I sous vide my first black bear roast

As some of you know I acquired some black bear meat from my parent after their successful bear hunting trip. They gave me this nice roast and the first thing I could think of was "this needs to be cooked sous vide" and that is exactly what happened.

Normally with bear meat you have to cook it to a very high internal temp (roughly 180 degrees F +/- to make sure to kill Trichinosis, the problem with this is it leaves the meat dry and tough, that's not what I want. Thankfully with sous vide I can pasteurize the meat which will kill out this problem and give me that nice medium rare cook that I do want. Lets see how it turned out FoodTribe!

A beautiful black bear roast

A beautiful black bear roast

There is no trimming needed as the meat is very lean, so I just seasoned it with my homemade MSG umami seasoning on both sides. Next I vacuum sealed it up and dropped it in to cook at 138 degrees F for 4 hours. When time was up I removed it from the bag and dried it with paper towels, then rubbed both sides with a little butter to get a proper sear.

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While it was getting seared on some hardwood charcoal I sprinkled on a little more salt and umami seasoning. After getting a proper sear this roast had a wonderful mahogany color that I have not seen before, sorry but the camera does not show the color like I hoped.

It had a wonderful mahogany color

It had a wonderful mahogany color

Now for the moment of truth! Time to start slicing and tasting. When I started slicing I was treated with a very tender and juicy bear roast that was cooked to a perfect medium rare. It turned from a dark purple when raw to this nice pink/ red kind of color. I was grinning so big my face started to hurt you all.

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I could not control myself I had to taste it immediately and once again I was not disappointed. There was no gamey taste at all, it was so good it made me do the happy dance. It was so tender and juicy you almost did not need to chew it and with my MSG umami seasoning it was almost perfect. I say "almost" because it needed just a touch more salt but instead of salting all of it I put some fine sea salt on the side so I could dip as I wanted it. Now I just need to beg my parents for another roast so I can experience this goodness again.

Would you all try a piece of this or have you had bear roast before? Tell me in the comments below. Stay wonderful you all and remember, I love you FoodTribe!