30-hour Sous Vide Whole Beef Eye of Round Roast

A few days ago, I bought a whole beef eye of round roast from Freshco.  It was on sale for $2.77 per pound.  This big piece of meat weighed over 3 kg and costed less then $20.  Since this cut of beef contains little fat and a lot of connective tissue, I think cooking this roast in the oven will likely produce a dry and tough piece of meat.  So I decided to try cooking this using my Anova Sous Vide cooker.

After researching on the internet, I decided to cook the whole roast sous vide at 135F for 30 hours.  I don’t have a big enough sous vide bag to hold the whole roast in one piece so I cut it into two pieces.  I seasoned the meat with salt and pepper then seared it using a hot cast iron pan.  After searing, I put each piece of meat in a separate sous vide bag and added thyme and olive oil.  Due to the long cooking time, I decided to used sous vide bags made specially for sous vide cooking instead of the regular freezer zip bags that I normally used to avoid possible leakage.

I started sous vide cooking this roast at around noon on Friday and it was ready for tonight’s dinner at around 6pm.

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After 30 hours of sous vide cooking, the sous vide bags held up well and there was no leakage.  I removed one bag of meat from the water bath and chilled it in cold water then put it in the fridge for later use.  I took out the bigger chunk of meat from the other bag.  After pad drying the meat with paper towel, I seasoned it with salt and pepper.  Then I seared the meat in a hot cast iron pan using grape seed oil.  Grape seed oil has a higher smoke point then the other cooking oil I have on hand.  The beef juice in the bag was saved for later use.

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I cut the roast into 1 cm thick slices.

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Then dinner was served!

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The beef was tender and not dry.  I think it turned out better than if I would have cooked it in the oven.  The texture has some resemblance to prime ribs.  Flavour is acceptable.  Since I am not a big fan of prime ribs or roast beef, if money is not an issue, I will choose strip loin instead.  I prefer its texture and flavour. However, this roast fed 6 people tonight with a small piece of leftover and don’t forget, there is another chunk of meat that was reserved for another meal.   So for less then $20, you can feed 10 to 12 people and it tasted pretty decent.  I think I will make it again.  It just require a little bit of planning ahead.  May be next time I will try slicing the eye of round into 3 to 4cm thick pieces before sous vide cooking them for a couple of hours.

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