverse sear unless you’re talking about something like 3" thick. A boring ol’ regular sear is all it takes to get a perfect crust and a rosy rare interior.
Nice work on the steak. I’m a huge fan of 94 Mouton. It vastly outperforms expectations (which are modest) and I think it is a fantastic vintage for Mouton. Cheers to kids that like wine!
Not surprised about the ‘94 Mouton; had a bottle a few months ago, and it was singing! Just a notch below the ‘85 and ‘90, and pretty much equal pegging with the ‘88. In the last year or so, have had multiple outstanding bottles of the ‘94 Leoville Barton, Pontet Canet, and Latour (mixed case from HDH auction). As a fan of “classic” Bordeaux, it is a vintage that I actively seek out at auction.
About ten years ago, we did Mouton and ‘mutton’ with the 93 and 94 alongside grilled lamb shanks. Both wines surprised everyone with how good they were. Glad to hear the 94 is still drinking so well.
I think 94 has something in common with 88 in general, though it has been a bit harder and leaner. That might even out in time. I like both vintages but people who have been raised on Bordeaux vintages since 2009 might feel like they are from a different place entirely.
I haven’t had 94 Mouton but the Haut Brion is very nice, and more giving than a lot of 94s. A couple of 94s that are very good but very true to the leaner/harder character of the vintage are LLC and La Mission.