I thought I'd post this before I tried it. I'm going to attempt the
following in a bullet smoker next time.

I tried 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.

As per instructions, the 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. Here's a very good scientific
article on the subject with recipes.
http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html

The reason for the post, again, is that next time I'm going to sear on the
grill, and then smoke the meat at a very low temp. As above, it must smoke
at 150F, no more, and when the meat hits 120F, the smoker should be damped
to stop cooking.

Ed

Theron wrote:
> I thought I'd post this before I tried it. I'm going to attempt the
> following in a bullet smoker next time.

Don't you think just maybe, just maybe... that the plastic bag may
interfere with the whole smoking process?

No water bath, no plastic bag, no sous vide.

-sw

Sqwertz wrote:

> Theron wrote:
>
>> I thought I'd post this before I tried it. I'm going to attempt the
>> following in a bullet smoker next time.
>
>
> Don't you think just maybe, just maybe... that the plastic bag may
> interfere with the whole smoking process?
>
> No water bath, no plastic bag, no sous vide.


No, this is for the sous vide in the garage. The laws
of physics are different there.

On Aug 3, 5:22*pm, Sunny <Sunny> wrote:

....
> *A good outdoor *sous vide technique I've used is to enrobe the meat
....

"enrobe the meat".

No more words are called for,

Dana

On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:42:35 -0700, RegForte wrote:

> Sqwertz wrote:
>
>> Theron wrote:
>>
>>> I thought I'd post this before I tried it. I'm going to attempt the
>>> following in a bullet smoker next time.
>>
>> Don't you think just maybe, just maybe... that the plastic bag may
>> interfere with the whole smoking process?
>>
>> No water bath, no plastic bag, no sous vide.
>
> No, this is for the sous vide in the garage. The laws
> of physics are different there.

The density of the hot air in his garage is near that of water, I
guess. As well as the air between his ears.

Next post: Sous Vide in the Kenmore washing machine. In the garage.

-sw

<Sunny> wrote in message ...
> On Tue, 4 Aug 2009 01:45:59 -0700 (PDT), Dana K6JQ
> > wrote:
>
>>On Aug 3, 5:22 pm, Sunny <Sunny> wrote:
>>
>>...
>>> A good outdoor sous vide technique I've used is to enrobe the meat
>>...
>>
>>"enrobe the meat".
>>
>>No more words are called for,
>>
>>Dana
>
> I contributed this tongue-in-cheek.
>
>
I guess I should have looked at the translator before I posted. I was
assuming the term referred to low temp, regardless of technique.

Ed, constantly struggling with my level of ignorance,