Beef - Roast

The grocery store was a madhouse as people shopped in advance of the snow. Thanks to the various micro-climates here it looks like I'll be spared the worst of it in my own little area, but it's hard to say, really. Regardless, they had a sale on standing rib roasts, which are my favorite. So I'm roasting one, in modified Alton Brown style:

-Rub down with salt, pepper and canola oil after allowing the roast to come to room temperature.
-Roast at 250 degrees until internal temperature of 125. Rest and then put a crust on with about 15 minutes at 500 degrees.

I don't have the giant planter to make an oven within an oven, sadly. The other variance I do from Alton's recipe is to put some onions, celery and a bit of red wine in the bottom of the pan for some moisture and to make the foundation for a jus.

Today I sent my SousVide Supreme demo unit back. I had it for almost two weeks. While this gave me a chance to get a feel for the machine, it didn't really give me enough time to really see all of what sous vide - as a technique - has to offer.

Here's what I cooked:

• Fish: Just tilapia, unfortunately. Since I moved to Maryland from Illinois, I just haven't been taking advantage of the (significantly) greater availability of good seafood. I'm not sure why. Still, given how tender, moist, and flavorful the tilapia turned out, I'd definitely like to try more fish sous vide.
• Eggs: Some people don't really like the "perfect egg" that you can get with sous vide. They find the white too loose for their taste. This means there are more for me. (If only it worked that way...)
• Root Vegetables: I cooked some celeriac and sweet potatoes for purees. The celeriac, unfortunately, was my biggest failure with the machine. I tried using a regular zipper bag. It opened at some point in the cooking process, and my celeriac escaped into the water. It still tasted OK, but it was nothing special. The sweet potato, on the other hand, turned out incredibly well: smooth and deeply flavored. I added a bit of cumin and turmeric and tossed it in the blender.
• Beef: Despite some reservations voiced by others on this site, beef was the real standout here. Chuck roasts are amazingly flavorful cuts of beef, but they are also fairly tough. Chuck cooked for over 24 hours at about 132 degrees (medium-rare) turns out amazing. Image by ArnoldDue to the fact that the water bath never rises above your ideal core temperature, you can't overcook it. Given a long cooking time, though, the collagen dissolves. You are left with a steak that is perfectly cooked from edge to edge... and is just about as tender as any steak you've ever had. The fact that sous vide techniques allow you to make (cheap) chuck steaks that compare favorably with much more expensive cuts of beef is exciting. Apparently, short ribs turn out really well, too. The chuck was good enough, though, that I made it a couple of times in the short time I had the machine (despite the long cooking time).
• Lamb: The lamb was good. It didn't benefit quite as much from the low temperature cooking as the beef did, but I also didn't cook it nearly as long.
• Squid: I followed someone's notes on the Internet. They were wrong. My squid ended up a bit too tough, though it tasted good. I usually find squid to be very neutral tasting. This actually had a very nice flavor to it. Next time, I'd try squid a bit above 140 degrees for at least two hours.
• Chicken Breast: Tender. Moist. Too often, chicken (particularly white meat) doesn't taste like much. This didn't have that problem. It tasted like chicken... in a good way.

Things I didn't get a chance to experiment with: Too many to list.

I'd have loved, though, to have been able to experiment more with fruit, other vegetables, poultry (sous vide turkey, definitely. sous vide duck? It would be nice to try...), and more seafood (I think it would be really good for squid, if I knew the right temp to cook it at). I have no idea what sous vide could do (if anything) for nuts or cheeses. Can you bake in it? What would that do?

Martin KingsleyBelieve it or not, you don't have to thaw that roast before you put it in the oven. It seems counterintuitive, but you can cook a roast from frozen in only a little more time than it would take to cook a thawed roast.