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Message: [QUOTE="auror, post: 3808227, member: 1329"] It was a pretty good pinot noir from Oregon. $25 bottle that I get for mid teens by the case buying wholesale and is our "house wine" as it were. There's a lot of rich rendered fat, butter, oil and salt from multiple components in the dish that the acidity of the wine helps cut through, and the fruitiness adds another element and enhances the sweetness in the beef. But those things will be true for most red wines and I wasn't looking to highlight any particular flavor this go around. It was a random weeknight meal after all. Since the short ribs have so much fat, you want it to render completely. And since it was low tempish (136 vs. something like 165), you need a much longer time period (it's an exponential curve, not linear). You could do it at higher temp in 24 hours, but then you lose more moisture and texture of medium rare and it'll end up more like a braise. I've done it at 36 hours also, but this time at 48 was so good I'm going to do it the same way every time going forward. 24 hours would've rendered a lot of the fat, but not all of it. Only concern for that timeframe at that 136 temp is surface lactobacilus, so I boil water in a pot and dunk the sealed meat in the bag for 1 minute to kill surface bacteria before putting in the real water bath. Lacto isn't harmful, but it does smell awful if you accidentally cultivate some. [/QUOTE]