What is the point of low temperature cooking, you ask yourself perplexed?
1 – Texture
=> The short version. Normally it will be more tender!
=> The long version of Hervé This:
If you cook for a long time, at low temperature, the collagen tissue that makes tough meats will have time to disorganize and its molecules will have time to hydrolyze into amino acids, which are very tasty!
2 – The weight
=> The short version: you will have more on the plate.
=> The long version by Hervé This:
Take a roast beef of 1 kg, at 20 euros per kg. If you cook it in the traditional oven at more than 200 degrees, you lose 250 g of meat. Cook it at a low temperature, at 70 degrees, and you have a cooked roast that weighs 950 g. You gain 200 g of meat and believe me, the chefs quickly did the math. But it cooks longer: I recently served a rabbit that cooked for three days at 75 degrees. You can have the same experience at home. »
3 – The comfort of the stove (just me ^-^)
If you make a roast beef like here, in traditional cooking, you cannot cook for more than x minutes (x being a function of the weight ^-^) otherwise your roast will be overcooked, too dry, not good. While at low temperature, it can stay 30 minutes longer in the oven, it hardly changes anything. And who is it who enjoys the aperitif without taking the lead? It’s us !
To cook roast beef:
°1 roast beef
°4 tablespoons of olive oil
°1 tablespoon Herbes de Provence
°1 pinch of salt
°Take your roast out 1 hour before.
Before you start cooking: mix the oil with the Provencal herbs and the salt. Brush the roast over the entire surface. Roast it over high heat in a skillet for 2 minutes on all sides. Deglaze the pan with 100 ml of water. Let stand.
Preheat your oven to 80°C, top and bottom heat.
Place the roast in a baking dish. Push the probe into the heart of the roast and cook for at least 2 hours, until the core temperature reaches the desired doneness (depending on whether you like it rare, rosé, etc.). For cooking as in the photo, we put it at 60°C, it takes 2h15 but it all depends on the shape of your roast, ours was quite flat.
Enjoy!