Today we try a slow cooking for the kid chops to provoke a very tender and moist result
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 5€ pp)
- 1 kg kid chops
- 200 g bulgur
- a small onion
- 1 litre vegetable stock
- 1 jar plum jam with no added sugar (better organic)
- black pepper
- zest and juice of 1 lemon
- salt
- EV sunflower oil
- wild fennel seeds and flowers
I adore kid, it is by far my favourite meat, as it is very healthy and tasty at the same time. The only “problem” with kid is that it contains a low amount of fats, about 3 times less than that of the lamb!!! This property lead the cooks to prepare the kid in humid or oily environments, in order to tenderize it and make it tastier. It is very characteristic that in Spain they bread the kid and fry it, especially the chops.
I selected a different way. I cooked them at low temperature in a sous vide bath. I accompanied them with bulgur, a very common grain in Eastern Mediterranean and North African cuisines. A simple self made sauce with home plum jam and lemon, as well as some fennel seeds and flowers complete the dish.
First of all we salt the chops. We put them in sous vide bags, we completely remove the air and we seal them. We adjust the temperature to 58 Celsius degrees and we cook the chops for 2 hours in a sous vide bath. After this time we can immediately proceed to our dish or we can put the bag with the meat in the fridge to finish it later.
If we don´t have a sous vide bath, we lay the kid chops on a wire rack, we place the rack inside a baking pan, we cover with foil and we roast them for about 60 to 80 mins at 150 C. We don´t forget to add some water in the pan, which, turning into steam, will tenderize the meat.
Just before eating time, we mince the onion and we fry it in 2 tbsp of oil, taking care not to burn it. We add the bulgur and when it turns golden, we pour in it 500 ml of the vegetable stock, we put the lid and we lower the temperature to very low. I cannot give you an exact amount of stock needed, as there many varieties of bulgur, which require a different amount of liquid. Whole grain wheats require much more, it is better to check the bulgur every 5 minutes to check the evolution of its cooking. So, we start with 500 ml and, if we need more, we add later. I remind you that the stock must always be very hot.
Meanwhile, we prepare the sauce. I suggested that you should select an organic jam, because these jams have no added sugars, or they have a very low proportion. By the way, use organic products when you can, my own diet is almost 100% organic.
We mix the jam with 2tbsp of EV sunflower oil, some lemon juice (we check with the tongue), the lemon zest, and some salt. We crush some peppercorns and some fennel seeds at the pestle and we add them in the sauce. The plum sauce must not be neither too thick, nor too watery, of course, we search for a consistency of a common sauce. So, if the sauce results too thick, we dilute it with hot water. In any case, we bring the sauce to a quite hot temperature.
We pat dry the chops and we sear them for just 1 minute in a very hot pan.
We put on the plates the bulgur, the chops and the sauce and we decorate with fennel flowers. During spring and autumn it is very easy to find them in quite every field. They are marvellous.
