Grass Fed Rancher Steak Sous Vide

In Los Angeles we have an incredible butcher named Lindy and Grundy.  They carry only organic, local, pasture raised and grass fed meats, but the most unique part is that they are a snout to tail butcher.  Not only is the meat incredibly healthy, only grass fed on 100% organic small farms, but you can get really unique cuts. I feel better about my daughter eating it, and I know it’s sustainably raised so I can feel rather smug about my elitist home cooking.

The cut I was working with today was a rancher steak, also know as heart of the clod.   Although it sounds like a middle school insult, it comes from the shoulder clod and is a tough piece of meat only good for braising. This makes it an ideal cut to sous vide. I’ve never understood people who take an expensive New York and sous vide it. Instead I want to coax flavor and texture from more overlooked cuts that would normally require a lot of time and effort to prepare. My steaks came from the butcher already tenderized with a jaccard so all I had to do was marinate, bag and cook.

Prepare a marinade of Worcestershire and soy sauce. Place the steaks in a shallow pan and cover with marinade. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours.

Start sous vide warming to 133 (my Nomiku does a more precise temp of 132.7 but 133 will be fine)

Remove from marinade, season with salt and pepper and place in a food saver bag with sliced onions and mushrooms. I used some trumpet and crimini mushrooms but pretty much anything flavorful would work. Add one pad of butter in the bag and vacuum seal. The butter is critical to the flavor and texture. You won’t get the same result from olive oil. Under my links you can read serious eats steak sous vide primer. It discusses in ore depth the reason that butter is important. I placed mine in the 132.7 water for 16 hours plunged into an ice bath and then froze them for later meals for my daughter. One of the things I love about sous vide as a mom is that I make small portions that are easy to thaw and heat in minutes.

To serve I thaw them in the sink, heat an iron skillet to searing hot, add butter and a drizzle of olive oil and sear on both sides. The steak is cooked to medium rare temperature so if you prefer medium or your kids won’t eat pink meat simply cook a bit longer on the skillet. The texture is amazing. Closer to a New York, and the flavor is fantastic.

Octo-fest!

Sorry i have been taking a mothers day break so I haven’t been writing and this has been sitting in my drafts folder all week.

Tuesday night 4 people devoured an entire 6 lb octopus. The conclusion is that 19 hours in the sous vide at 165 was amazing but next time we will stop some at 12, some at 14 and some at 16 to compare. 19 hours was so tender it was amazing in salads and just eaten cold but it presented problems on the grill. the skin had become so gelatinous it stuck impossibly to,the grill and the meat didn’t have enough left to hold up. We did carpaccio with sriracha and lime but it was so soft we could not get a true think carpacio. the taste was fantastic but presentation was off a bit. We served some cold on arugula salad, with lemon and olive oil. The best was thinly sliced with lime and sriracha rooster and sliced jalapeño peppers. I will be getting another octopus very soon. Sorry for the lack of pictures but we could not start till my four year old went to bed so it was dark and the pictures were not appealing. Fear not we will do this again and I will have better presentation and pictures.

Sous vide success !

The 19 hour sous vide octopus is a smashing success! We took out one of the yummy umami tentacles and simply sliced it over some lemon, sprinkled with paprika and chowed down. It is fantastic. Perfect texture! We also got out our sriracha and dabbed some on top because we thought it could use some heat. We have tons of ideas for this and we are having some friends over tomorrow to try our little experiment. Check out Wednesday for the update.

2 creative directors sous vide an octopus

It was Sunday and I had someone take our 4 year old to a carnival so we had several hours to ourselves. Did we watch a movie? Go out to dinner? Take a nap? Take a passionate roll in the sack? No we decided it was the perfect time to experiment with a 6 pound octopus and take pictures of it.

Several months ago we had an amazing octopus carpaccio at a restaurant. They had cooked the octopus in a sous vide and then sliced it very thinly on a plate with some micro greens, lemon and I think paprika. We have been talking about making it ever since.

We ordered a frozen spanish octopus and were expecting to get a 3-4 pounder but what came in the mail was a 6 pound monster that sat in our fridge defrosting for a couple of days.

We roved the internet for a while to find some videos of people breaking down an octopus. Since our was frozen and not fresh we fortunately didn’t need to “clean” it and take all the ink and yucky inner stuff out of it’s head. Yes if you buy a fresh one from a fish monter you will need to slice open it’s head and pull out all the gunk inside. We pulled out Flavio (I named him of course. Doesn’t everyone name their food?) and put him on a cutting board. Eye side up and then we cut out the beak. This is about as appealing as you might think. That little black thing is an actual beak!

We then flipped it over and cut out the eyes. Fortunately I’d made us a batch of my yummy blackberrry gin coolers. It’s a squirt of home made blackberry syrup which I did with some Thyme, lime, gin, mint and club soda. They helped me deal with all the gushy octo parts and the intense fish smell.

After that we cut off the head and cut apart all the tentacles. Once broken down we washed it in the sink and dried it off with a clean towel. Now we were ready to put in our food saver bags and get into the sous vide. We added just salt, lemon and olive oil to some, added oregano to the mix for others and finally did some with paprika, olive oil, lemon and oregano.

We placed them in the sous vide at 165 and checked them in 7 hours and they still were not tender so we left them in overnight! We had intended them to take them out as soon as we got up but our daughter had a melt down and getting her ready for preschool was harder than breaking down the octopus so I completely forgot about it. When I started planning dinner I suddenly remembered we had an octopus that had been in the sous vide for 19 hours and I ran to take it out. It was pink in the bag, nice and tender but amazingly still in tact. The tentacles have shrunk to more than half their size and are now swimming in lots of pink liquid. I popped them in the fridge and later I’ll put some in the freezer for a later date, but that 6 pound octopus looks like it will feed 4-6 for dinner, but as the intended carpaccio it should be enough to make appetizers for 2 to 3 diner parties. We will try some tonight and tomorrow we will make the carpaccio. More pictures coming on my tumbler feed!

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