72 Hour Sous Vide Top Round Steak

[mark in the pit]

72 Hour Sous Vide Top Round Steak

Ingredients:
Top Round Steak
Salt
Pepper
Garlic

Balsamic Reduction:
2 Mushrooms
1 Thick Slice Of Onion
2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinager
2 Tbsp White Wine
1 Tbsp Butter

Method:
Salt and pepper the top round steak. Crush the garlic and place on the top round steak. Place in bag and sous vide for 72 hours @ 140°F. When finished sous viding remove from bag and pat dry. Heat up the grill good and hot for a quick sear. While waiting for the grill to heat up prep the balsamic reduction. Slice the mushrooms and onion, toss them in a pan with balsamic vinegar and white wine. Once the balsamic and white wine reduces by half toss in the butter. Once the butter is fully melted you're ready to go. Once the grill is hot sear the top round steak on all sides. Turning about once every two minutes. Once you have a nice sear top with balsamic reduction and enjoy.

Notes:
This had a really great, soft, tender, moist, roast beefy type texture. Not exactly like roast beef. To me it's still kind of weird compared to other methods of preparation but the flavor and softness turned out exceptional. I have read of others comparing it to the tenderness of high end cuts of meat but it's nothing close to that. It tastes more like a piece of really soft roast beefy type meat that has been slow cooking for about three days. Very tasty.

 

[troutman]

Nice looking video and looks like good result. Curious as to why you chose 72 hours. I've done these and other cheaper cuts (sirloin, chuck, etc.) for no more than 24 hours. I actually started to pick up a spongy sort of texture and have now cut back to about 18 hours. I guess each to his own.

A couple of other suggestions I've done with success. Try putting some smoke to the meat prior to the SV bath. I usually piggie back on another smoke I'm doing and put the meat on for an hour or so to pick up some smoke. I then shrink wrap and put it in the refrig until I'm ready to SV or you can SV directly after the smoke.

On the sear, try using some oil or ghee, it helps even the sear our for a more uniform Maillard effect.

Just some of my observations and experiments.

 

[mark in the pit]

Thanks for the suggestions. I like doing a smoke before bagging, I'm starting to gain some success with my pork that way :). When going 18 hours what temp are you cooking at? I've been sticking at 140F and 24 wasn't enough, neither was 48, 72 surprised me, I didn't expect it to finally get as tender as it was and was about to give up on it. I might go with some ghee next time around for browning. I've got a jar of that in the fridge, I need to pick and choose when I use it though, was using it for everything for a while then everything just felt way too rich all of a sudden. Maybe I maxed out my tolerance for it.

 

[troutman]

I typically want the end result to be at or around 132* or medium rare, that's my magic number. Therefore I start with a smoke that doesn't ever get the meat much above 100* to start then I SV to about 125* in the 18-24 hour window. Now some folks caution this is not a safe zone bath but I've never had any problems. Once I sear then it jumps to that 132* threshold. Also one other note that I do religiously is to ice bath after the SV. It tightens up the proteins prior to the sear and helps with overshooting my final 132* temp while searing.

 

[mark in the pit]

That sounds like a great method actually. SV for 18 ~ 24 is pasteurized by that point so I would think everything should be safe to eat if you are ice bathing.