Cooked a roast in the BEESR the other day. According to the packaging, it was an "Arm Roast."
I weighed it on my kitchen scale and it was 61.35 ounces (including the freezer/butcher paper it was wrapped in), so three-point-something pounds, I think. I'm not seriously going to do the math.
I wasn't quite sure how I should prepare it. I usually do roasts in the crock pot where it'll spend a lot of time cooking submerged in water, so I don't usually bother applying too much of anything directly to the meat. But since this bad boy wouldn't be submerged in water, I figured I oughtta do something I'd never do in the crockpot. So I made a truly odd mixture of mustard and Sriracha sauce, and I slathered that onto the roast. (I can't explain why. Sriracha and yellow mustard? Yeah, I know. Clearly, I don't know what I'm doing.)
Then massaged some salt and pepper into the meat, naturally.
So I started the roast in the preheated BEESR with the heat turned up to 15. After 25 minutes at 15, I lowered it from 15 to 10. I also cut up an onion and placed the slices on top of the roast at this point (figuring it'd drip some tasty moisture onto the meat).
After another 30 minutes, with the internal temperature reading up to almost 100, I lowered the heat from 10 to 7.
After another 2+ hours, the internal temperature reading was up to 139. I raised the heat from 7 to 8 at this point, just because the BEESR was now in the shade as the sun had moved substantially since the cook began. The BEESR felt a little too cool to the touch, making me worry the cooking temperature would be impacted if I didn't make up for the fact that it no longer had the sun beating down on it. (Have I mentioned that I don't really know what I'm doing?)
After another hour and a quarter, the internal temperature reading was at 150. Out of curiosity, I removed the BEESR's temperature probe and began checking the temperatures at different locations. The highest I found was 160, and the lowest was 145.
After another hour, I went outside with a different thermometer, not sure if I should trust the BEESR's temperature probe after it gave me multiple different temperatures the last time I checked. The meat was shrunken down pretty good, so it's not a huge piece, really, making me think the temperature shouldn't vary that much. And it was lying pretty flat, all on the same level (not like a turkey that is in a vertical upright position where I'd expect different areas to have different temperatures because of the high difference within the cooking chamber).
My other thermometer also found temperatures that were all over the map.
I tested 3 different locations. One was 170, one was 190, and one was 201. I was frustrated by the uneven temperatures, so I removed the roast at this point. My goal had been to get the temperature to 200-205. As much as I wanted to hold out for that 205 mark, I was afraid of badly overcooking parts of it in an attempt to raise the temperature of the cooler spots. So I pulled it out of the cooker.
It was in the BEESR for a total of 5 and a half hours.
I took it inside. Let it sit for a bit. Wrapped it in foil.
Out of curiosity, I placed the foil-wrapped roast on the kitchen scale and it was 38.7 ounces (including the foil, of course).
I stuck it in the fridge for about 12 hours, at which point it was thoroughly chilled. I cut it into slices. The slices look kind of cold and dry and unattractive, perhaps, but it tastes quite nice in my opinion. I've mostly been eating it with eggs, so I stick a few slices on the skillet to get the beef slices hot (and get the fat sizzling) before I scramble some eggs. After a couple minutes on the skillet, it's juicy enough and no less tasty than my CrockPot roasts.
So I'll call it a victory, even if I'm a little confused by the uneven temperatures.
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