I have a 2and1/3 pound eye of the round roast, can I stuff it and still get rare to medium rare? How long? Then plan to sear it on the grill with hardwood clippings.
Depends on what you’re looking to stuff it with. Remember that proteins cook at lower temperatures than vegetable matter, so at medium rare temperatures (129-135F) any vegetables in your stuffing would be still raw unless they’d been cooked first.
Time depends on the thickness of the piece of meat and the texture you want. I’ve seen people use times from 6 hours to 36.
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You also need to be careful that the stuffing gets hot enough to kill the bacteria, etc. that will multiply if it remains in the danger zone while cooking. it is the same issue people have when they stuff a turkey and the middle does not get hot enough and the guests get food poisoning or worse.
If it were me I would cook them separately and stuff it if you want before serving. I like using the eye of the round for sandwich meat. I only cook it a few hours to medium rare, cool it then cut it paper thin with the slicer. It is still tough if you cut it like a roast but when the slices are thin it is great. You really need a machine though as even with a sharp knife it is almost impossible to cut correctly.
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I was going to do some garlic as a stuffing. It’s about 5inches thick at the biggest part.
Your garlic would need to be cooked prior because the 54C/129F or whatever temperature you choose to use for your beef will leave it raw. Vegetable matter cooks at around 80C/176F.
I suppose you could use roasted garlic. But it is worth mentioning that little other than salt has the ability to penetrate the meat.
Round roast is an interesting animal (or part of an animal. It’s a tough cut and if you want it tender the cook time can be in excess of 24 hours. At that cooking time, anything you stuff it with will be at the final temperature. However, I’ve found that some meat tenderizer injected into the round roast will tenderize it and bring the cook time down to about 3 hours. Use a turkey baster to inject a solution of meat tenderizer dissolved in water. Push the injector into the meat at several locations and squeeze the fluid in as you withdraw the injector to spread the enzyme around evenly. This sounds like heresy, but it works well. Finish the roast in a 450 degree oven for browning. Use your eyes to decide when it’s done, but a few minutes works for me.
Now for the stuffing part, think food safety. I would seriously think about stuffing it after the roast is cooked. If it’s stuffed with veggies, they will still be pretty raw. If it’s a meat product, think of the safety problem with ground meat. What keeps sous vide safe is the fact that the bacteria are on the outside of the meat. Searing kills them. If you introduce bacteria into the interior of the roast, they will not be killed by searing. Make sure whatever you use to stuff the roast is either cooked enough to kill bacteria, or is something you would eat raw. If it’s a meat product, pre-cook it.