Venison haunch

As it was my birthday and I got an Anova circulator as a present, I decided I wanted to buy a thick ribeye and cook it to see how the new machine got on with it. Then we went to the pub and got a pizza on the way back which left us with one steak between the two of us the following day. Being the resourceful types that we are, we had a bear-like forage in the freezer and up came venison haunch to top-up the meatiness. Veg stumbled into the impromptu protein party and along with some supporting characters, lunch was done.

I say done. Rabbit hopped on the passing bandwagon and it turned out to be a bit too much but at least it gave more to post about. 

Vital statistics : 56.5 for 1 hour

I've already started on a lie - I gave it an hour and a half because it was frozen but yours won't be so 60 minutes would be a bit too much like dandy.

Busting it straight out the pack, it looks like liver. However, if you look closely at the right hand side, you might be able to make out a dolphin's face. or is that just me??

This next picture makes out the container I'm using is e-nor-mouse. In actual fact it's no bigger than the Supreme. My girlfriend'll tell you it's all perspective due to f-stops or something ; all I know is it's not as big as it looks. I've heard that line before.

If you decide to get into blogging, you'll find out things about yourself that you've never noticed before. I've never noticed I've got surprisingly pointy elbows for instance.

Dropping frozen food into warm water's always going to drop the temperature and it has - 55.8 instead of the 56.5 I set it to but it only took a few minutes to bounce back. On the right's the venison, on the left's the ribeye from a couple of posts ago.

This is nothing to do with sous vide and I'm not trying to justify it but we've been having Yorkshire pudding issues recently and I've no idea why they've decided to be so spiteful. 20-odd years of puddingy greatness cast to the wolves leaving nothing but muffinish impostery. I've got to make some more this weekend and I'm not sure whether to put gravy on them or hundreds and thousands.

And so my friends to the business end, how it turned out and the photos are great. If you got served this in a restaurant you'd come away with very happy chops but this could've been even better with a degree or so less. It was juicy and tender but being the awkward difficult-to-live-with sod that I am, I'd like to push the envelope to get it even better. Don't get me wrong, it was the best thing on the plate but I've got a feeling 1.5 degrees less and a short siesta in a warm place would've paid dividends.

And so continues a worrying trend of re-cooking to get perfection. I did say I'd post the results good or bad. I'll do an updated retry next time we happen upon some venison. Watch this space.