Hi Dru, I am glad I"m not the only one! after many disasters, with even a simple thing like 63% eggs, my cooker has been in the cupboard & will probably stay there!
Wow @seato - it looks like you read the first post in this thread and just ignored the rest! Give all the other comments here a read - it shouldn’t take much effort to cook sous vide successfully. Good luck.
I usually cook steaks like ribeye, strip, loin or T-bones at 131 for 2 hours up to 1.5 in thick. Quick sear and they have all been great.
I am not one to sous vide for days though. I will braise or pressure cook tough roasts. The best pork loin steak I ever had was a 2, 1.5" slices bagged separately and cooked at 145 for 2 hrs.
I agree about eggs and veggies. I have other means to cook them.
I really only use my SV for roasts and eggs ! It sounds like im lucky I haven’t had the stinky problem, and even on a chuck roast its was tender as steak after 36 hrs@137
Great read, thanks for all the tips and info.
For set and forget soft boiled eggs? SV cant be beat, I hate overcooked yokes LOL.
Sj
Hi @Dru Don’t throw away any tough mistakes - the meat grinder is your friend, and provides delicious meat to use in meat pies, pasties, haggis, cottage/shepherds pie, and plenty of other culinary delights. Once it’s been ground a time or two, it ain’t tough anymore. 
. I use an attachment on my Kitchen Aid.
Cheers,
Rob.
Dru, I have had some very good results with Sous Vide and what I consider my worse failure was a large brisket which after 24 hours you could sole your shoes with. Put it back in for another 24 hours which improved it greatly, on closer examination the meat I was cooking was a poor cut with more than its fair share of fat in the grain (the wrapping when bought was opaque and I was unable to judge the meat properly with an eye-test). I always cook medium so I was cooking at 61DEGC.
So my final conclusion was the meat quality was not good, saying that it did become edible after 48 hours. I use a SearzAll to seer which gives no propane taste.
docj–Just proved your take that low fat meats don’t do well in the SV. My understanding is grades of beef are determined by presence of marbling. 3 bottom rounds 35hrs @ 133 came out very tender, bordering on mushy and little taste. My fault for not seasoning more heavily, but I now think maybe 134.5 and keep an eye on it. Always have great success with chuck roasts, US Choice. Lots of fat for flavor. Those also 35hrs @ 133
Totally untrue there Bill. Fat content has little or nothing to do with successful/favourable sous vide processing as little or no fat will render at the low temperatures usually used for sous vide processing.
Along with the marbling content visible in graded beef usually goes some work done by an animal. A higher fat content beast will usually have eaten higher quality feed and had to do less work to get it. A lower fat content beast is more likely to have moved around to get his feed, therefore his muscles will have done more work. Higher work for muscles results is lower tenderness meat. Lower tenderness meat requires longer cooking to convert the collagen content into gelatin for mouthfeel.
The fat is flavour adage is not quite true. The fat content helps carry flavour around the mouth and lets the flavour molecules linger longer on the tongue, but the flavour resides in the muscle. Otherwise, why bother eating the meat?
Have had my precision cooker for 2 weeks I cooked two shortrib plates - about 1.5 kg each.
I cooked the first one for 48 hrs at 140 using Joshua Weissman’s recipe and the second one for 36 hours at 150 using Serioud Eat’s recommendation.
In both cases, I did not get the outcomes described in the recipes (I also seared after in a hot pan) . Tenderness was ok but neither was no where near the “beginning to fall apart & easy to shred/pull apart” descriptions after. The plates cooked at 140 had the texture of a medium steak and the one cooked at 150 was even firmer.
Could it be the quality of the beef? I’m in the Philippines and use beef from a farm that breeds a cross Australian Wagyu and Japanese Brahman (I wonder if the person I asked got the breeds mixed up?). Could beef quality have been the problem?
It’s disheartening to hear about your struggles with using the sous vide method. Cooking with sous vide can be a bit tricky, and it’s not always a guarantee that the meat will turn out tender, despite the claims you might have heard. It seems like you’ve put in a lot of effort to follow recipes and different cooking times, but the results have been disappointing.
Cooking tough cuts of meat like bottom round roast and chuck roast for long hours at a low temperature might not always yield the desired tenderness. Sometimes, certain cuts of meat require more traditional cooking methods like braising or slow-roasting to break down the tough leather and become tender.
It’s not uncommon to encounter varying recommendations and temperatures for sous vide cooking, and this can be confusing for anyone trying to master the technique. Additionally, the quick sear method might not have provided the desired results, and using a torch with propane can indeed impact the flavor.
It’s essential to experiment and learn from these experiences. Maybe consider trying some other cooking techniques for tougher cuts of meat and see what works best for you. Don’t be discouraged; cooking is a journey of trial and error, and you’ll eventually find the methods that suit your tastes and preferences.