Hi all,
I’m having a dinner party and need to cook two 1.5kg eye fillet roasts to rare/medium rare. Is the machine able to do both at the same time and what temperature and for long is recommended?
Thank you
Nina
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How thick are they? If you want them at two different temperatures/donenesses, there will need to be a time when they are not in the water together.
Nina we had a longish discussion on your topic last March through May. It will lead you through the challenging steps to achieve your desired outcome.
This is not a technique an inexperienced SV cook should attempt and particularly not when you have a guest audience.
Look for it under Food and Cooking.
Cook a medium rare & a medium steak in same batch?
For your Plan B, i usually advise cooking beef tenderloin roasts, aka Chateaubriands, in a low oven (225F) and pulling at 120F for rare and 125F for medium rare and finishing both about 6-inches below a preheated broiler turning almost constantly for about two minutes. Get yourself 18-inch tongs and don’t even think about doing something else at that time. Above all, don’t waste your money on all that beef if you don’t have an instant read thermometer.
The results are superb and the oven technique is a lot less distressing.
The challenge with SV cooking two roasts is you risk over tenderizing the medium-rare roast if it remains in the water bath for the several hours the rare roast requires. Most of your guests probably don’t enjoy fall-apart beef.
Do well and enjoy.
They are probably 2-3 inch think but could be 5inch in depth.
Happy for them to be the cooked to the same temperature or doneness just in the bank of rare to medium rare.
Thank you
Nina, your welcome.
Think about what’s happening when you SV cook.
Heat is slowly penetrating meat.
Do you have a ruler? Probably won’t do. You need to be precise to be successful. Consider that a 3-inch thick piece of meat will require 50% more SV cooking time than a 2-inch piece because it is 50% thicker.
Think about it.
I know this isn’t an easy concept to grasp when you are new to SV cooking. The heat energy penetrates the meat evenly from all around, unless of course your cooking vessel is too over crowded and there’s insufficient water circulation, but you wouldn’t do that.
To calculate the SV cook time required you need to use the lesser distance heat travels through the meat. The 5-inch depth, or length, of the meat could be 10-inches. Cook time won’t change, only thickness matters.
Think about it. What is happening as the meat cooks?
Ok then, split the difference temperature wise and cook for 3 to 4 hours, but no longer or you will be unhappy with your result. For your guests who prefer medium-rare blot their meat slices heavily as you slice them. That’s how to have rare beef tenderloin appear medium-rare. Also, if you are serving a pan sauce, and i recommend you do, serve the sauce beneath the rare portions and over the medium-rare portions. That way you won’t have a who-gets-which-plate mix up or have to conduct an annoying table side who’s the rare? plate auction.
If you’re not sure about how to go about making a pan sauce avail yourself of one of the Knorr Demi-Glace mixes and make it ahead using only about half the water so the meat liquids in the bags can be incorporated into your sauce. You would be surprised at the number of restaurants that use them as a quick, consistent, and easy solution.
Perfect Thank you.
I’ll defintiely measure when I have the meat I just haven’t purchased it yet. The party isn’t until Dec 1 so hoping to do a trial run this weekend.
I’m definitely not an amateur in the kitchen but new to the sous vide machine.
I’ll let you know how the trial run goes!
Thanks again.
Nina
Nina, the cat apologize for providing more detail than necessary. A lot of new users here have very little cooking experience or knowledge.
Once you grasp the thickness-matters learning phase you’ll be just fine.
Some day amaze yourself with a rare or medium-rare 24-hour inside blade or top sirloin roast.
Looking forward to learning just how great your trial run goes.