"Cindy Fuller" > wrote in message
...
> 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
>
> --
Apparently high brow steak houses do this routinely, over a 12-24 hour
period. The steak is then seared at 1700F with an infrared burner, and then
to the table, as here. http://www.ruthschris.com/Menu/Steaks Hubert Keller,
of French Laundry fame has just published a cookbook about sous vide.

Ed