Baking – Steaks taste horrid in the center

Pretty much...yes, but you can fix it!.

When you properly sous vide or very slow cook anything, you'll retain more of the myoglobin color because of the even cooking that often doesn't go above 140 at all. So a properly cooked steak like this will retain much more of its red colored myoglobin. Simply put, the meat will have more red juices to release! (Its a great, great thing about sous vide.)

As @Ronald mentions, the other thing is the resting of the meat. It's an important step as the muscle fibers relax after the heat is off and hold juices better then. An often misstep for the home cook is they allow a hot piece of meat to rest on a flat, solid surface. This causes the bottom of the meat to steam against the board, open the fibers in the meat more, and release the juices on to the board. Rest your meat on a raised baking rack so that it has air circulation all around it.

After a short rest - for most steak 10 minutes is fine, then you can cut into the steak. Use a very sharp knife to slice. The meat here is essentially a sponge and you don't want to compress it and squeeze out the juices. A dull knife will do this and you'll lose more juice on the cutting board again. Use a sharp knife and apply steady, even, but light pressure while slicing - let the edge do the work (if it won't, sharpen the knife more).

Eye of round is very lean. Very, very lean. So as a steak, it would not stand up very well to any cooking method that gets it much beyond rare. And even then, it's going to be a tough piece of meat. My suggestion would be to prepare that cut differently (such as macerating it and making country fried steak or Swiss steak), or omitting it from your rotation. Your method is sound for preparing a steak, but I would limit it to:

• Tenderloin
• Strip
• Ribeye
• Chuck eye (not chuck steak, which is a tough piece of meat, but chuck eye, which is cut from the eye roll).

If you want cheaper beef, the last in the list is your best bet.