How to cook a Chuck Roast that taste like a Ribeye.
Chuck Roast can be cooked like a Ribeye if you Sous Vide it. It keeps it juicy flavor while tenderizing the beef.
Get a nice Chuck Roast that has good marbling throughout. We are going to cook it to be as close to eating a thick juicy ribeye as possible, without the ribeye price!
Be sure and take it out of the package it comes in. Most plastic sealed meat is not food safe to cook in unless it comes from a local meat processor that is heat vacuum sealing their products. Most grocery store packaging is glue sealed and the glue will dissolve when it is heated leaving you with a mess and glue in your beef.
Once out of the package sit the roast on some paper towels and take a few more and pat dry the whole roast on all sides, you want to get it dry as you can. Sit it on a plate and salt well on all sides. Rub in the salt and salt again. A good coating will help break down the fibrous tissues and start tenderizing the beef.
While the roast sits out and starts to warm up let’s get our Sous Vide ready. Sous Vide is an amazing way to cook food to a certain degree temperature and keep it at that temperature. It uses a container filled with water that is heated by the Sous Vide device specially made to heat and circulate water at a constant temperature. You can find ones that you just turn on and set the temp on the device to fancier ones like the one we use in our video made by Beville that has a wireless app that connects to your phone and gives you an extradentary amount of information and recipes, with video and step by step instructions. Let’s fill the container of your choice with water about ¾ full. Your roast is going to be submersed in this water and has to be covered an inch or more below the surface of the water. Attach the Sous Vide of your choice to the container and turn it on. Set it to the temperature you want your roast cooked.
As your Sous Vide heats the water let’s get our roast ready to go in. You can do this a few ways. The best way is to use a vacuum sealer and create a bag large enough to put your roast in or use one of the vacuum seal bags pre made for roast or turkeys. Vacuum seal till all the air is out and heat seal the bag. Immerse the sealed roast in the container of water when the Sous Vide is heated it to the correct temperature. If it wants to float at all, laying a butter knife on top of the roast will keep it under water.
If you don’t have a vacuum sealer that’s ok too. We can use a Zip Lock Bag to cook this roast in. Zip Lock bags are food safe plastic and do not contain any BPA. The manufacturer claims you can even microwave in them, as long as you don’t get the food too hot, because the plastic could melt. We do not recommend ever microwaving plastic!
Microwaves get extremely hot and even though these are BPA free, they do contain plastic and dye that can melt into your food at microwave temperatures. Sous Vide get nowhere near that hot! Even cooking something well done will be hot enough to burn your hand but not melt plastic.
Place your roast in the Zip Lock bag and press the sides of the bag down sealing the bag while getting the most air you can out of it. You can also leave a corner unsealed and when you place the roast in the water all the air will come to the top escaping the bag. Be sure and seal it good so water doesn’t leak in while it cooks. A butter knife placed on top of the roast will keep it under water, if it wants to float.
If you have a concern about using plastic then you can always cook your roast in a glass container. You can fill the air void with beef broth and seal the glass container shut with its lid. Then put your glass container down in your Sous Vide container.
If your container has a lid put it on. This will keep the water hot and keep the Sous Vide unit from having to keep heating the water as often.
Set your Sous Vide to cook for 24 hours and walk away.
This is a slow low cook that will tenderize the meat and breakdown the fat and fibrous tissues slowly. Down some of you may be wondering about food poisoning with meet left out this long. If this were chicken we would have a problem Houston, but this is beef. After we have cooked this roast for 24 hours, we are going to sear the outside of the roast like you sear a steak, on the grill, when you start cooking it, to lock in all the juices. Sous Vide keeps the meat juicy and tender without the sear in the beginning.
But we are going to do a reverse sear, where we sear it after it is done. Why do we sear it if it’s already done? Well two reasons for that. First a sear give beef that crust that we all love. Golden brown perfection! Second it kills most of the germs. Meet has bacteria on it and when you cut meet the bacteria is transferred to every cut part. With steak the outside has been cut away from something else and must be seared at a high temperature to kill the bacteria. This is why you can eat a steak rare. Almost all the bacteria are on the outside and if you sear all sides, you kill those pesky suckers that make us sick. Ground meat has to be cooked to well done through out because the meat has been cut multiple times by the blades of the grinder and those bacteria are now everywhere in the meat.
After 24 hours it’s time to take the roast out of the Sous Vide and remove it from the bag. Don’t throw away that juice in the bag! I didn’t keep it in the video and I am kicking myself for not showing how good the juice is to make AU JUS! Put the juice in a small pot to heat and make Au Jus for pouring over your steak.
Lay the roast on a plate and give it a pat dry with paper towels. Heat up your grill or a pan on your stove top that is large enough to lay the roast in where the whole side is flat against the pan surface. You could even place it on a baking sheet or pan and place on your top rack of your oven and give it a good sear on broil. If you do this be sure and broil both sides.
For the grill or pan method, throw some ghee or butter on the hot surface and let it melt. Slowly lay your roast on and listen to it sizzle! If it isn’t sizzling then you pan or grill is not hot enough. As it sears it is helpful to press down on the roast to get good contact with the hot surface. Let is sear for about a minute and flip over and repeat the same on this side. Then with some tongs sear the skinny sides all the way around the roast turning it as needed.
Remove it from the heat and let it sit for about 5 minutes and cut into this delicious roast like you would a thick ribeye.
Cooking it this way will give your roast a texture similar to a ribeye instead of a roast that is mushy and falls apart like pot roast. A good ribeye is tender and juicy because of the marbling of fat in the cut. The fat renders and melts into the surrounding tissue giving it an amazing flavor and texture. A good marbled Chuck Roast will do the same thing at a third of the price. Give it a try and we hope you enjoy this delicious Carnivore recipe.
