The Crackling Is Superb: Sous Vide Beef Rib Roast

Everyone loves a roast, right?

Well not everyone, but those of us who do, want to enjoy the cooking of it as much as the eating of it and when we've shelled out a huge chunk of change for a huge chunk of meat the last thing we want to do is worry about over or under cooking it.

So last night I had a go with a big chunk of meat in the Sous Vide bath.

The theory behind cooking in a vacuum bath at a low temperature is that the piece of meat cannot be overcooked. The core temperature of "rare" beef is 54C so if the meat never goes above that temperature it will always be perfectly "rare" when served. It will also lose far less moisture than traditional roasting and will therefore be that much juicier.

The catch here is that it wont have the beautiful, caramelised exterior of a traditional roast (the Maillard reaction) so after removal from the water bath the meat requires a quick browning in a very hot pan on the stove top and then can be seasoned and rested briefly.

The other consideration is the thickness of the meat - we want the core to get to 54C so we can refer to any number of handy charts online to help us figure out how long it will need to cook for the core temperature to reach that number. By the way - so long as the meat is in long enough to reach the core temperature it can stay in the water bath for longer (much longer) without overcooking.

My cut of choice was a beef rib roast - around 1.5kg but the important number is it's thickness - in this case 70mm. That equates to a minimum of 3.5 hours in the water bath at 54C to be cooked "rare".