Let me start by echoing the advice given many, many times on this site to folks who as the question "I was asked by my xxxx to cook for their wedding..." Say no. Actually it turned out fine but more stress than I needed.
Long story short, my son commissioned into the Army when he graduated a couple weeks back and even though his BOLC date isn't near term, given the uncertainty of when they'd be able to really have the wedding and the risk that he'd be called up on short notice given the disruption the virus is having, he and his fiancee went back to their original date and had a small-ish ceremony in my backyard on Memorial Day weekend.
The bride (at the urging of my wife) decided to go with steak, baked potatoes and some other things. It was more than we needed but we cooked up two tenderloins cut into filets and two prime ribeye roasts cut into steaks. We seasoned them up and used a sous vide machine in a cooler to cook them. Dusted them with Carne Crosta and seared them off on the Blackstone. Filled the 36" space twice. Ultimately came out perfect.
Problem was that when I went to put the steaks in the water bath I noticed that the temp was 5 degrees lower than it should have been and the machine was off. I turned it back on, the temp display increased quickly to five degrees above what it should have been, started to fall back to the five under -- then made a buzzing noise and shut off. :shock:
Fortunately I'd had my SIL bring his unit just in case we needed two in the cooler to heat that much water and was able to use it. We had to quickly dump some of the water and replace it with some boiling water to get everything back where it needed to be but once there, his weaker unit could keep the temp stable.
The scramble did take away from my other job -- photographer -- but fortunately one of my daughters was able to step in pretty well on that front.
The bride's dad grills and smokes too so we knew we could probably pull off just grilling them if we really had to but it would have really been challenging to get things out and hot with that volume and neither one of us was really excited about trying.
I will say, the blackstone with the carne crosta worked insanely well and everyone raved about the steaks. No finished pics but you can see what we started with.
And a gratuitous picture of the couple.
Long story short, my son commissioned into the Army when he graduated a couple weeks back and even though his BOLC date isn't near term, given the uncertainty of when they'd be able to really have the wedding and the risk that he'd be called up on short notice given the disruption the virus is having, he and his fiancee went back to their original date and had a small-ish ceremony in my backyard on Memorial Day weekend.
The bride (at the urging of my wife) decided to go with steak, baked potatoes and some other things. It was more than we needed but we cooked up two tenderloins cut into filets and two prime ribeye roasts cut into steaks. We seasoned them up and used a sous vide machine in a cooler to cook them. Dusted them with Carne Crosta and seared them off on the Blackstone. Filled the 36" space twice. Ultimately came out perfect.
Problem was that when I went to put the steaks in the water bath I noticed that the temp was 5 degrees lower than it should have been and the machine was off. I turned it back on, the temp display increased quickly to five degrees above what it should have been, started to fall back to the five under -- then made a buzzing noise and shut off. :shock:
Fortunately I'd had my SIL bring his unit just in case we needed two in the cooler to heat that much water and was able to use it. We had to quickly dump some of the water and replace it with some boiling water to get everything back where it needed to be but once there, his weaker unit could keep the temp stable.
The scramble did take away from my other job -- photographer -- but fortunately one of my daughters was able to step in pretty well on that front.
The bride's dad grills and smokes too so we knew we could probably pull off just grilling them if we really had to but it would have really been challenging to get things out and hot with that volume and neither one of us was really excited about trying.
I will say, the blackstone with the carne crosta worked insanely well and everyone raved about the steaks. No finished pics but you can see what we started with.
And a gratuitous picture of the couple.
