Have you ever prepared the perfect side of beef and cried when you had to put it in the fridge? have you ever seen your lovely meat turn to jelly?
This has certainly happened to my steaks. my brisket as well.
what if that perfect meat could be held at 140 degrees forever?
and all that tender moisture could be locked inside
How long could it go on for?
Ahhh! Interesting thought, but unfortunately you end up with autolysis. (@Ember mentioned this in one of her responses to you on another thread, but I don’t think she went into detail.)
Essentially the enzymes in the meat break it down and it spoils. A good snippet I read describes it as “postmortem self-digestion of cells by their endogenous enzymes”. If you ever experience it on a long cook it’s hard to forget the “sour” smell.
The Youtube channel “Sous Vide Everything” did a video called " I COOKED a Brisket for a MONTH and this happened!". Here’s a link to it…
I’m not sure if there might be some way to get around autolysis.
Autolysis aside (other than a stasis field, I can’t see anyway around that prroblem) here’s another reason why your idea won’t work @mucus…
The idea of tenderisation by sous vide works by cooking tough meats for long times at low temperatures (needs to be above 130F for basic food safety) so that collagen within the meat breaks down into lucious gelatin. This is a slow process at these kinds of temperatures, which is why a lot of people trade the medium rare temps for higher temperatures and quicker conversion. There is a limited amount of collagen in any piece of meat, and at some stage that conversion process has completed. At that stage you have a mushy, squishy piece of meat with an unpleasant, mealy texture. Most of its structural integrity is gone. It gives a very unpleasant mouth feel and taste.