I have a week-old cooker and it is malfunctioning, telling me that steaming water is negative fifty Fahrenheit. So yes, a request is in to support, but today is the holiday and that problem won’t get solved until later this week. The question is how to save the roast. I was supposed to do 18-24 hours at 165 degrees and I am 2.5 hours into it. An external thermometer told me the real temperature was 175 so I added a little cold water. I can babysit while I am awake, but what am I supposed to do overnight? Should I pull it out now, give it an ice bath, and then resume tomorrow when I’m awake and can babysit?
I think I’d pull it and shock chill it down to refrigerate.
Have you a leave-in meat thermometer? The remote signal RF or Blu-tooth kind? If you do, you can cook your roast off in a slow oven, keeping an eye on the internal temperature. The idea would be to reverse sear it in much the same manner as you would with sous vide. Of course, it’s a high maintenance way of doing things, where the sous vide version is set and forget, but it will give you similar quality results.
When the core of the meat has achieved about 145F pull it from the oven and sear. The roast will probably make the remainder of the temperature gradient through your resting period.
Hopefully this won’t happen again. However, if it does you can cobble together an emergency rig using a covered stock pot on a small element/burner of your cooktop or stove and an accurate thermometer for periodic checks. Give the water a stir each time you check.
Use ample water for thermal stability and bring it up to your cooking temperature and add the product being cooked. You will find through trial and error a heat setting that almost maintains your temperature setting. It will require monitoring and take some adjustments. Just bring the temperature up to your target each time.
For shorter cook times a preheated cooler chest will hold almost constant temperature for a few hours. Add a little boiling water to maintain temperature and keep the lid on otherwise.