It's no secret that we are beef people...we raise it, we sell it, and we enjoy eating it. But if we're being honest, there are just some cuts that we don't care for all that much, and eye round roast comes to the top of that list.
Eye round roast comes from the round, which is in the hind end of the animal. As a general rule, the more a muscle is used, the tougher it is, and the round gets used A LOT, so eye round roasts seem to be tough no matter how low and slow you cook them in a crockpot or the oven. It generally sits in our freezer until we run out of everything else, but our friends at Laurel Springs Farm posted the a while back
about using a cool gadget, the sous vide, so we decided to try it and Oh. My. Goodness. We will probably never fix an eye round roast another way again.
Sous vide is a fairly small device that basically cooks the food in a vacuum sealed bag in a water bath super low and slow for a long time, which allows the muscle to breakdown and become tender. You can buy them online for about $70 (though there are more expensive models, we went the economical route and it worked perfectly). It does take time, but it is almost all hands off.
For our 3.9 lb eye round roast we cooked it 18 hours at 131.5 degrees, because we like our beef medium rare, so if you like a different temp, you'll need to adjust (side note, if you are holding meat at a temperature more than 2 hours it needs to be at least 131 degrees). Once it's done, pull it out of the bag, pat it dry and sear it in HOT oil in a skillet for about 15 seconds each side to get a nice crust. You can season the meat before you put it in vacuum bag (which we did a little bit), or before you sear it (which we also did).
I was skeptical but we could cut the eye round roast we made with a BUTTER knife, it was amazing. Grab your own and give it a try, let us know what you think! (P.S. the sous vide can be used for lots of other meat too...we'll definitely be trying some other cuts!)
