Hi everyone, I’ve been lurking here for a while and find it really useful.
Not long ago I got a whole rib eye from the butcher and he cut it into about 8 big steaks, which I cooked sous vide with thyme and onion.
The steaks turned out amazing and I have been collecting the juices from the bags. They are now sitting in the freezer waiting to be turned into a delicious sauce or gravy.
Anyone know a good recipe I can try? I have probably about 150-200ml of juices.
Thanks in advance,
Mike
They need clarifying first. Bring them to a simmer so that the proteins coagulate. Then you can strain off the delicious essence of beef and use it like stock. I add mine to reduction sauces etc.
I do the same and add it to a green peppercorn sauce that’s prepared with homemade Demi glacé
There are uses for your juices!
Onions, garlic and other fresh flavourings added to sous vide do not impart the same flavours in the way you would expect with traditional cooking,
As far as your collected juice you could read Badlwin’s article: How to Use Sous Vide Juices
After searing in a pan, add juices and a deglazing liquid (wine, apple juice, anything you like), boil to reduce, stir in 3 pats butter, take off heat and add a squirt of lemon juice. You now have a wonderful sauce for any meat dish.
Thanks everyone, that’s been really helpful. Especially the link to Baldwin, who appears to be the SV guru around here.
I haven’t done anything with the stock yet as it’s all in the freezer awaiting the right moment. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Easy tip for when you’re storing it or after clarifying, put it in a mason jar and put the Mason jar upside down. Makes it easier to wiggle out what’s usually almost a jelly, or spoon it out for small uses. And makes it really easy to seperate from the fat.
You can of course do the traditional sauces and gravies. But don’t forget, you can use it for the liquid to make stuffing or rice too.
On the gravy thing, if you’ve conveniently seperated out the fat, your can use that fat to make roux that you can freeze for later use. And the nice thing about frozen roux is that it incorporates slower so you don’t get lumps. So some people just use a more manual fat separator to seperate most of the fat from the current bag juices, and add the frozen roux from the fat from the previous bags, and cycle around that way. I tend to way to do my mason jar thing and really strain it and decoagulate it, so I use previous bag juices and roux mostly, and save the current bag juices for later, unless I’m cooking something really different. It won’t let me link here for some reason but I like inhabited kitchen’s
MAGIC ROUX CUBES post. I use a mini muffin silicone pan for things like this.
I use my juices to make gravy. A teaspoon of butter combined with a teaspoon of flour will make a roux. Which is enough to thicken your gravy. Along with a teaspoon or two of red wine and your all good. You do need to be mindful of the amount of salt you season your steaks with.
Is everyone clarifying their juices before using? I’ve got a YEAR’s worth of beef cubes to make good on.
But I hate to throw any animal product away - plus it’s free nutrition! - and while I don’t especially enjoy the texture of the coagulated protein I’ve wondered about using it in a blended black bean soup: start by frying up some of the trinity in butter, whole cumin, fennel, and coriander, then melt down some beef cubes for adding to the black beans in the blender, whole thing goes in the pot together.
Anybody try anything that doesn’t involve trashing good protein?
A lot of neat ideas for juices, great job! Will try them out!
Meat juices are worth keping but most domestic refrigerators can’t sustain below -20ᴼF / -29ᴼC to prevent some spoilage and off-flavours from developing. What’s the temperature in your freezer?
Date and label the saved products, don’t mix them, and it’s best to consider 90-days as maximum storage life.