I tried a beef sirloin roast. Approx. 2 1/2" cylinder shape. Pan seared prior to the water bath. Seasoned with salt and pepper, placed in a sealed bag. Cooked at 135F for 10 hrs. Finished with a quick search on the grill. The beef smelt and tasted gamey. It also was not as tender as I had expected. What may have caused this?
Victory, there’s a missing detail or two in your request.
I hope you didn’t eat much of the roast.
Smelt and tasted gamey = spoiled meat, which usually means mishandling somewhere along it’s pre-cook journey.
I suspect that’s the cause.
What did the meat smell like when you removed it from the retail packaging?
Did it feel slimy?
Smell and feel are your first line of defence.
What was the purpose of the pre-sear?
Did you suspect something was wrong with the meat?
Did the meat smell bad or off during the sear?
You cooked the meat well past the Pasteurization stage, plenty safe for wholesome meat at the beginning. If you preheated the water while searing and sealing the meat and promptly added it to the water bath it should have been satisfactory.
“A bit tough”, indicates its tenderness didn’t meet your expectation.
Have you previously cook the same “sirloin” from the same trusted source with a satisfactory outcome? The reason i ask is that where i live a lot of meat cut from the rump is misleadingly labeled “sirloin”. Unless it is well-aged meat cut from the rump needs prolonged cooking, at least 24 hours in my experience, significantly longer if you expected beef tenderloin tenderness.
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Sounds like you overcooked it by about SEVEN HOURS! You might want to invest in a needle probe style injector thermometer – with alarm – to determine when the center of the meat within the vacuum bag has reached the target temperature. Any cooking beyond that point will slowly remove fluid from the meat, thus drying it out and making it tougher. You also might want to consider searing at high temperature only AFTER the water-bath cooking. Searing before the water-bath cooking is pretty much a waste of time because the sear is essentially neutralized by the water-bath process. There are also several useful books about precision water-bath cooking that you might enjoy.
Thanks Zokellib, I went by a recipe I found on line. I will try another roast based on your feed back and will post results.