Athena, looks like this a known issue with beef under a vacuum. From the eGullet forums.
Sous vide meat often doesn’t look appetizing straight out of the bag. I think the searing is just as much for appearance as for flavor. I tend to do a lot saucing instead of searing.
There was a thread here a while back when my sous vide pork roast turned bright blood red in the bag even after long cooking, but the color went away as soon as I opened it. It was delicious.
I have done 72 hour short ribs. They looked more gray than yours. They were also delicious.
Oh interesting - I guess I should have looked first.
I’ve definitely seen the gray before, but not the green. So maybe squeegee really didn’t have an issue at all.
Huh. Thanks for the info. Is it expected that the meat smells like an armpit? It didn’t that truly sour smell that bad meat gets, but it didn’t smell very appetizing either.
Maybe 72-hour cooked meat just isn’t for me.
I am thinking that 72 hours was excessively long, we normally do 24 hours for ribs.
Another successful try at the oven method. Cast iron pot, no lid, about 175F for 2 hours and then a quick sear. Delicious.
I’ve been doing fine with a beer cooler so far. I think I’ve found the right temperature controller (thanks for pointing me there** pulykamell**). I’m debating possible heat sources, although I’ll probably start with the crock pot. But I don’t see any need to leave anything in for 72 hours. I did 2" thick pork chops for 4 hours the other night, and they actually seemed over-tender. I had some beef ribs to try out, but time didn’t allow me to monitor the water temp, so I just put them in the crock pot. I’ve got a vacuum packed corned beef that I plan to do this weekend, 12 hours tops. But I don’t really see what 72 hours will do except turn meat into mush.
One thing I plan to try when the weather improves is smoking meat for a while to start, then sous vide for a bunch of hours and sear.
I (the green ribs guy) am going to get back on the horse tomorrow with pork ribs for 9ish hours. A simple rub, then 9 hours @ 175F. I think multi-day sous vide is not for me. Wish me luck.
I’ve found these work pretty well. One is enough to hold the water temperature, but you’ll need to start with the water close to the desired temperature (heat it on the stove).
http://www.amazon.com/NORPRO-559-Immersion-Warming-Liquids/dp/B000I8VE68/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361646152&sr=8-1&keywords=immersion+heater
The other heat source I like is a simple electric hot plate with a large stock pot on it. The natural convection of the heated water helps with circulation.
You should give liquid smoke a try as a comparison, that stuff is great.
Those are on the list. One set of plans I’ve seen used three of them, but I would start with pre-heated water. Those things usually have a short life, but I think that’s because they overheat, kept to the lower sous vide temperatures they may last.
I’ll just politely disagree and let you guess what I’m actually thinking.
What were you cooking?
I see what people mean about starting with already-hot water. My crockpot took nearly 3 hours to come up to 175F.
This reminded me to go buy a bottle of liquid smoke from Amazon Fresh. A search yielded it as the first hit. The second hit? “Liquid Ass”. I don’t think I want to know.
I’m guessing lube. But, yeah, I don’t really want to find out if it’s something else.
Steak.
I never liked rare steak, especially if its raw, bloody and cool inside. Gah, disgusting texture and squicks me out.
For some reason, I’ve got no problem with sous vide steak that is bloody. The taste and texture just aren’t the same as traditional cooking methods.
I need to figure out salmon next
But you said 175F for 2 hours for those steaks. They’d be utterly grey, well done, non-bloody. Am I misunderstanding you?
The oven was set to 175 on full convection mode, in a large cast iron pot without the lid, and the water was pre heated while the steaks were frozen. The water temperature inside the pot was ~128F (My wife actually cooked it this time around and didn’t measure the water temperature.) Sear the steak 1 minute per side after the sous vide. It took a little trial and error the first time I did this to figure out the heat transfer from the oven to the big pot of water is not as efficient as I thought it would be. Started out with the water and oven temp preheated to 130F. Then slowly keep raising the temperature up while checking the water temperature. Ended up being around 170 - 175F to get the steaks out that I like.
Like I said, I’ve been playing around with this oven hackaround instead of buying a sous vide unit. Steak is pretty straightforward. I’d like to work on some others like salmon, scallops, pork chops, and maybe a roast. Also like to figure out any cheap cuts of beef that end up very tasty via sous vide
Finally, what I really want is a Sous Vide Oxtail recipe. Chinese or a good hearty French version with burgundy.
Ah! That makes much more sense, thank you. You’re not going for constant temp but average temp over a known period. Got it.
actually the temp is constant. Preheat the oven, preheat the water, toss in the steaks, and then put the big pot in the oven. There may be a couple of degree change while the steak thaws, or while you’re figuring out the right oven temp, size of pot, amount of water in pot, etc. But the point is to get the temp of the water bath to whatever your target is and then leave it there. Natural water convection should avoid any significant temperature variation in the bath. After doing this a couple of times, I just check the water temp after about 30 minutes and if no adjustment necessary then leave it alone until time to take them out.
If cooking a lot of steaks, then probably want to stir the steaks around quite a bit to ensure they don’t clump together and don’t get the circulation. I had this problem once where some of the steaks were perfect and some undercooked. Since an extra hour or two in the water bath won’t hurt, next time I’d just cook the steaks longer and mix the pot a lot. Not quite the toss 'em in and forget about it for a few hours but pretty close.
Anyway, it’s a work in progress that i’ll probably fine tune a little bit but the broad strokes are there.
I believe it’s some kind of prank aroma compound along the lines of a stinkbomb, the details of which I’m not terribly curious about.