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Sous Vide Beef

Many of you will read this and think “Does he live fifty five kilometres from a steak restaurant?” Others of you, on the far side of the Atlantic may think “Does he live 55 miles from a steak house?” And some of you might even, quite cruelly in my opinion, think “Is the old fool trying to lie about his age while overcooking a bit of meat?” No, this is a pretty pathetic introduction to a post about cooking a great quality rib eye steak for myself and the Wife using the sous vide. 

 

Tomatoes are messy things. Purists tell you to drop them into boiling water until the skin splits. Then remove them and cool them, peel them, remove and discard everything except the outer flesh then use this in whatever dish you have planned.

That is far too much trouble for a midweek night dinner. But, I have found a solution. While on a recent trip to the north of Italy (To cycle the awesome Stelvio Pass. It is one of the world’s most beautiful and iconic climbs).

Butchers should love sous vide. They should be actively promoting the cooking method. They could, if they had the wit, see that the saving of their dying craft is tied to innovation. Domestic sous vide is such an innovation and could help on a path to profitability. Using sous vide, one can turn out a spectacular steak in just over an hour. I can turn out a spectacular steak in a lot less time without sous vide. Granted, the SV steak may be a bit tastier and a bit more tender. But, this is not where Sous Vide really shines.

“Why would you waste three days cooking a bit of beef?” “How can a cut like that taste good?” “Wouldn’t a nice fillet be tastier?” So go the questions. So goes the debate. I can tell you now. The debate is over. There is very little to be said. For the technical amongst you, this was beef cheeks sous vide 54/72 (129/72 American and 54ºC for 72 hours for the non technical). 

You are probably reading this hoping it’s a software glitch in the Anova or a hacking of the Joule that has led to this culinary failure. It is technically true that an app was responsible for the issues. But in reality, it’s my own dumbass behaviour that was the problem. The app in question is WhatsApp and the issue had nothing to do with the sous vide end of the cooking. I started over two days out, planning a 48 hour cook of my short ribs. At this stage, everything went according to plan.

Feather blade sous vide (10 of 11)

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. 

 The V by Very Blog Awards Ireland ’17 have been underway for a while now. The format involves being nominated, agreeing to participate and then hopefully making it to the long list. After the long (very long)  list, the great and the good of the blogging world get culled and only the worthy (lucky) get to the Short List (See the links at the end of this post).  This year, I am delighted to say, One Man’s Meat has made it to this list in the Personal Food Blog category. To celebrate, I thought I would cook a meal using as short a list of ingredients as I could find. With this in mind, I give you a real winner, Berbere Beef.

Summerhill Farm (4 of 41)

When we Irish say “grass fed” we mean “grass fed”.

Competition is the life blood of commerce. However, many Irish retail businesses have suffered a perfect storm over the past few years. None more so than the independent butchers. While there are huge problems, it’s not all bad. And for those of us interested in real food, there might just be a nice fatty lining to the meaty retail cloud.

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