Mmm, ^^that^^ looks good.
I hit the easy button and one-clicked the Anova sous vide probe off Amazon for $129. It came yesterday, and I promptly threw some vacuum-bagged shoulder flat iron steak that I'd poured about 1/3 of a cup of store-bought teriyaki marinade over. I usually make my own, but it was late, I was tired, and I was mostly curious about the cooker.
Now, Wikipedia says this about that cut of meat: Flat iron steak, butlers' steak, or oyster blade steak is a cut of steak cut with the grain from the shoulder of the animal. This produces a flavorful cut that is a bit tough because it contains a gristly fascia membrane unless removed.
I did not remove that membrane, though I saw it. It was late, I was tired.
I clamped my little Anova thing onto a Rubbermaid bin, plugged it in, opened the app and paired my phone before choosing a flank steak recipe. Thing immediately came on with the preset temp (bottom number) and started preheating:
Once it hit 131, my phone buzzed and told me to drop my meat in. I lowered in the bag and clamped it to the side. Thing started counting down 1 hour 30 minutes. Once we reached the end of the time, my phone buzzed again and I pulled this out of the vacuum bag:
Meat felt kind of weird--like if you could press your palm where you want to test for medium-rareness and felt just the meat with no skin. Hard to describe. I dried it on paper towels, then threw it in a hot frypan. Here's what I ended up with:
Final verdict: With no chemical tenderizers, just the use of extra time, this tough and chewy cut of meat turned into tender steak. Like, perfectly cooked, tasty, tender medium-rare steak. It was pretty astonishing.
Takeaway: Do it. I like the Anova, but this makes it almost TOO easy. Scary simple with zero involvement. I would recommend the cheap hand-held vacuum bag system on Amazon, too, because they are huge, heavy-duty and reusable. You can use any big container. The probe is pretty large, so I wouldn't go smaller than 8 qt. And that final sear really requires flame--my crappy ceramic-top stove barely got the job done. Next time I will use my gas grill and cast-iron grates and challenge Ruth's Chris to a cookoff.
Margie
