How to make gravy from tri-tip juices after a 5 hr sous vide?

Sweet100s

Looking for advice from you gravy-making wizards...

If you had yummy tri-tip juices after a 5 hr sous vide at 134 degrees Fahrenheit,
how would you make gravy from that? 

gdenby

I'm certainly not a gravy making wizard. I'm at least past the novice stage, so I'll offer a few things, and hope folks w. better skills than mine comment.

My experience w. SV is that the juice tends to have a lot of myoglobin in it. The juice looks really red, but when cooked, gets lots of brown clumps. At the temp you cooked, it may already be clumped. Nothing bad about it foodwise, just looks gloppy.

At the least, I would strain it thru coffee filter paper. Not very efficient, but it will clear the fluid some. S & P to taste.

The big thing about gravy is the quality of the roux. Nominally, that is equal weights of a starch and a fat. The starch can be greater in quantity. Look up roux recipes. I've used "wondra" brand pre-gelatinized wheat starch w. good result, and also had decent results w. corn starch. What is being done is that the starch is being toasted in the fat, and while that happens it turns into a gelatin.

Then, when the roux is as dark or light as you may want, the jus, broth, stock, etc is added, and the starch puffs up and you end up w. a nice velvety textured gravy.

Many "modernist" recipes do not use the juice for gravy, they just make a "jus." Simplest way is brown some butter, skim off the solids, and mix warm juices, and let that simmer (180 F) for a minute or two. That way there's no chance that there will be a bland starch flavor mixed w. the hopefully savory meat flavors.

Shiff

I can't help with your gravy question, but I'd like to mention that most food safety people say that meat should not be in the range from 40 to 140 degrees for more than 4 hours.  Just thought you should be aware of this for future reference.

gdenby

Hi, @Shiff

The food safety rules have been revised somewhat, but overall they still assume folks don't really know how long a food has been cooking. SV is safe because above about 126F, the same temperature that causes the meat tissue to break down, the pathogens start dying faster than they reproduce. Given enough time, and it is hours, they are wiped out. The "safe" temps, 145, 165, 185, will kill the pathogens in a minute to seconds. SV compensates by adding hours to the cooking time.

Shiff

gdenby said:

Hi, @Shiff

The food safety rules have been revised somewhat, but overall they still assume folks don't really know how long a food has been cooking. SV is safe because above about 126F, the same temperature that causes the meat tissue to break down, the pathogens start dying faster than they reproduce. Given enough time, and it is hours, they are wiped out. The "safe" temps, 145, 165, 185, will kill the pathogens in a minute to seconds. SV compensates by adding hours to the cooking time.

Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of how the SV kills pathogens.

Sweet100s

 Thank you Gdenby,  I was hoping you would answer. 

Yes, au jus  is what I  had in mind  more than  a classic gravy.

 I didn't have time at the end of the sous vide to do anything but sear  before I had to leave the house. So the bags of sous vide meat juice are still in the fridge. One from a Trader Joe's Kansas City  tri-tip. One from a Trader Joe's  garlic pepper pork tenderloin.  And one from a H-E-B tequila lime flank steak. 

I've started using glucomannan as my thickener instead of cornstarch or flour.  It rescued a pie I was making when the thickener that the recipe called for, maybe it was tapioca?, was not thickening at all.

Glucomannon is also supposed to have some health benefits.  The guy at the vitamin store told me that if he drinks hot tea with several tablespoons? of glucomannan dissolved, his blood sugar  increase is lower  when he eats movie popcorn 45 minutes later, then if he did not drink it. 

 I was impressed that someone actually did before versus after testing instead of just repeating a claim.    I'm not diabetic so I don't have the equipment to test this feature of glucomannan, but I'd like to test that myself.

 In any event, since it saved my pie, I'm now using it as a thickener for cooking and it works great. Although I feel little bit like a druggie opening up a capsule of it into my food. I use 1 to 2 capsules  of glucomannan per teaspoon of cornstarch in a recipe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucomannan