Mike Forman

Makes sense

How long do you usually cook a 2 incher for? Or rather to what temp should I get to before a 10 min rest? I've had bad luck with my thermapen getting close to the target temperature, then 1 min later it's 20 degrees above temp.

I just received this bone in ribeye from DeBragga. This 28 oz 2-inch thick styled "American Waygu" chop, a marbled beauty is vacuum sealed and sitting in the fridge and the only thing separating it between me (and the Mrs.) bellies is how am I going to cook this thing to perfection. Sous vide is out. The fat is too precious. I don't have a grill, but I do have a perfect cast iron skillet. Two questions. Should I salt it overnight in the fridge and let it air dry to help with a crust? Reverse sear it, or should I just keep flipping it every 30 seconds until it's done? How long should I expect to cook this for? I'd like medium rare. Regarding fridge drying: My fridge has a fan in the bottom drawer for quick chilling beverages. It works rather well. Would that be preferable to just letting the steak dry on a rack? I'm a little concerned about the steak picking up smells from other foods. Might make sense to use some baking soda to de-smell it first. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I really don't want to screw this puppy up.

I'm branching this off of the A 3lb top round roast and dreams of pit beef thread because I'd like a Mulligan. I'm not really sure of what my objective is. Originally I wanted to re-create Maryland's (should be famous) Pit Beef, which is a cheap hunk of meat that is grilled or traditionally over a fire pit and served rare to medium rare on a Kaiser roll. If you go old-school you top it with a horseradish mayonnaise "horsey" sauce and some thinly sliced onion. Cooked properly it is a tender and flavorful. Or do I want deli roast beef, like Boar's Head with a rare and slightly chewy texture? However Boar's Head is hit or miss at the store. I always ask for a slice before making an order. Sometimes it's just flavorless. I don't know, but I plan on making and documenting several roasts. I'm going to try different cuts with different techniques. I'll start with some simple parameters and goals: 1) Use a cheap cut of meat. No tenderloins allowed. 2) Bloody hell, it's gotta be rare 3) Keep the roast within 3-5 lb range. I don't want to spend a week eating mistakes. 4) Slice it thin using a slicer with non-serrated blade. I'm going to try both oven roasting and sous vide. So here is a picture of my latest attempt. 3lb top round, marinated for 2 days with salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. Frozen for 3 hours, then seared in a skillet. Sous vide at 134 for 24 hours. There was about 1/2 cup of juice in the bag. The photo makes it look a lot rarer than it actually is. There is no grey layer, which is nice. It was flavorful, but the texture left something to be desired. A little mushy for my taste. It also wasn't juicy. Probably because most of it was in the bag. The next time I sous vide I'm gong to try 132 for 12 hours. At this point I should ask you to step in and yell at me if I'm doing something unsafe. Might do it anyways, but I'd rather know than not. This was not my first attempt, but rather the third. I just didn't document the first two. My first attempt was using a Food.com recipe, which was pretty simple and turned out nice, but it was more cooked around the outer portion that I would have liked. The second time I screwed up because my timer failed. This method called for roasting at 500 for 5 minutes per pound, and then sit in the oven for an hour, followed by a 15 minute rest. I want to try this method next time, but be more careful about the timer. Hopefully I can find a deal at the store this week.

How rare was it? Is 132 too low?

I read they use any cheap cut of beef.

So months ago the wife and I were traveling south down I95 and right after we passed Delaware we made a turn onto Rt 40 heading into Maryland. My wife found a BBQ place she wanted to check out called Fast Eddie's. The ribs were decent enough, and so were the hot sides, especially the baked beans. The cold sides were meh. Just a few weeks ago we were making the same trip and made another stop. I didn't really pay attention to the menu the first time because our eyes were on the ribs. But this second trip just before our order was rung up, I saw it happen. A beautiful kaiser roll had thin slices of onion placed on the bottom shelf and a high mountain of slices of rare roast beef on top of that. The owner of that sandwich pulled the top bun off, which was dappled with blood, and pumped a nice dollop of mayonise on top and reassembled the sandwich. I'm having what he's having! (Though they didn't onion me, I should have asked) Tender raised to the 10th power. I know Pit Beef is grilled, but I'm indoors so that's off the table. How can I make this 3lb top round approximate Pit Beef? The round is in the fridge, seasoned with kosher salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and vacuumed sealed. I'm going to make this for Sunday dinner. How would you suggest I cook it to get a nice tender rare roast beef ready for the slicer? Sous-Vide and then finish it off with a sear? Sear before? Two sears? Or use the oven? 500 for 15 minutes, oven off and leave in for an hour? Thanks. My stomach is already rumbling

This is my mother's recipe, which always cracks. If followed to the recipe it's texture is more chunky than creamy. Recently I've tried using a water bath at 350 for 15 minutes, then 325 for 35 more. I've had decent success in stopping the crack, but I lose the texture -- though more people seem to prefer it that way. 1 lb cream cheese 1 lb ricotta 1 pint sour cream 4 eggs 1 ½ cup sugar ¼ lb salt butter 1 ½ tbs lemon juice 1 tsp vanilla 3 tbs cornstarch 3 tbs flour Bake 1 hour @ 350 In any case, for a change I was thinking about trying to use wide mouth mason jars (8 oz) for individual cheesecakes using my Anova stick. Using the same ingredients (I'm ok with skipping the flour and starch) what temperature should I use and for how long should I "bake" for? I was thinking I would pour the custard into the jars, and put the jars in the bath with the water level reaching above the custard. Or should I try sealing the jar and just submerging the whole shebang? I'm unsure of the latter, due to condensate and I definitely don't want these guys cracking. TIA for your suggestions.

First post here, so I hope I don't embarrass myself. Anyways, I need not lecture everyone here on using the archimedes principle to get the air out of a ziplock bag, but I did learn a little trick to make it easier to get that last little bubble out of the bag. Take a q-tip and dab it in some vegetable oil. About an inch below the zipper, swab a ribbon of oil across the length of the bag. Make sure you get the seams on each side as well. Make sure the ribbon extends to the zipper. Now follow the normal procedure to get the air out and sink the bag. The ribbon of oil acts as a 2nd zipper, so you can get all of the air out of the bag with the oil zipper being below the surface of the water. I did some experiments with this trick, and have several bags holding airtight for several days now -- without even locking the ziplock. The oil does all the work.