Sous vide trouble shooting

Background: Thanksgiving meal (USA, sorry Canada), I'm doing recipe testing for November, feeding 12 people and I've been asked to do a second major protein because a number of people don't care for Turkey. So Protein #1: roasted turkey

Question: I've done one test thus far, and I took a whole pork loin, double butterflied it, and brined it overnight (I'm using a pork brine recipe from Ad Hoc at home by TK). Then in the morning, I made a spread of fresh breadcrumb, pureed granny smith apple, small diced fennel bulb and minced sage and covered one side of the loin with that mixture. I then layered over the spread thin slices of prosciutto. Finally I rolled the thing back up, tied it with twine, bagged and sealed it and cooked sous-vide for 4 hours at 144 degrees. I then Removed from bag, seared on a screaming hot cast iron skillet, sliced into rounds and served.

So it was funky, and I was not happy with it at all, the pork got a weird, slightly mushy, but also slightly dry texture? there was a ton of excess liquid in the bag after cooking, and the prosciutto got overly chewy?

I'm thinking maybe I should pre-cook the apples and fennel and try to get as much moisture as possible out of it before I cool it down for the filling? Or maybe I should use pre-dried apples and blitz then in a food processor? Any suggestions welcome.

It was suggested to me that I cook the pork by itself Sous-vide and then cook the filling separately and roll it up afterwards, but I'm trying to avoid a bunch of extra steps near the end of the process when I'm finishing sides and warming plates before everyone sits down to the meal.

Thanks in advance.

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HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

Did you use any salt prior to SV?

mdcombs

I just lightly salted the exterior of the roll prior to SV. On the inside my thinking was that the prosciutto would provide enough salt to season the inside of the loin but I could easily be wrong about that.

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

I would use NO additional salt as you have already brined it. IMHO you cooked to the max amount of time, I would back off to 2 hours or less depending on the diameter of the loin. I cook 2 tenderloins glued together for about an hour to 1 1/2 hours at 139F close to the size of a loin.

and they are amazing here is one stuffed with bacon (precooked)

mdcombs

Thanks very much for the advice, I'm going to try it at 139 as you described and see how it goes, appreciate the feedback. your tenderloin looks awesome : )