With school back in swing, I am not meeting my goals of updating the blog. Oh well, I'll do my best. Life really hasn't been too inspiring lately. Lots of reading and eating a bunch of left overs. I took a look in my fridge, realized it was full of a lot of remnants of things I didn't want to eat again, and decided to clean house. I kept saving pickle jar + leftover brine with the plan to reuse them again to and pickle things. But at $3 a cucumber, not really cost effective to make dill day pickles. Gazing into a rapidly filling fridge with not much of any actual food, I realized I was turning into a refrigerator hoarder. So I cleaned out all the crap and feel much less burdened.
Sous Vide Tri Tip
I picked up a huge Tri Tip from Longs and decided to cook some of it tonight. This morning I cut off two of the oblong ends to make a uniform rectangular tri tip roast. I vacuum sealed the roast and froze it, and bagged the other two pieces with salt, pepper, Olive Oil, 3 crushed garlic cloves, balsamic vinegar, and Hungarian smoked paprika. I let it marinate the whole day.
To cook- I fired up the sous vide supreme. The internal temp settings have been off anywhere from 4 to 6 degrees based on what I have been testing with my thermapen- so I set it at 148F with the intent to cook it in the low 140s. The previous tri tip I cooked at 140 was good but pretty rare and a little chewy- my guess because it was actually cooking around 135.
It came out perfect. I was feeling lazy and didn't bother searing it off in a pan to save making the mess. The meat melted in my mouth- delicious.
Beans, Spinach, and Tomatoes
Sauteed garlic in olive oil and added two cans of diced tomatoes. Added thyme, dried rosemary, 2 bay leaves and crushed peppers. After after most of the liquid had reduced, I added a bag of frozen chopped spinach and 2 cans of drained northern beans. I added some balsamic vinegar and paprika to mirror the spice of the tri tip, and when the tri tip finished cooking, I added all the juices from the tri tip's cooking bag into the pot. I let it simmer and reduce. Really happy with how it turned out. Pleasing herby notes on the front with a subtle beefyness in the back.
Added some cheap bag salad mix with some oil, vinegar, and some cracked black pepper and I had a pretty delicious meal. Looking forward to eating more of those beans for breakfast. Also have another 1/2 lb or so of tri tip :)
