Eye of Round Roast - cooked sous vide

[ElsieD]

I am planning to pick up an eye of round roast and cooking it sous vide. I have looked through previous posts but could only find a reference to bottom roast and that was posted in 2006. Has anyone cooked an eye of round sous vide? Is it worth the bother? I generally stay away from round anything as I find it to be pretty crappy meat. However, if it works I thought it might be okay for sandwiches.

[Kerry Beal]

I salted as per Cook's Illustrated - 1 tsp of kosher salt per pound to the trimmed eye of round. Let sit in vacuum bag for 24 hours. Then sous vide at 55 C for 24 to 26 hours. Took out and browned in my Big Green Egg.

[rotuts]

Various cuts of meat from the same animal have very different flavors, cooked this way and that. Muscle that had to work during its life, seems to have more flavor, yet might be on the tough side.

SV, when properly understood, takes those tougher muscle groups and melts the connective tissue without over cooking the muscles them selves.

If you plan to study SV Beef: keep a small notebook: indeed with a sharpie note those details on the plastic itself.

'Eye of the Round' is a posterior meat with little flavor in itself compared to lets day shoulder. Thats not to say you cant have a nice SV experience. But how ever you cook your Beef, you cant add much flavor other than 'age-ing flavor'. But if you keep track of how you SV you will find out eventually a lot better way to cook any cut of beef so that 'on the plate' will be better than any other method.

unless you can afford and get "true aged prime cuts" you will have to open your wallet for these.

good luck! post a pic! we (I) love to learn from your work.

Edited April 21, 2012 by rotuts (log)

[Todd in Chicago]

I salted as per Cook's Illustrated - 1 tsp of kosher salt per pound to the trimmed eye of round. Let sit in vacuum bag for 24 hours. Then sous vide at 55 C for 24 to 26 hours. Took out and browned in my Big Green Egg.

Ummmm...Kerry....so how did it turn out? Would you do it again? Would you change anything? :-)

Thanks...

Todd in Chicago

[IndyRob]

I had a promising result with a bare roast done sous vide and sliced very thin. But based on some similar experiments, I think the thing to do is ask your butcher to slice it paper thin and then take it home and portion it out in bags with a bit of salt and some beef stock/base. Then you can sous vide each portion individually as needed.

[Kerry Beal]

I salted as per Cook's Illustrated - 1 tsp of kosher salt per pound to the trimmed eye of round. Let sit in vacuum bag for 24 hours. Then sous vide at 55 C for 24 to 26 hours. Took out and browned in my Big Green Egg.

Ummmm...Kerry....so how did it turn out? Would you do it again? Would you change anything? :-)

Thanks...

Todd in Chicago

Was very happy with the result - I know I've posted about it before - I seem to recall deciding that you can make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Here you go.

[ElsieD]

I picked up an eye of round roast today. It is Certified Angus Beef, although I don't know if that makes much difference over the regular supermarket variety. It does, however, have some visible marbling. So, I will follow Kerry's method and salt it using 1 teaspoon per pound and leaving it in the fridge in it's vacuum pack for 24 hours. I will then cook it sous vide for 24 or so hours, followed by a good browning. I'll post the result. Thanks for your help. IndyRobs method is intriguing as well. I may try that some other time.

Edited for spelling

Edited April 22, 2012 by ElsieD (log)

[infernooo]

I know some will disagree with me (the beauty of the subjectiveness of taste), but I personally find round beef flavourless and almost a pointless cut of beef to cook. This is not for a lack of good supplier/meat quality either... I have simply yet to try round cooked any way that has impressed me that could not be achieved with a more flavourful cut!

[IndyRob]

I know some will disagree with me (the beauty of the subjectiveness of taste), but I personally find round beef flavourless and almost a pointless cut of beef to cook. This is not for a lack of good supplier/meat quality either... I have simply yet to try round cooked any way that has impressed me that could not be achieved with a more flavourful cut!

First, I'll agree that this cut is flavorless and seems to have limited potential. But to write it off completely based on your past experience discounts values that many cooks hold dear in themselves.

Is there any cut of beef that could not be improved by using a better cut? Only one, I would suggest, and it would probably be the full-on Kobe foodporn-steak at $120 per ounce.

If you have one of those, your biggest challenge is to 'do no harm'.

But if you have a normal cut of beef, the ingenuity in you must come out. We can add flavor and do things to reduce toughness. To stop at "This is not good enough" is not a chefly trait, IMHO.

There're salts and spices, herbs and acids, and meat glues, sous vide, etc. The possibilities are nearly infinite.

I don't mean to seem insulting, but if you say that a certain cut of beef is 'pointless to cook' then, I think, you've run out of ideas.

[infernooo]

I know some will disagree with me (the beauty of the subjectiveness of taste), but I personally find round beef flavourless and almost a pointless cut of beef to cook. This is not for a lack of good supplier/meat quality either... I have simply yet to try round cooked any way that has impressed me that could not be achieved with a more flavourful cut!

First, I'll agree that this cut is flavorless and seems to have limited potential. But to write it off completely based on your past experience discounts values that many cooks hold dear in themselves.

Is there any cut of beef that could not be improved by using a better cut? Only one, I would suggest, and it would probably be the full-on Kobe foodporn-steak at $120 per ounce.

If you have one of those, your biggest challenge is to 'do no harm'.

But if you have a normal cut of beef, the ingenuity in you must come out. We can add flavor and do things to reduce toughness. To stop at "This is not good enough" is not a chefly trait, IMHO.

There're salts and spices, herbs and acids, and meat glues, sous vide, etc. The possibilities are nearly infinite.

I don't mean to seem insulting, but if you say that a certain cut of beef is 'pointless to cook' then, I think, you've run out of ideas.

Fair call, and well said.

I suppose it does come down to my views... sous vide? Chuck or short ribs. Grilled? Ribeye or hanger or sirloin or strip. Grilled and thinly sliced? Skirt/Flank/rump. Braised? Chuck, blade, oxtail. Traditionally roasted? Fillet Smoked? Brisket Corned? Brisket. Soup? Tail. Lean? Tenderloin/flank/rump.

My view is that we are often looking for meat with more flavour (you see more and more complaints nowadays about beef "not having as much flavour as it used to"). Part of this is fat, part is the inherent flavour of the meat from muscle type, blood supply etc. To me at least, round lacks in both of these areas.

Edited April 23, 2012 by infernooo (log)

[IndyRob]

Fair call, and well said.

Thanks, but in the confines of this thread, it's about getting the best out of a specific, if suspect, cut of meat.

We can add flavor. We can add fat. We can add salt. We can add beef stock. But we can't change the cut of beef.

[rotuts]

this cut might benefit from a higher SV temp until tender, then cut thin with a good flavored beef stock for 'French Dip' with some crusty sourdough.

[slkinsey]

Has anyone cooked an eye of round sous vide? Is it worth the bother?

Yes, I've done it. No, it's not really worth doing. As others have said, eye round is not particularly flavorful. It's fine to cook SV to rare and use for roast beef sandwiches. But that's about the only thing I'd do with it. I suppose if you had some plan to do beef medallions heavily sauced, it might be worth doing as well. But I'd prefer to do that with a more flavorful cut. If you want to do eye round SV for roast beef, I'd consider doing things to increase the flavor. For example, you could thoroughly trim it, aggressively brown the trimmings, make a minor amount of broth with them and then put that in the bag while you're cooking the meat to get some more beefy umami in there. Or you could use a spice rub or something like that. Or you could brine it with something flavorful. Otherwise... meh.

[Anna N]

I think eye of round makes great sandwich meat. I have followed Kerry Beal's formula and a couple of weeks ago I followed this recipe:

Both work remarkably well to produce a tasty and reasonably tender hunk of beef. I like the high-heat method as it requires less pre-planning.

[gfweb]

I like this cut for corned beef because it is lean. I'll give it a load of flavor with the corning spices so the loss of fat flavor is not problem for me. Cooking SV x two days works great in this application.It ends up tender and flavorful and moist enough.

[ElsieD]

I cooked the eye of round sous vide and I am amazed. It is tender, moist and has a surprising amount of flavour. I cut a few thin slices to try it out and we had to force ourselves to stop nibbling. I had been wanting to try this particular cut of beef cooked sous vide as I had heard good things about it and I am not disappointed. It will make wonderful roast beef sandwiches. I don't know that I would serve it as beef for a roast beef dinner as I don't know (yet) how tender it will be if it is cut more thickly. In any event, for the price I can see doing this again. It won't supplant my usual strip or hangar but it's darn good.

[IndyRob]

I've just started to experiment with transglutinase (meat glue) and have been able to confirm that fat can be glued to meat. I've been using pork tenderloin filets with salt pork slices glued to the faces. It turns out that while the TG is working while compressed by the cryovac bag, there's a brining effect that equalizes the salt between the salt pork and meat (although that last bit doesn't relate to my point below).

So I think the next place to go is to get some fat (should be less expensive than the round) and slice the round down the grain into 'chopsticks'. Do the same with the fat (maybe toothpick-sized lardons), and layer up a well marbled 'tenderloin'. Compress that and let the TG work, and then slice steaks and cook them conventionally or SV.

[Peter the eater]

Has anyone cooked an eye of round sous vide?

This is an eye of round slab cooked in a bag with a water bath. I don't recall the exact time and temp -- it was probably around 4 hours @ 60C. Obviously not the greatest cut but if kept rare and sliced thinly across the grain it's fine for sandwiches, etc.

[rotuts]

PTE: Was 4 hours enough for tender? Even thin cut? and Im curious about the pebble-y look, haven't seen that before.

[ElsieD]

I did mine for 24 hours at 134F. It weighed about 2.5 pounds.

Edited April 25, 2012 by ElsieD (log)

[FoodMan]

Eye of Round really makes a superb deli style roast beef. Here's a link to one I posted about a while back: SV Deli Style Roast Beef

[IndyRob]

Interesting. What is the reason behind the 20 second dunk at 190F?

[Shalmanese]

Interesting. What is the reason behind the 20 second dunk at 190F?

Presumably to sterilize the outside.

[dukelancer66]

We recently SVed eye of rounds at 130F for 48 hours. just chopped rosemary, oil, truffle oil, and cracked black pepper. It was tender and delicious. It isn't the best cut of meat, but done this way it can stand up to more flavorful cuts.