The bag turned out to be jusssst the right size. I didn’t have any room to mess up though, as it was pretty close to the end.
I have to admit that I must have had a different impression of how “juicy” the meat was supposed to be in the bag. I had read somewhere here on the forum that someone usually dumped straight from the cryovac into the drybag, juice and all (at least I thought I read that). I also read that you Ron, were kind of at the other end of the spectrum and rinsed/patted dry your cuts. I figured I would try to wind up somewhere in the middle this first time because the instructions pretty much come out and say that juicy is best.
I dumped about half of the juices out, thought it still seemed like a lot, but went with it. As the vac started pulling out the air it, of course, wasn’t but a few seconds later that the juices zipped up at lightning speed to the snorkel. Doh! I hit the power switch as quickly as I could, but it was too late. It took a big slurp.
I sat there debating what to do. I went ahead and pulled it off of the vac, drained out everything I could (without ripping open the corner seals and rinsing), dried the inside of the bag where the seal would later be made, and started again. There was still lots of fluild left. I decided that the vac sealer wasn’t going to get any more contaminated than I had already just made it, so I forged ahead and would deal with the vac later. The vac wound up sucking several tablespoons of fluid through, but it did its job even if it may have been the last time it would do it! I’m currently working on undoing the horors that I’ve placed upon it (in a warranty voiding kind of way). Will post later on how that goes, but so far so good.
Aside from that one little “learning experience”, it turned out great.
The ribeye wound up bumping up against the ends of the blue tray, so I had to stretch the wire rack out and turn it into a shelf. Should have thought of that earlier, as it actually worked better.
Also went ahead and took the test tube of gell off of the Ranco sensor last night. It was slowing things down a little too much. Just bumped up the “cushion” on the Ranco to allow for a couple of degrees difference and it’s been holding in a tight range since then.
