Sous Vide In The Mash Tun

[Thirsty Boy]

Its the better half's birthday today and the request is for a nice roast beef dinner.

So its Roast beef with assorted roast veggies, steamed asparagus and Roast Potatoes done in duck fat

Dinner will be at 8:30-9:00 when the beloved gets home from her early evening flamenco gig (bass player)

Veggies are in the oven on low under foil (it is a shit oven and I will cook them through on lowish and ramp it up to cremation territory to brown just before serving)
Potatoes are cooking mostly through in their skins and will be peeled and halved then go in with the vegies in a little pot of duck fat when the oven gets turned up.
Beef is in my mash tun with the RIMS set to 55... its been there for an hour so far and will only come out about 10 minutes before serving (total of just under 3 hours) - when it will be patted dry and then it will be browned to a crust on a scarily hot cast iron grill pan for about 2mins tops just to get a bit of a crust going..... asparagus into steamer at about the same time as the beef hits the hotplate.

and it should all be perfect.

hopefully.........

If all else fails - desert is terrific Vanilla Slice from the French Lettuce patisserie in Carlton, washed down with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. So it will finish on a high no matter how badly I screw up the main

TB

 

[capretta]

did you bag it?

 

[pokolbinguy]

Sounds good. Will have to give this cooking method a whirl when I move back to the Hunter and have access to my electric mash tun again.

Mmmm food.

 

[proudscum]

Sounds good. Will have to give this cooking method a whirl when I move back to the Hunter and have access to my electric mash tun again.

Mmmm food.

Hope the roast is cooked ,we normally marinate lamb rump for 24hrs and they sous vide for 10 to 11 hours.....hmmm middle eastern lamb with labnae.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

did you bag it?

Of course - Patted dry, seasoned with salt, pepper and rosemary, vac sealed and then tossed in the bath.

Hope the roast is cooked ,we normally marinate lamb rump for 24hrs and they sous vide for 10 to 11 hours.....hmmm middle eastern lamb with labnae.

It was - perfectly even all the way through. It got nearly three hours in the end - plenty long enough to cook it, but not long enough (and probably not high enough temp anyway) to give you the other benefit of sous vide and really tenderise it. I would probably go up perhaps 1 or 2 degrees for the next time though, it was a titch on the rare side for swmbo. And with more time on my hands... I'd certainly give it the 10+ hours treatment.

 

[zebba]

Inspired by ThirstyBoy I tried something similar to this yesterday. I don't have a vacuum sealer so it wasn't "traditional" (hehe) sous vide, but from what i've read the actual vacuum part isn't as important as the temp and time.

I rigged the tempmate up to my HLT, set it to 59 degrees and let it go. I then got some butterflied leg of lamb, put in some garlic and rosemary (see below), wrapped it all up in a heap of glad wrap and then threw it into the water. Then wrapped the HLT up in towels in an effort to hold the temp steadier and waited.

It went in @ 9am, and a 5.30pm I pulled it out and threw it on a piping hot skillet for about 30 seconds on each side, then served with an rosemary and anchovy sauce, roasted spuds and assorted boring vegies to keep the dietitian wife happy.

And happy she was. She went back for seconds, which she has NEVER done with lamb, and then went back for thirds!

So, lessons learnt.
1. Thirsty was right in a previous thread (which I had forgotten about till searching for this one this morning) - the garlic didn't work great. Created a god awful stink as it was cooking, but only imparted a small amount of flavour to the finished product. It didn't taste raw, but it certainly wasn't that classic nutty roasted garlic flavour.
2. The rosemary didn't work at all. I suspect it just wasn't hot enough for it. Next time I might try bashing it with a mortar and pestle first.
3. The glad wrap works, but air caught in the outer layers caused the meat to float about so it was half under the water line and half above. Wasn't a concern though. The inner layers were tight - the juices stayed with the meat, and the water stayed where it should...

The lamb was amazingly tender. The texture was bizarre. It felt raw, and cut like it was raw, but it just melted in your mouth. Didn't pull apart like oven cooked lamb. Not chewy in the slightest, and no toothpicks required. The fat though was a mixed bag - some of the fat was lovely, but the gristle was still gristle. I had expected it to gelatinise with the long cooking time, but I suspect (more research required) that 59degrees wasn't hot enough.

Next time I'd pick a different cut of meat (i.e. without the gristle) and probably go lower temp.