Today I stand at the verge of hitting double digits in my 30 day challenge! Tomorrow will be 1/3 down, and I’m pretty excited about it. I was off today which was nice. I started the day doing some home visits for a hospice that I work for. It’s not often we get out in patient’s homes these days, so the visits have become quite enjoyable for me even though it is my day off! This morning I made a two egg omelette for breakfast with my super fresh farm eggs. Yum! My wife and I had the rare chance to grab some lunch today sans kids and we headed to a local burger joint and ate amazing burgers minus the buns of course. Some sweet potato on the side and we were stuffed!

Dinner tonight actually started two days ago when I defrosted a beef chuck shoulder roast from Butterfield Farms and vacuum packed it after lightly seasoning it.

I prepared my Sous Vide Supreme and warmed the water to 130 F. Using my newly purchased metal rack I put the roast in, and let the magic happen for 48 hours…till tonight. I got the roast out and this is what I found!

In the mean time I chopped up a red pepper, yellow onion, and a head of cauliflower and cranked up the convection oven to 385F. I tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper and cooked them for around 40 minutes shaking them around every 10 minutes or so.

I removed the roast from the bag and dried it thoroughly. Using my Iwatani Butane torch I browned it nicely all over. As you can see the meat was perfectly cooked edge to edge…Sous Vide style! The taste of the grass fed beef is definitely different, but we all agree better. My daughter (6 years old) inhaled around a third of the darn roast and declared…”Dad, grass fed is the way to go!” This chuck roast was transformed into meat comparable in taste and texture to prime rib. Cheap cut + warm tub + time = Expensive cut results! The best way I can describe the difference in taste is to say that the grass fed beef tastes like a dry aged steak at a steak house. It must be the grass coming through, but it was very enjoyable. Here is what the end result looked like.

All in all, a very good day off. I really want to encourage anyone out there who is even considering a Sous Vide purchase to do it! I bought the Demi version which reportedly has 85% of the cooking area as the more expensive regular sized unit. The cost of $299 is worth every penny. I do not consider this a kitchen gadget, or fluffy luxury, it is an integral part of my cooking equipment on a day to day basis. Even my wife, the “expensive kitchen gadget we don’t need” queen has admitted that I was…wait for it…”right” about how awesome this thing would be. She is even trying to convince her friends to buy one! If you are serious about Paleo and spend the money on Grass fed meat and wild caught seafood you DON’T want to waste your money and improperly cook things. The Sous Vide is like a guarantee that your investment will be worth it.

I hope all had a wonderful day. I will continue to keep posting about my Whole 30 experience, and plan on continuing to share my insights as a Paleo Physician in a very non-Paleo world. I appreciate everyone who follows, comments, and supports my blog. May you all have a blessed evening.

-E