Sous vide steak.

[JabbA]

With my Ardunio controlled brewery up and running today saw the first try of the sous vide mode. I was planning on getting the toughest, cheapest lump of meat from I could find in the butchers but I popped round to a see a cattle farmer friend of mine on Tuesday and he was throwing the best part of half a cow into his chest freezer that he had been butchering all day and I left with a couple of rump steaks!

After drying, I seasoned them with a few grinds of pepper, a sprinkling of mustard powder and a pinch of salt- thinking about it later I thought adding salt might not have been a good idea as it may draw all the lovely juices out?


The main reason for wanting to try sous vide cooking was because I brought a vacuum packer for storing my home grown hops last year.


Packing the steaks. I packed them on Wednesday night and left them in the fridge until taking them out to cook today, Saturday afternoon.


Cooker set up, using my mash tun and HERMS unit (kettle!) to heat.


Steaks in to cook.


The Arduino keeping a steady tempreature.


Checking up on the cooking whilst enjoying (a rather lively!) first pint of my Scottish 60 shillings- Ok but not great.


Steaks after 2 1/2 hours in the water bath.


Drying off before cooking on the BBQ.


Quite a bit of liquid left in the bag, due to adding the salt when packing?


The first outing of the camping BBQ this year! It didn't get very hot and I had the steaks on there longer than I wanted.


Just off the grille.


And sliced up up to serve.


The texture of the finished article was firm but not chewy, very succulent and the time on the BBQ gave just enough caramelisation and charring. I did mean to do a side by side comparison by taking out one of the steaks out of the bag before cooking and re-sealing, but on seeing how much liquid was in the bag I decided to keep them together. Overall they were delicious and I'll defiantly be doing it again but I'll use a smoking hot griddle pan to finish them off.

Cheers,
Jamie

[masterosouffle]

You're right, salt that early is a bad idea, also with it being a relatively tender cut, you are looking for perfect cooking temp rather than a breakdown of cologens etc that you would when doing something like oxtail, therefore you wouldn't need any more than 30-40 mins at most. I add pepper, thyme, and a clove of garlic, pop in 54 degrees bath for 30 mins, remove herbs etc, pat dry, then season with salt and light rub with oil, sear for 20 secs each side in a smoking hot pan, perfect medium rare!