Sous Vide Chuck

Posted by johngl

As many of you know, most glorious mother-in-law was visiting from the rain-soaked North for over a week (I counted the days). She really likes ribs, so a whipped up a batch sous vide style, which spent over 20 hours in the the sous-vide rig. While I was at it I thought I might run an experiment, so I cut off a 9 ounce chunk of some nicely marbled chuck and let it join the ribs for the 20 hour bath.

The results were pretty incredible.

Chuck comes from the shoulder of the cow and isn’t noted for being a particularly tender cut of meat and is usually relegated to use in multi-hour braises or being ground up for some really tasty burgers.

Not any more.

Meat chuck, my favorite cut of beef for burgers. This 9 oz. guy has been aged for several days, hence the darker coloring, and is particularly well marbled.

Pondering seasonings for this first-run experiment, I chose salt — and only salt — sprinkling it on all sides of this rectangular chunk.

I bagged it and dropped it into the 142° water bath along with the ribs.

A mere 20 hours later…

I was draining out the accumulated juices. A lot of this is dissolved collagen, the main — and most abundant — protein in meats that provides strength, resilience, and support to the skin, ligaments, tendons, bones, and other parts of the animal. It renders out as gelatin. If you refrigerated this, you would quickly have a beefy-tasting jello.

Since chuck is from the shoulder, it gets a pretty good workout and therefore has a lot of connective tissue. Hence the meat is tough. When the connective tissue gets broken down by the slow application of heat at a steady temperature, the resulting flesh is tenderized.

How tender? Well, think of a New York Strip. It isn’t as tender as a tenderloin and has a bit more chew to it. However, that chew carries with it a wonderful beefiness that make it a very popular choice among steak lovers.

I never fail to be impressed with the edge to edge coloring of sous vide cooked meat; there just isn’t any other way to get coloring like this.

I cut off another slice and popped it into my mouth. I was immediately reminded of a NY Strip, richly beefy with a nice chew, not at all tough.

I dipped another slice back into those drained juices. My, my, my. That was some beef juice; concentrated beef stock  just waiting to be made into a sauce augmented with red wine, a touch of sage, and butter.

This sous vide experiment was most definitely a success. I’ll be doing a dish based on these results for an upcoming wine salon next weekend.

Stay tuned!