Beef Feather Blade Sous Vide – It’s My Secret Sauce.

Customers would ask me “What’s our secret sauce Conor?” “How can you make our business stand out from all the others out there?” I would evade the questions, preferring to maintain the curtain of mystique around what I do, like the Wizard of Oz pulling on the levers of deception and subterfuge as I wrestled with the brand image of various entities. Ultimately, we would define the brand and expose the “secret sauce” that really made the difference for the company in question. However, this is not marketing and the sauce I want to mention is less of a secret than it used to be. 

We’ll come back to the secret sauce a little later. I was cooking some beef feather blade and decided that it would be best tackled in the sous vide.

Side note for Sous Vide Nerds: I cooked it for 12 hours at 55ºC (131ºF). I seasoned first and didn’t use any butter, oil or aromatics. 

The blades getting a decent bit of salt and black pepper.

The early shots were taken in the breaking morning light. Everything from here on was taken under artificial light in the gathering gloom of a February evening in Dublin. After 12 hours in the bath, the steaks looked like this.

They really don’t look appetising at this stage. Bear with me.

Second side note for Sous Vide Nerds: No, I didn’t save the bag juices to make a tasty gravy. Purely because I was serving it with the secret sauce mentioned above. If I had not had the sauce, I would have made an epic gravy. 

The meat looks pretty good by any measure.

The feather blade comes with a fibrous piece running down the middle. At this stage, it is best to trim this and the grizzly bits on the outer edge. This leaves some lovely, lean meat. I fried these in a bit of butter and oil (the oil to stop the butter burning) to brown the outside.

A quick sear is all it takes. We don’t want to overcook it.

While I was giving the meat a quick sear, the Wife was cooking some Ciabatta bread. We enjoyed the meat in sandwiches with generous helpings of White Mausu Peanut Rãyu.

Like I say, not such a secret anymore.

This is White Mausu Peanut Rãyu. It looks pretty Oriental. It tastes really Oriental too. But, it is made in a small village a few kilometres south of my home, in south Dublin.

Side note for anybody thinking bad things about me: I have never met the makers of this lovely sauce. I have no commercial arrangement with them. I bought the sauce, paying full retail. It appears here because it is a true delight and was excellent with the meat. #notanad.

This is a pretty spectacular sauce. If you find it in a store, buy it.

The feather blade was excellent. I highly recommend cooking it sous vide as done here.

The best beef sandwich I’ve eaten in a long time.

If you can get your hands on the (not so) secret sauce, you will enjoy it and you can feel good in that you are supporting a growing business.