Sous Vide Ribeye with Béarnaise Souse

Ahh, ribeye.  Mhmm béarnaise.  Ohh calories.

I picked three really nice-looking ribeye steaks to try for my inaugural sous vide meat dinner party.  Each was approx. 1.25 lbs @ $15.99 /lb.  I insisted they all be very close in size and shape.


Water bath set value: 134 F
Time: 4hrs
Seasoned only with salt and pepper and pan-seared with hot canola oil.

3.4 lbs of ribeye.  #meatporn

Vacuumed sealed with a little salt and pepper

And placed in the water bath at 134 F

The rig on the counter.  Unfortunately, the controller is in the shadows.  I found the it is much more efficient to have a lid over the vat and helps get to temperature much sooner.

I used a 12qt food-grade bucket as my water vat.  I used two immersion heaters as the element and an PT100 RTD as the temperature probe.  Circulation was provided by a fish tank pump.  I should design a neater immersion holder to keep things neater and away from the sides of the vat and the bags.

Pan-seared in hot canola oil for about 20 sec per side.

Béarnaise Recipe
2 tablespoon chopped shallot
1 tablespoon tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
4 egg yolks
1.5 cups of butter, clarified (AKA 2.5 little sticks)
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup white wine vinegar

Clarified Butter
Clarified butter looks like what you would want to put on pop-corn at the movies.  It involves taking sticks of butter, melting them and then straining out the foam.  You're left with a transparent, dark yellow oil.  If you're not careful and the heat is too high, the butter will brown and you don't want that.

Separating Egg Yolks
Short answer: Just use your fingers.  By the time you fool around with two spoons, or fancy equipment you can have your yolks just by cracking the egg and letting the white run through your fingers into a bowl.  If you drop a yolk, you can just gently pick it out of the bowl.

Mix your ingredients, excluding the butter and eggs, in a sauce pan and allow to simmer to a reduction. I don't think I allowed mine to reduce enough and felt my sauce had a very vinegary taste.  I then combined all ingredients in the pan while whisking.  Frankly, this basically finished the béarnaise but I then placed it in a FoodSaver bag in the 134 F water bath for about 30min.

If I had a second controller, I would have tried 180 F for 45min.

When removed from the bag, I placed in the blender, just for good measure; this aided in re-whipping it up and gave it a very creamy consistency.

The sauce in the vacuum sealer.  The heavier the sauce, the easier is it to vacuum seal with a clamshell-style vacuum.

Served with a side of grilled asparagus.

Finished product.

This was actually the only steak knife we had; the others used butter knives to cut the steaks!

Edge-to-edge medium rare.  Very soft, very supple and tender.  "I didn't know steak was supposed to taste this way."

The fat didn't get hard like it would on a grill; it remained very gooey and palatable (but I still gave it to Ele).

Smoking Superbowl Weekend

My latest meat smoking / BBQ experiment was conducted on the Saturday before the Superbowl.  It was my largest meat selection so far and I was extremely pleased with the results.


Meat:
Duck, whole duck including head and feet
Pork Spare Ribs, 4 racks, 8.6lbs, two with spicy rub, one with wasabi and one plain
Beef Chuck Roast, 3.4lbs

Wood:
The chips had been soaking in a cooler and even developed a slime on the surface, which was cleaned off.  The water was drained Friday afternoon and the damp file was wood was allowed to set outside in the open cooler.

Brine (Duck):
- 7 cups of water
- Pinch of Thyme
- Sliced Orange
- ½ about of salt
- some sugar
- Ground black pepper
- 5 smashed garlic gloves
- 4 bay leaves

Preparing the duck brine on the stove.  The brine and whole duck were placed in a glass jar for 8 hours in the fridge.

Beef Prep:
The beef chuck roast was injected with melted butter using a syringe.  The butter did squirt out and it was a little weird.

Rub (spicy):
This rub included the same ingredients as previously, but with less cayenne pepper.  The rub was also mixed with the mustard in a bowl and applied to two sets of ribs as a slurry.  It did not adhere to the meat as well as applying the dry ingredients first and layering the mustard on top.  Butter and black pepper was added as well.

Don't do this!  I mixed the rub and mustard together into a "slurry".  It didn't adhere well to the meat and crumbled off when cooked.  I recommend spraying the meat with light oil, applying the dry rub like a boss and they then optionally applying a 1/4" thick spread of mustard to cover.

Rub (wasabi):
- 1.75 oz of wasabi power
- Water
- Soy sauce
- Garlic powder
- Onion powder
- Sea salt
This rub was very runny and wasn’t like a rub at all.  It did stick surprisingly well to a single rack of ribs.


All the meats were placed in the smoker at 7am on Saturday 2/2.  Temperature was set at 225 deg F.  The duck was placed above the plain ribs so that the duck fat would drip down over it.

Chuck was removed at 6pm with an IT reading on the igrill of 217 deg F. Wasabi and plain ribs were removed at 630pm with an IT of 210 deg F. They had been on the lowest rack. Duck was removed at 230pm and allowed to cool to serve as deli meat. The best smoke occurred at 250 deg F. The side dampers were open. The top damper was 3/4 closed.  Beef and ribs were allowed to cool for an hour.

Results:
- The spicy ribs were good, but there was a problem.  I had mixed the rub and mustard into a slurry to apply to the ribs prior to smoking.  This was a mistake.  The slurry did not soak into the ribs and was too thick and goopy.  The ribs were best with this coating removed.
- The wasabi ribs imparted no wasabi flavor
- The ribs placed underneath the duck were the best, probably due to their exposure to the dripping duck fat.  This should absolutely be repeated.
- The beef chuck was excellent and pulled nicely using just two forks.
- The duck was served cold and was excellent.  The brine should be repeated.

Nice smoke ring.

The beef shredded nicely using two forks.

The beef didn't make it to plates; was consumed on the cutting board.