Degas

Thanks for all the replies. Intuition told me that smoking combined with sous vide should produce excellent results, the real question being to pre or post smoke. I guess I'll have to experiment to find out which I prefer. I purchased a tri tip (for the first time) and now have the dilemma of leaving the fat cap on or not. Conventional smoking calls to leave it on, while sous vide only recommends taking it off. If I do a combination, I'm assuming that I'll be taking it off since it won't have enough time or heat to melt during a quicker, colder smoke. I plan on smoking it around midnight tonight, then placing it in a bath until noon tomorrow upon which time it will finish on a hot grill. I'll check back with results.

I've done a lot of online research but can't find any recipe that uses both smoking and sous vide. I've recently added a vertical box smoker to my arsenal and would love to incorporate it with my sous vide methods. In other words, meat in a smoker generally only takes on smoke for the first hour, so what would be the harm in smoking something like a tri tip for an hour, immediately vaccuum sealing it and placing it into a bath at 132 or so? It seems like an ideal way to get the best of both worlds. A good idea? Bad idea? Why aren't there more recipes using this combination? I'm aware of incorporating liquid smoke into pouches, but this seems like a pefect way to achieve both smoke and tenderness. Thoughts?

Hi folks. One of the reasons I found and joined these forums is from my research on the internet pertaining to sous vide cooking since there's relatively little out there. I'm aware of Baldwin and Keller and the likes, but every so often there's an ingredient or product that I cannot find anything at all on, as in the case of my recent purchase of fresh Venison/Brisket sausage. My separate research on both venison and brisket call for 1-2 days, but being in a sausage form, I was a bit hesitant to go this long. I started it at 140 for about an hour, then rethought thinigs since it's beef and deer only and lowered the temp to 133 and cooked it overnight for about 8-9 hours. It looked like some of the liquid was exiting the sausage, so I pulled it out and placed it into an ice bath for over an hour and now it's in my freezer. I also had no idea what part of the deer was utilized. Loin calls for a far shorter time than other parts. Should I have gone longer than 8-9 hours being brisket and venison? My intuition told me not to go anywhere near two days. I didn't want a lot of liquid leaving the sausage, nor did I want to change the texture of the meat. These babies will be finishing on the grill, so they will get more cooking time there. Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks in advance.