Sous vide 63 °C egg, reverse sear steak, and roast pumpkin

This week I have taken three inspirational inputs for tonight’s dinner.

I was watching Guga on Sous Vide Everything and it’s time to do a 63 °C egg.

I mentioned this to a friend at work, AB, and steak with my eggs was suggested.

That night, I was chatting with my dear friend, GC about comfort food and she mentioned her Mum’s roast pumpkin.

Dedicated to GC, AB, and Guga

I love watching cooking videos on YouTube and I love chatting with friends about food.

If you watch reality TV cooking shows, I reckon you may have seen a contestant make a 63 °C (145.4 °F) egg. In simple terms, it’s cooking an egg in sixty-three degrees Celsius water for one hour. The tight white (middle albumin) apparently is just set and the yolk is gooey. The loose white (exterior albumin) falls away. It’s like having a perfectly poached egg without all the stray tangles of coagulated loose white.

The steak tonight is cooked by reverse searing it. I dry brined the steak by putting it on a cooling rack over a baking tray and seasoning it with iodised salt and putting it in the refrigerator overnight. Dry brining dries out the surface of the steak to ensure when the searing action happens, the surface is dry for a Maillard reaction to occur.

I bought a Kent pumpkin because I couldn’t find a Queensland blue pumpkin to roast.

Yummy Lummy is not sponsored by anyone.

Recipe

It’s important to read the recipe before cooking because the timing of processes needs to be understood.

Print

Sous vide 63 °C egg, reverse sear steak, and roast pumpkin

Prep Time

30 mins

Cook Time

1 hr 30 mins

Faffing

30 mins

Total Time

2 hrs 30 mins

 

Sous vide 63 °C chicken eggs, reverse sear scotch fillet steak, and roast Kent pumpkin for Saturday night dinner.

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Australian

Keyword: Roast pumpkin, Scotch fillet steak, Sous vide

Servings: 1 Adult

Calories: 500 kcal

Author: Gary

Ingredients

Sous vide 63 °C eggs

• Chicken eggs
• Ice

Reverse sear scotch fillet steak and gravy

• Scotch fillet steak
• Iodised salt
• Whole black peppercorns
• Queensland nut oil
• Leftover puréed carrot, celery, and leek
• Lurpak butter salted
• Plain flour

Roast Kent pumpkin

• Kent pumpkin
• Queensland nut oil
• Iodised salt
• Ground cinnamon

Instructions

63 °C eggs

1. Fill a water bath with cold water and attach a precision cooker.
2. Turn on the precision cooker and set for 63 °C.
3. When the water reaches 63 °C add the eggs with a slotted spoon to protect the egg from breaking because the last thing I want in the water bath is egg white and yolk and shell clogging up my precision cooker and envisaging the persistent thiol (sulphur) smell in the instrument which would fill me with regret for as long as I own the precision cooker.
   
4. Cook the eggs for 1 hour.
5. At the end of 1 hour remove the eggs carefully from the water bath and carefully place them into a bowl with ice water for a couple of minutes to terminate the cooking process.
   
6. Set the eggs aside for plating up later.

Reverse sear scotch fillet steak

1. Unwrap the steak from the environmentally unfriendly plastic packaging.
   
2. Put the steak on a rack over a baking sheet.
   
3. Season the steak liberally with iodised salt.
   
4. Place the steak on the rack and baking sheet into the refrigerator uncovered overnight.
5. When you’re ready to cook the steak the next afternoon remove the steak from the refrigerator and insert the meat thermometer.
6. Heat the toaster oven to about 100 °C (212 °F).
   
7. Set up the app on a tablet or smartphone.
8. Set the cooking temperature to 45 °C (113 °F).
9. Put the steak on the rack and baking sheet into the toaster oven and weight for the internal temperature to reach 45 °C.
10. On reaching 45 °C remove the steak from the toaster oven.
    
11. Remove the meat thermometer.
12. Heat up a frying pan to a high heat.
13. Put the steak into the frying pan along with a good knob of butter.
14. Baste the steak with the bubbling and foaming butter while turning the steak in the frying pan every 15 seconds until the steak is seared to your liking.
15. Allow the steak to rest given the stress of being heated slowly and then heated quickly and drowned in butter. Rest is what the steak needs to keep moist and tender because moist and tender is what you want in a steak.
    
16. Put some whole peppercorns into a mortar and grind them with a heavy pestle and do it roughly.

Gravy

1. In a small saucepan simmer the leftover puréed carrot, celery, and leek.
2. In a glass or mug melt some butter with microwave radiation.
3. Add a teaspoon or so of plain flour and mix with the melted butter to form the start of a roux.
4. Spoon in the roux starter into the simmering puréed carrot, celery, and leek and let it thicken into a gravy.

Roast pumpkin

1. Preheat your oven to 180 °C (356 °F).
2. Cut pumpkin into chunks (with or without skin)
3. Drizzle with Queensland nut oil.
4. Add cinnamon and salt.
5. Massage the pumpkin with your fingers, coating all the pumpkin.
   
6. Spread in a single layer onto a baking tray.
   
7. Roast for 40–45 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft and caramelised.

Plating up bit

1. Place the rested and relaxed steak onto a cutting board and with sharp knife (I like my Dick butchers knife) dissect the spinalis dorsi (deckle) from the longissimus dorsi (fillet mignon) and place the latter into a container and put it into the refrigerator for lunches at work during the week.
2. Slice the spinalis dorsi against the grain and place onto a dinner plate.
3. Crack the shell of the sous vide eggs and carefully peel away the shell and place the cooked egg onto the steak.
4. Place some roast pumpkin next to the steak on the dinner plate.
5. Spoon some gravy onto the steak and over the roast pumpkin.
   
6. With a sharp knife penetrate an egg and carefully cut it in half to reveal the soft yolk.
   

Blogging bit

1. Shoot a photograph and a short video because Google now wants video on recipe cards.
2. Eat the meal.
3. Wash the dishes (hint, wash as you cook, it makes life easier).
4. Write the recipe.
5. Write the blog post.
6. Hit publish and hope this blog post gets shared on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Recipe Notes

Disclaimer I have no culinary training nor qualifications. This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner. The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste. I deliberately do not calculate the energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.

Photographs

This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one image and then scroll through the photographs.

Questions and answers

What was the sous vide 63 °C egg like?

It was great. The texture of the white and the yolk was really nice. The yolk was like the consistency of thick custard. This would be great with Hollandaise sauce and on some toast.

What’s so great about roast pumpkin?

Pumpkin is great. I love pumpkin. I love roast pumpkin, pumpkin mash, and pumpkin soup. I’ve had pumpkin pie once and that was great.

What I like most about roast pumpkin is the sweetness and the flavour of the caramelised bits.

How good was the steak?

The steak was great. Moist and tender. When the spinalis dorsi is cut against the grain, when you bit into it, it’s like the muscle fibres part for your teeth in anticipation.

Final thoughts

• Have you tried sous vide 63 °C egg?
• Do you like roast pumpkin?
• How do you like your steak?

Sponsorship

Yummy Lummy has no sponsors but maintaining a blog isn’t free. If anyone or any company would like to contribute please contact me.

Maillard reaction

Maillard reaction according to Wikipedia is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars which gives browned food its distinctive flavour. Maillard, L. C. (1912). “Action des acides amines sur les sucres; formation de melanoidines par voie méthodique” [Action of amino acids on sugars. Formation of melanoidins in a methodical way]. Comptes Rendus (in French). 154: 66–68.

Kent pumpkin

Kent pumpkin is also known as Japanese or Jap pumpkin. I remember as a kid seeing them labelled at Japs in the shops.