Don't get me wrong, any sane and decent person wholeheartedly agrees with Greenpeace's principles and I stand shoulder to shoulder with every one of them. Then I see a dozen of them trespassing someone's ship and it makes me want to burn some tyres. Here's my advice to Greenpeace - engage, not enrage.
The reason I used so many bags was because the beef kept releasing juices which traveled up the bag under vacuum ruining the seal in the process. Next time I'll open the packaging and leave it to dry in the fridge for 24 hours giving me ample time to storm a BP fracking rig.
Vital statistics : 55 degrees for 20 hours
I'd cooked top rump once before and I was intrigued to find out if it was only good for a long cook or whether it could do a short soak too. I was getting flashbacks of the silverside saga but bought a joint a bit too big so I could lop a bit off the end to give it a pop.
This is the big bit we were going to have for lunch.
And this is the small experimental bit. This one volunteered itself into the water bath 4 hours before serving. I say volunteered but I'm not sure it was bothered either way. Whatever happened, that's when I tossed it in, so to speak.
Usually I'll use the Supreme for long cook food but I went with the Anova for one good reason. Cooking beef for extended periods takes away some of the pinkness so I wanted to drop the temperature to get some of that back but this buffered pretty close to the 54.4 degree danger zone and this is where the Anova shines. It's Exocet accurate whereas the Supreme runs a little bit cool. Given the risk is botulism and the certain death that comes with, I went with the safest option.
The more seasoned readers among you will know it's just been pulled from the bath and it's going to be fried in a screaming hot pan. These readers will also know it'll be photographed from the other side of the kitchen to minimise the risk of damage to a £140 lens.
Taking my own advice, I cooked it quite 'hard' because the darker the crust, the better the flavour.
After getting a good outer crust, I carefully lost half of it when I took the netting off in a move I can only call 'bungling'.
The best way I can describe it is 'old school' roast beef, the kind you used to have on Sunday as a kid. It's very tender without the softness of silverside with a proper meaty feel when you chew. It's got a tonne more flavour over silverside too and overall I think we've settled on this as our regular Sunday beef, with rib or sirloin for special occasions.
I'll come back to improvements at the end because if you remember back to the beginning of the post, I took a small piece off and cooked it for 4 hours to see how it coped for a shorter length of time.
Let me introduce you to Jabba the Hutt.
I wasn't really bothered about frying it because I'm a bloke and I'm lazy. Plus I was only really interested in its tenderness after the short dunking as I knew it'd taste great.
This is how it turned out.
It looks more steaky and that's how my girlfriend described it when she tried it. It's pinker, needs slightly more effort to chew but it does it in quite a good way. You can see a white membrane but don't let that worry you ; it was the same texture as the meat. We'd buy this, cut a couple of thick steaks and cook it for 4 hours, making sure there were chips in the house.
Going the other end of the spectrum and cooking it as a roast, I'd probably drop the time a fraction. Having seen how the 4 hour piece went, I'd probably try 16 hours next time, not because the 20 hour version has issues, but because it could be even better.
What's surprising is how good top rump is. Cook it short and you get steaks. Cook it long and you get a great joint.
I'll update it with the 16 hour version when we have it next.
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