Sous vide ribeyes for 16

[David S]

I thought that I ate well on camping trips. This is over the top!

[Jerod Broussard]

You da man!!!!!!!!!!

[FLBuckeye]

Here are the pics. I guess my epic tome above was too much...lol

[FLBuckeye]

Firstly, apologies in advance for the length of this post but I wanted to describe in detail what transpired

This past weekend the leaders of my son's Boy Scout troop, past and present, went on a retreat. 16 guys staying in 3 campers and talking crap all weekend. As I am the current Grubmaster for the Troop, I was "voluntold" I would be in charge of the lunch Friday, dinner Saturday (the main event) and Sunday breakfast. I had done ribeyes sous vide once before (http://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/for...t-at-sous-vide) but that had been just two pieces. I had to scale up quite a bit to serve 16. Apps for the dinner were Boursin cheese spread with assorted crackers, two shrimp rings (made some cocktail sauce with fresh horseradish as the stuff that comes with the rings is lame) and some colby jack and sharp cheddar as the apps. I bought a slab of ribeyes at Restaurant Depot (15.3 lbs. @$7.29 a lb.) but wanted the ribeyes to be thick so I bought four more at my local Publix (4.33 lbs. @ 9.99 a lb.). I trimmed the ribeyes a bit and cut into 12 pieces so they were at least a pound each. I dry brined them on Thursday night. and put them into gallon freeze bags into a cooler surrounded by ice. Publix also had snow crabs on sale so I bought 10 lbs. of those. I have never done crab legs before so I did a bit of research on ways to prepare them. I made clarified butter also on Thursday night. That was also a first. I bought 18 large russet potatoes and had decided to do a "potato bar". The items were cheddar jack cheese, pico de gallo, fritos, bleu cheese crumbles, shredded parm, sour cream, butter, scallions, bacon bits, and two hot toppings, queso and chili. I received a 3 unit warming container for Christmas that I used for the two hot toppings and the clarified butter. I also did AR's crunchy french style green beans.
My target was 6:00 to serve dinner. We got back from the gun range around noon. I started prepping the 5 lbs. of green beans right away. I started my turkey fryer going to boil water for the beans. I filled a bus tub with ice and water to shock the beans after the 3 min. cook. Cooked the beans, shocked them, and cooked on 4 skillets on 2 camping stoves with bacon grease. When they were down, I put into a crock pot to keep warm. Started another pot of water on the turkey fryer. Filled the two coolers that I would be doing the ribeyes in partially with water. I was shooting for between 120 to 125 degrees. I filled a large pot of water 3/4 full of water and dipped the freezer bags with ribeyes into it to force the air out. Sealed the bags and they went back into the cooler. I got the water up to 170 and added to the coolers. I did not get the water temp as high as I wanted so I started another pot of water. I wanted to start the water at 135, thinking that adding the meat would drop the temp down to my target of 125 or so. I finally got the water to 135 and added the steaks, eight in each cooler. I dropped a Maverick probe into the cooler to monitor the temp. I started four pots of water on the camping stoves in case I needed to bring the temp up in the coolers. I had already had the potatoes put in ovens in two of the campers. I did not realize that they took it upon themselves to wrap the potatoes in foil, something I know better not to do.
The steaks were in the water both over an hour and I had added hot water only once. I pulled the thickest one and it temped at 122. I had my "beater" Weber all fired up with bricks under the coal grate to within an inch or two from the food grate. It was VERY hot. I had some assistants take the steaks out of the bags onto a large tray and pat dry with paper towels. I had a long handled spatula ready and another guy with a coffee pot with water for flareups (I forgot my spray bottle). I fit 6 steaks on and turned them every 30 seconds as best I could. Had a lot of flareups for some reason. I cautioned my fire guy to use minimal amounts of water as to not decrease the grill temp. I pulled the first one off and had another guy temping the steaks. If it was above 133, they came off. If not, back on. Two miscreants had requested medium well so the last two stayed on until 145. When I had the first steak go on, I had the crab legs go into the turkey fryer and the toppings set out on the serving tables as well as the green beans. The warmer with the warm topping and clarified butter were transferred too.
I finished the last two steaks and grabbed a plate. Everyone was very complimentary and intrigued by the sous vide technique. I didn't get as many pics as I wanted as it was pretty hectic at times. I should have assigned someone to snap pics. The flavor of the ribeyes was very good. The 48 hours of dry brining helped a lot.

Having issues posting the pics, will try to in another post