In article >,
"Theron" > wrote:

> Well, last night I thought I'd try cooking a beef eye of round "sous vide"
> style. This technique, of cooking at a very slow temperature in a plastic
> bag immersed in low temperature water appealed" I had previously roasted an
> eye of round as suggested by Cooks Illustrated at a very low temp with
> excellent success.
>
> I salted the beef 4 hours before starting. The 3 lb piece of beef went into
> a Ziplock bag; the air was sucked out thoroughly, and it was placed in a
> warm water bath at 140F, first in the microwave on "thaw", and then in the
> oven at a low temp, 150F by oven thermometer. The water bath, as far as I
> could tell never went above 140F. By plan, I was going to sear the meat
> afterwards, rather than before cooking. This can be done either way, the
> recipes say.
> After three hours, I took the meat out, expecting to sear it. I had a beef
> "rock", dry as a bone, and tasteless.
>
> I think one must do this with a very careful attention to an ongoing
> temperature just over your final meat temperature. I wanted the meat to cook
> to 130F at the center. I couldn't even get my thermometer in to measure it;
> it was so hard searing would have been a joke.
>
> In retrospect, I would
> 1. Sear first at a high temp.
> 2 Find a way to not ever exceed the planned temperature. Cook at 1
> degree over the final temp for many hours, and hold the meat at that temp.
> For a final meat temp of 130F, the water temp should have been 131F. That's
> far beyond kitchen technology for most of us, for me at least.
>
> As I posted previously, searing an eye of round, and roasting in the oven at
> a very low temp, 150F and turning the oven off when the meat temp hit 120F
> resulted in excellent results. The meat was moist, with au jus on the plate,
> and very tasty, a real poor man's standing rib. I've done this twice with
> excellent results. Slice it very thinly.
>
> If any want to try this, here's a very good scientific article on the
> subject with recipes. http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html
>
> Ed
>
>
> .

Sous vide might be okay for a tough cut of meat, but not eye round.
It's one thing to roast it at a low temp (dry heat) and quite another to
stew it in its own juices at low temp. This is another fad that will
pass.

Cindy

--
C.J. Fuller

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