Some general things for sous vide cooking, new to me.
I tried a marinade in the bag with some cheap chuck roast (or ‘chuck shoulder,’ can’t remember) beef. Looked for a recipe online, something like, “best marinade for beef.”
Found one that “looked good,” though I didn’t really know at that point. It included vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, pepper and some other spices. I cut the meat into “steak” thicknesses, like 1" or 3 cm, and then sliced into those pieces every 1/4" or 6-7 cm, not cutting all the way through them, but most of the way. I figured this would give lots of surface area and exposure for the meat to the marinade, while having each ‘steak’ still hang together as one piece, versus cutting it into true thin slices.
48 hours sous vide at 138°F or 59°C. Wow, it turned out GREAT! Really delicious, and tender and “high quality” seeming, even with such a cheap cut of meat. I think the meat would be excellent without the marinade (such things have been, in the past), but it made a significant difference for taste, and I will definitely do it again.
Searing - using an oven broiler for ribeye steaks has been good, but for some tenderloin/filet mignon it was not. It substantially cooked the meat more versus how it came out of the sous vide.
I’ve used a torch, propane or ‘MAPP’ gas (burns ~100°F or 40°C hotter than propane), and it gets to all the outside surfaces of meat admirably well. My wife doesn’t like it - she says it alters the taste, even though I’m careful to keep the cylinder lower than the torch head, so no unburned material can get to the meat. I don’t know whether anything is changed or not, and would be interested to hear other people’s experience and opinions.
Searing in a pan on a stove - recently got a plain old cast iron skillet, and it does a fantastic job, much better than most other materials. If the meat has flat sides, so much the better - that’s what one really needs. A box of pre-cut frozen pork chops, a sliced pork loin, beef that’s been carefully cut or done by a machine - life is good.
Oil or fat with a high smoke point, get that iron really hot and boom.
lol
