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TG / Reconstructed roast questions

High_Steaks_18295

I tried while back to make a reconstructed piece of beef, but the results were disappointing. I had two problems in my experiment:

The meat glue did not hold when heated. It softened when I cooked it sous vide, it and completely disintegrated on the edges in the pan later. Thus. the piece did not look and feel like one piece of meat after. I used this meat-glue.

The meat gave off a foul smell when I cooked it sous vide. I tried to taste it despite the smell (in the name of science), but the taste was also disgusting. I know that this is probably due to surface bacteria that has not been killed off before cooking sous vide (as per this discussion). However, I guess that this is always a problem with reconstructed roasts. How can one work around it? In the previous discussion, Brendan Lee suggests to pre-sear the pieces of meat to kill off the bacteria, but this would create traces of cooked meat in the middle of the steak. I used beef-cheek for my experiment.

Help on this issue would be greatly appreciated, since I was planning to sell this in my restaurant. I can hardly think of any worse disaster than rotten-smelling falling apart steak. Especially if it takes around 3-5 days to create a replacement product

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Brendan_Lee_56950

How much would you say you added to the roast? How long did you let it sit when compressed?

I have seen where the roast was not seated and pressed well and pockets inside were left where it could develop some funky spots. Likewise, I have seen where a slurry has left big pockets of The gel and the meat falls apart.

Chris_Young_80640

The weak bond is likely because the meat pieces were not compressed together tightly enough. That's nearly always the mistake people make the first few times using this technique (been there, done that).

What temperature did you cook the meat at? Short of a blanching or searing step, the next best way to ensure a safe and reliable outcome is to cook the meat at a temperature hot enough to bring the core temperature up to 54 to 55 °C within a couple of hours at most (faster is better). For a really big piece of meat, simply cooking in a water bath one to two degrees hotter than you want the core will be enough to make sure this happens.

High_Steaks_18295

Thanks a lot for the advice. I'm looking forward to trying this again.

I left the meat for around 24 hours, and it stuck together nicely before I cooked it. However, the amount of TG used might have been an issue. I sprinkled it on as if I were decorating a cake with powdered sugar, so to speak. That is, I covered the pieces of meat with TG. As for the compression, I put the meat in plastic foil, and wrapped tightly, as if I were making a foie gras au torchon sous-vide. Maybe I should try next time to use less TG, and apply some additional pressure, for example through vacuuming the meat and putting something heavy on top?

I cooked the meat at 54 degrees Celsius, using a circulated bath. I suspect that the meat I cooked was not the cleanest, since beef cheek is a piece of meat that might be hard for the butcher to separate in clean cuts. It was also bought "swimming" in blood, albeit from a respectable butcher. The butcher recommended that it be used for stew. Maybe using a cleaner cut would also be helpful?

@Chris, what would you say is the lowest core temperature that is acceptable for this technique?