Sous Vide chuck blade steaks

Now that I'm getting the hang of the sous vide setup, I figured it was time to make what drew me to this method of cooking to begin with:  tender cheap steak.   Let's be honest, I hate spending more money that I have to.  That's really why I started cooking to begin with - working at fine dining restaurants and realizing typical food cost is about 15-20% - the rest goes for the linens, piano dude, fancy plates, etc.  In other words I could afford to impress girls with good food and wine if I did it myself.

So when I realized that there was a method of cooking that turned inexpensive cuts of meat into succulent morsels of happiness, I was intrigued.   So to test this, I decided to get two 8oz cuts of chuck blade steak to see just how much magic this DIY setup could conjure. 

Thankfully my local Dominick's even had them on sale for $4.29/lb - good start.  Next, I used the jaccard to tenderize them a bit - something I usually do anyway.  Not sure how much it ever helps, but whatever, its kind of fun to use and it can't hurt.

 That's pretty much it.  I sealed them in ziplog bags using the underwater method to remove all the air  (once again too lazy to pull out the vacuum sealer) and then prepared the water.  I wanted to cook these to medium rare so I set the temperature to 134 F, waited for the water to get up to temp, then dropped the bag into the crockpot.   Since this method of cooking is so imprecise, I'm thinking 8 or 9 hours.  Some people have suggested up to 24 hours - I'm a bit leary of that long since I don't want to end up with mush for dinner.

8 hours later, I put a potato in the oven and sauteed some mushrooms with red wine,beef stock, and some herbs.  After an hour, I did a rough mash of the potato with some butter, cream, and white truffle oil just to be fancy.  Heated up the mushroom reduction and pulled out the steaks.

  

  Yeah, not very appetizing as expected.  Good thing I've got a cast iron skillet smoking hot and a blow torch handy.  After a couple minutes of sizzle, things are looking up:

And that's it.  Time to plate up and trip over the dog for the upteenth time.  I love her company, but laying smack dab in the middle of the kitchen while I cook gets a bit annoying.  Being she's the only girl in the house this evening, she gets to stay sprawled out while catching chunks of potato I'm tossing to her...


The result... the steak was fork tender although it could have gone a few more hours to melt all the connective tissue.  The fat melted as expected, just a couple pieces that were too chewy and went to Bella.  Overall I think it was a smashing success.  This dinner ended up at under $5 for the food cost and sure as shit blew away a value meal at McDonalds for the same price.