Quote:
Originally Posted by PSM
Looks great! Fill us in on your sous vide method s' il vous plaît.
Merry Christmas!
Pat
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Merry Christmas to you too.
I started with two whole tenderloins. I fabricate them myself because it is MUCH cheaper. Untrimmed USDA Choice tenderloin is about 12.99/lb (costco). If you buy them peeled they are 18.99/lb and fully cut they go for about $20-$22/lb. Besides, you can use those trimmings for stock/broth and sauces.
Anyhow, once I fabricated them, I cut the two in half (total of 4 64 oz pieces) so they would fit in my Sous Vide Supreme. Salt, cracked black peppercorn and then vacuum sealed them and left them in the fridge for a day. The people I was serving tend to prefer their meat a bit more done than I like so I went for 133 degrees F for a little under 3 hours. I temped them at 1:30 and 2:30 and they were still in the 120's. At 2:45 they were up to 133 so the time was about right. When I pulled it out, I used a chef's torch to sear the first one. It worked great, but was taking a bit longer than I liked with four of them to do so I switched to searing them in a pan in olive oil. The one in the pic was from the pan sear. The torch seared one had virtually no ring around the outside edge. I think I'd use that method for smaller dinners. I rested them for about 30 minutes before cutting with a granton edge slicer to get the nice clean cut for presentation.
In the future I'd aim for closer to 15 minutes rest, 30 was a bit excessive and I had to use the sauce to give the meat some warmth. Also, with a less well-handled piece of steak I'd probably have let it sit at 133 for another half hour just to be sure any bacteria was deader. At 133 for that short a time, there's a bit of a risk, but with the source I used (butcher run by a chef instructor that is just as focused on food safety as I am) and the quality of the meat I felt it would be fine.
I just stuck with simple seasoning on the meat and put all the flavor into the sauce. I really like to keep a great cut of meat like these (they were USDA Prime) as close to natural as possible and offer the flavoring as an option through sauces on the plate.
The meat was fork tender, in fact you can see in the pic that, even though I was using a razor sharp knife with scallops designed to help keep suction from sticking the blade the meat still pulled a bit apart when I cut it. That's what the two notches on the top of the steak in the pic are from.