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London Broil….

Ok. ok. I can hear the internet mob forming already. Yes, London broil is not actually the cut of beef. These are top round roasts. But I am going to refer to it as London Broil for this blog. why? Well, because thats what this has always been to me growing up.

After being the beneficiary of a buy one get one free sale, I decided that I was going to cook these two different ways. One in a traditional London broil marinade (Ant Kellys) and the other, only seasoned with salt and pepper.

🔪Prep Time 10 minutes

🛁Sous Vide Time 12 hour @130F/54.5C

👨‍🍳Sear Time 10 min

🥩 Total Time 12 hour  20 minutes

Ingredients (Ant Kellys Marinade)

Instructions

To keep it in line with the original recipe, I scored the London broil before it went in the marinade. From my research, this is done to sever the tough fibers? Someone fact check me on that? But I decided I would follow the recipe to the letter as I was trying to duplicate a traditional cook in the SV. As I was doing it I wasn’t crazy about it. (Note: I definitely went a lot deeper than I wanted. generally you’re looking for about 1/8″)

Next, combine your marinade ingredients and the beef into your ziploc bags and marinate in the fridge for at least 4 hours and up to overnight. For this cook I went overnight.

For the other roast I kept it simple. Just Salt, pepper, and into the bag it went. Since the marinade was going overnight I decided the only fair way was to salt the other roast and put it in the fridge overnight as well.

When you’re ready to cook your roasts, I took the london broil out of the marinade and put it into another clean ziploc. In place of a nicely vacuum sealed bag, you’re going to want to use the water displacement method which is achieved by submerging the protein in the water till most of the air is out of the bag. Then secure the bags to the side of the Sous Vide Container  with binder clips.

Set my Sous Vide cooker  to 130F/54.5C and place bags in bath for the long cook.

I left these roasts in for 12 hours and when the London broil came out I didn’t have the same warm and fuzzy I usually get from other SV meats I have done.

When I pulled the Salt/pepper one I had a little better feeling. They didnt look that great but I went right to searing.

For searing these roasts, I treated them like steaks. I used a Cast Iron Skillet. Heat up the skillet on medium high and when it just starts smoking add the oil. I then seared for 60 seconds a side.

First up was the London broil and at the first slice, I knew something was up. Right away I could tell it was dryer than I ever thought a SV piece of meat could be. And after tasting it my visual thoughts were confirmed. Dry, and the taste was almost none existent.

I was so perplexed, so the only thing to do was to take a look inside the salt and pepper seasoned top round. This had a much better result. This was juicy and tender. The only interesting thought I had was that it did not look like the inside of a 130 degree SV roast.

Conclusion

So two wildly different results here. Ill start off by saying the salt and peppered roast came out good. What really puzzled me is why the London broil dried out. To be honest, I am not exactly sure. If we look at the variables, the only differences were the scoring and the marinade. My initial thoughts are that the scoring allowed the meat to dry out. What I do know….Im going to need to run this experiment again! If anyone has an idea what may have happened here I would love to hear it. Im open to all suggestions.

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