Recently got an immersion heater and vacuum packer and I’ve been experimenting with lots of sous-vide cooking. This ‘roast’ beef (gently cooked for 24 hours then finished on a hot griddle) was great, so smooth and rare with still a lovely browned crust.
(Late to the party, I know…) I’ve done a fair amount of sous vide cooking (although it’s been a while since I’ve done beef). I’ve done tri tip and tenderloin a fair number of times but keep my cook times short - probably 2hrs or less most of the time. I’ve made fewer “roast beef” type roasts, but also don’t cook them much longer than needed to bring the roast to bath temp.
I haven’t experimented much with longer times for lean meat and when I have I think it’s always been pork. But, from my limited experience and my recollection from what I’ve read, you’re usually better off keeping the cook time shorter unless you’re primary goal is to tenderize the meat more. Extending the cook time cause the meat to release more moisture, even at low relatively low temps — it’s a lot slower than conventional cooking, but still noticeable. I think if you tried a much shorter cook at the same bath temp, you’d find the roast would seem less well done.
If you haven’t, I recommend reading through some of Kenji’s Food Lab articles where he uses sous vide on Serious Eats. He does a lot of testing, shows the results (including failures), and talks a lot about why the results happen.
What temp was the bath? Also, what kind of machine/setup are you using?
My advice: only cook the toughest of meats for much longer than that. You can safely go longer, but the tenderness gets to be too much and you cross a line into unpleasantly soft.
Yours looks perfect though! What’d you season with?
Yes, I think the 24 hours was overkill. I’d read it on a few blogs, but I imagine that was for a bigger joint of beef. And i feel like it could have been rarer too. The texture was a bit too even, I prefer a little bit more bloody in the centre.
Didn’t really much seasoning apart from salt. But we got an eighth of a cow from a local farm, so we’ve got plenty more roasting pieces in the freezer to experiment with!
It’s less for bigger pieces and more for tougher pieces. Shoulder, chuck and bottom round roast is what I usually use for long roast beef preparations. Given enough time the connective tissue breaks down into gelatin and it becomes wonderfully tender rather than mushy.
I like to cook it to rare and then sear or oven it to midum rare ish, which I like for sandwiches.I like to grind some black pepper, salt, minced dried garlic and onion, and some mustard seeds on mine before cooking. Leaves a good flavor on the outside and you can take the juice in the bag with the spice that fell off and cook it down with some butter to make a really good savory spread.
For those roasts in your freezer, try 4-6 hours for tender cuts and 12-36 for tough ones depnding on size - you’ll get that bloody center you want with less time in the bath.
Looks good
