This may be a silly question. I quite often buy corned beef (silverside) from the butcher; traditionally I’ve cooked it with a quartered onion, honey, pepper corns etc in either a slow cooker or a pressure cooker and then served it up with mashed potato, vichy carrots and bearnaise sauce. I currently have a piece which, courtesy of my butcher friend, is beautifully vacuum packed - my question is - can it be satisfactorily cooked using mu Anova without removing it from the packaging?
In other words, is it likely to turn out too salty and lacking the flavours provided by the other cooking methods - in which case would I, presumably, be better to stick with my old methods?
Any comments, suggestions or advice would be very welcome.
I’d give it a couple of hours wash first. I’ve found that Aussie corned beef is too salty to sous vide straight. It’s traditional cooked in water, so it really isn’t a surprise that it’s too salty when done in nothing but its own juice.
I tried one straight from the store earlier this year.
First the bag did not hold up for the entire cook. Luckily I was there almost as it failed and I repackaged it and continued the cook. If it had happened in the middle of the night it would have been a mess.
Secondly the meat was as you suspected over salty. I plan on a good wash next time.
The texture was spot on perfect and it was very flavorful even though salty.
I soak a store bought corned beef, in multiple changes of water, in the refrigerator, for two days. Then I dry it off, vacuum seal it and sous vide it. The sous vide can take as long as 48 hours, depending on what temp you set the water bath at. check the discussions, on seriouseats.com. Kenji Alt has detailed discussions and instructions, on corned beef.