131 for 24 hours

For whatever reason, I made a commitment on cooking two large pieces of meat a few days before going out of town.  I had taken the TriTip that I smuggled home from Texas out of the freezer, put it in the fridge to thaw, and purchased half of a fresh turkey breast. Why would I cook all that meat a few days before going out of town? I’m really not sure – that’s the life of a hobbyist that likes to experiment with meat I guess.

I knew that I wanted to do a semi-cold smoke on the meat, followed by a sous vide bath, which actually turned into a little bit of an issue! But I’ll get into that later – here’s how it all went down:

I seasoned the tri-tip like I would a brisket, just heavy deposits of salt and pepper – then did just salt, pepper and garlic powder rub on the turkey. Onto the smoker with hickory and cherry wood for 2 hours!

I put the meat on before the fire was really going, so I probably got about 30 minutes of actual ‘cold smoke’ but at the end of 2 hours, it was rolling right along at 225, but without a special cold-smoke tube or other such apparatus, there’s not much I can do about that.

The Tri-tip looked great – I almost wanted to slice into it and take a bite, but we all know that would have been a mistake, as both of these meat pieces were still super undercooked and pliable. It was about this time that I realized – Wait a minute, I can’t cook these at the same time! I was overclocking my brain because I didn’t want to do two separate cooks, I just wanted to do a nice long cook and have them both!

I know I wanted to cook the Tri-tip at 130, but I wanted to do the Turkey breast at about 140. I didn’t want to average the temperature, because 135 would have been too high for the beef. I did a little research and found out that salmonella dies when exposed to 131 degrees for over an hour, so I figured 131 would work. I would cook for 24 hours, so that wouldn’t be a problem on the ‘potential sickness’ front, and if it was slightly underdone, I could always drop it into the oven for a half hour or something like that. I was planning on finishing in the broiler, so I thought maybe that would be fine.

Vacuum packing!!!

Into the water bath at 131 for 24 hours! Any time I do a long cook, I’ve been covering my pot with plastic wrap to avoid evaporation, specifically vapor that rises up into the circuitry of the Anova. Not saying they haven’t built a rock-solid piece of culinary equipment, but I have had a couple long cooks go wrong by the temperature spiking to a terrifying 190+ degrees out of the blue. Some people said it may have been vapor getting into the circuitry, and since I’ve been doing the plastic on longer cooks, I have had zero problems, so maybe they’re right.

Flash forward 24 hours later, time to take them out of the pot, pat them dry and finish them.

I dropped the turkey into a broiler to get a little browning and crispness on the skin.

The Tri-tip I wanted so much to do on the grill, but it was pouring outside, so into a screaming hot pan in went!

Basting with butter, it came out awesome check these pics out!

Super moist, super tender – but not falling apart – this was as close as you can get to brisket! So good!

Look at the smoke ring!

Now let’s take a look at the turkey. Skin crisped up nicely!

But was it raw on the inside? Let’s see! Holy juiciness.

This was possibly the best turkey breast I’ve had in years. It was so succulent and tender – guys… seriously..  this was amazing turkey.

It seemed to be cooked perfectly. I probably could have gone at 133-135ish and got things a little better around the bone, but this was so good, I ate way too much of it as I sliced it up. I did the same thing with the Tri-tip – I just could not stop eating this good shit. 131 for 24 hours was a hit.

So what did I do with all that meat? Well, I shared it with some people at work. Both options were a hit. The warmed up Tri-tip wasn’t as good as fresh out of the pan, but the turkey was, and both were gone that day.

131 might be a magic number, or maybe I got lucky, but I look forward to attempting a repeat of this action for sure!

 

 

 

 

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