Sous-videQ NZ Wagyu Picanha Roast

Thought I'd share my learnings on Picanha, as I've been wanting to cook for a while, and finally gave it a go.

• Meat – 1.68kg (3.7lbs) of Wagyu Rump Cap (as it is called in New Zealand). NZD $44 / kg (I think this would be USD $11 per pound)
• Trimmed down the fat a bit and then Dry Brine – 12 hours – 1.1% salt
• Scored fat and Smoked just over 1 hour on pellet grill at 107C (225f) until internal temp was hitting 120F or so.
• Sous Vide – 58C / 137F for approx 6 hours.
• Chilled in water bath / fridge approx 2 hours.
• Finished on charcoal grill
• Rest, and sliced.

Observations:

• Meat was delicious, family all loved it.
• Smoking gave a bit of a colour, but probably didn't add much to the finished product. I'd probably do it again, but I don't know if you'd miss it.
• Grilling – trying to grill the fat cap resulted in a big surge of flames. Only managed a minute or so before having to pull it off. Gave a good flavour, but not really possible to grill for very long. Fortunately, given it was sous vide cooked already, no big deal.
• Fat cap was probably too thick – I did trim a bit, but could probably have done more. More importantly, the silverskin under the fat was noticeable. My teenage son and I were ok with it – but I made the call to remove the fat layer on the portions served to my wife and daughter. To be honest, the meat was delicious – so didn't need the extra fat anyway in my opinion.
• Slicing – I went down a rabbit hole on "against" and "with" the grain. I worked out (thanks to videos from Andy cooks and Chuds BBQ) that the "with the grain" advice relates to when slicing into thickish steaks before cooking, not when slicing a cooked roast. So I went and sliced the roast against the grain in thinish slices.

Next time:

• More aggressively trim the fat or in fact entirely remove it and the silverskin – or do some research as to whether a longer sous vide would break that down more.
• I might give steaks a go (slicing with the grain, sous vide steaks). Partly to try something new, and also because I think I might have less flair up issues.

Hope this helps people.