Second time Mystery beef

First post: https://www.reddit.com/r/sousvide/comments/1nv6e83/first_time_beef_chewy/

Thanks everyone for the overwhelmingly helpful response to my first post two days ago. Many great tips and techniques, very complete write ups. I wrote them all down, and I hope I responded to everyone!

The unanimous agreement was that one hour wasn’t enough. So I changed one variable: 130F for 6 hours. Okay, a second variable too: this time salted in the bag. It was air cooled afterwards for an hour (something came in the way), and then seared for 2x30s per side.

The result was better, definitely. Still very chewy but different than before . As many of you suggested, 12 to even 72 hours could be necessary and I agree. The taste was a lot stronger, a very pleasant deep full grain bread + beef flavour.

The meat fibers seemed to run vertically, so slicing the meat through the thin edge worked best in tenderising it. (the flat direction)

I don’t really have the space to put this humming machine on all day and night, for noise mostly, so experimenting with longer cooking times cuts will have to wait. There is one suggestion by a Dutchy to go colder and shorter on this meat. Out of curiosity, I’ll give that a last try.

As a bonus I also went to the butcher for Sirloin steak, 2hrs @ 130F. Prepared with some salt, pepper and garlic butter (don’t have ghee/avocado yet). Unfortunately I started at a too low temp, so by the time it was seared I greyed a part of the inside. Still good and miles better in texture than the mystery meat.

As a kicker, my butchers sirloin is a lot cheaper than the supermarkets cheapest mystery meat. Didn’t see that one coming. For next steps I’ll continue with the sirloin.