I need help planning a meal that includes salmon steaks & a Chateaubriand beef roast. I understand the recopies I’ve found but need help from a planning perspective. I want to finish both meats on the grill. Do I cook them with the precision cooker & then refrigerate until I’m ready to put them on the grill? Do I cook them one at a time, and leave sitting out until I’m ready to put them on the grill? I’d like to cook them earlier in the day & then finish them on the grill just before serving, but don’t know the ins & outs of doing so.
Thanks,
Bo
Practise runs on delicate fish will fare you better than anything else. (temp of cook in relation to the flesh, how it handles from bag to pan (etc) as it is moist first & foremost, as intended.
You don’t say if new to sous vide or experienced? & salmon steaks are a very common item to try out from a new owner perspective as is, so how well established in the pan finish of salmon steaks are you currently (easy to burn if not as its skin turns on a penny from slightly underdone to burnt to hell without a diligent approach.
Farmed salmon tends to be cheap end of the price scale, & if going in blind to the courses you intend to present a potential slow motion crash.
So i’d dry run that with times & temps set to MY KIT being used (which doubtless differs from your kits performance)
Nothing to stop you pre cooking, rapid chilling (ice & water) storing & bringing back up to temp to finish.
Are you going the full Auguste Escoffier route of following the 2 meat cook & the reduction white wine, shallots demi glace etc? compared to an “honest” well cooked steak which can easily stand on its own merits without excessive faff? …sounds like a big task to impress for a special occasion maybe?
Are you experienced with making a bearnaise sauce / making a good hollandaise & adding in the extras? a proper chateaubriande sauce goes through multiple reductions to “get there”
What style of serving is expected, plank or platter? (again following the
Bear in mind the origin of the cook for the one you are intent on was pre-sous vide, a roasted meat, that as a result kept / improved the juicy, moist nature of the meat within cooking tech of the time, …this is something the whole modern sous vide technique tends to achieve as standard, you see where I am going with this in an attempt to understand your request?
Are the people to whom this will be eaten by all types who will eat meat to a doneness that is presented to them as a chefs choice or will that cause problems, in which case regular steaks to preferences likely wins out done sous vide & pan finished? with perhaps a couple of good simple, small butter based sauce such as blue cheese mixed & chilled solid for final flourish.
How many are you cooking for is also a bearing here.
All I can say is “if” new to any of this you plotted a potentially tough route to the table.
Hi ya @Bo539 Look to the recipes tap here at ANOVA Culinary .com for times and temperatures. I have found Douglas Baldwin’s A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking FREE ON-LINE a good place to start.
Quite a challenge. Chateaubriand is beef tenderloin traditionally cooked with meat end covers that are used separately. A SV tenderloin might be cooked at 130ºF for a few hours as beef is very tolerant of excess time beyond the minimum to core temperature.
Contrariwise, salmon is quite fragile to start with and excess time will make it even more so. I would cook salmon at 115ºF for the minimum possible time, and very carefully sear it on the grill, briefly, just enough to mark the surface.
Cook the beef first and let it rest covered while you cook and sear the the salmon. Then sear finish the tenderloin. How you will make it chateaubriand is beyond me.
Useful cooking times link in both c/f
https://www.cookipedia.co.uk/recipes_wiki/Sous_vide_cooking_times
The anova temp guide (connected to the app if you have installed that) is a good “go to”
Fish
| Preferred Doneness | Temperature | Min Time | Max Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mi-cuit (tender but translucent) | 110°F / 43°C | 30m | 30m |
| Tender and flaky | 124°F / 51°C | 30m | 1h |
| Traditional well-done | 132°F / 55°C | 30m | 1h 30m |
Fish cooked sous-vide is difficult to sear without having it fall apart.
(Sous Vide Tuna), and Sous Vide Salmon.
As before, if new to sous, then you may get caught out by the delicate nature of fish flesh when removing from cooking bag, patting dry, transfer to butter pan (etc) skin on is easier, logically, more to adhere to.