The processor sealed the meat in a foodsaver bag. For the past hour, it’s been sitting in a 110°F bath to get it to defrost. Then I came on here looking for instructions to defrost for preparation to cook, but the few topics I pulled suggest that I should just set to cook and increase the cook time to 1.5 times the normal cook time. Good advice?
Actually, I just checked, and it seems to be mostly thawed now. The center appears to be frozen still, but hopefully that will change within the next 30 minutes.
I know how easy it is to cook venison into a tough piece of meat, so I’m wondering if anyone has a good venison roast recipe. I would like to serve it tonight, in about 3 hours, but if that’s not enough time, I can serve it tomorrow. I expect to remove the roast from the foodsaver bag so I can season it. I don’t have a foodsaver device myself, but I have Ziploc freezer bags.
I’ve no experience at cooking a venison roast sous vide yet, but from my experience with cooking a leg of lamb, I’d suggest you’ll be better off planning on serving your roast tomorrow.
I’ve never cooked venison, but I don’t see why it would you could not cook it straight from frozen. I’ve never done it, but I do read alot where people put frozen uncooked items in their sous vide and thaw/cook them in one shot.
I would recommend re-bagging the item to release the vacuum before thawing/cooking. You can pull a really tight vacuum on something that is frozen, and remember water boils at a much lower temperature under vacuum. The foodsaver can pull 24 in of vacuum, which would allow water to boil at about 140 degrees. If the moisture boils inside the meat, this could affect the moisture and texture.
I know you needed to know this last night, but I would just kick the temperature to 135 or so, and check the IT of the roast after 2 hours or so with an instant read thermometer. If its too low for you, seal up the ziplock and cook it some more. Check it again 15 to 30 minutes later.
Not sure whether this will help anyone in the future, but a final update from last night:
After 1.5 hours of thawing at 110°F, I opened the foodsaver bag so that I could season the meat. Lo and behold, it turned out to be steaks and not a roast. (Which likely means that the package labeled steaks in my freezer is probably a roast.)
I put the seasoned steaks in a new Ziploc freezer bag, and cooked at 140°F for 2.5 hours. I threw them on a hot grill for a minute per side. I was surprised at how tender they turned out. They were a hit and now my wife wants the boys and me to take up hunting.
