Brian in the Kitchen Recipes
BRIAN IN THE KITCHEN brought to you by Stittsworth Meats
March 25 2021
In The Bag - Sous Vide Steak
Image From anovaculinary.com
How To Cook the Perfect Sous Vide Steak? A medium-rare steak is like the litmus test of the culinary world: you’ve got nowhere to hide. It’s either tender, juicy and perfectly pink, or it’s not. And so it makes for an ideal sous vide test subject. We’re talking no sauces, no distractions. Just a beautifully cooked steak. Luckily with sous vide it couldn’t be easier to get spot-on results time and time again. It’s the foolproof way to get exceptional, restaurant-quality steak at home.
Season a couple of fat fillet steaks with pepper and put them into two Ziploc bags (or vacumn bags), squeezing out as much of the air as you can. Then clip the bags onto the edge of the sous vide cooker, ensuring that the steaks are fully submerged. You’ll notice that as you place the bags into the pot, the water will displace the remaining air in the bags and force it to the top. Set the timer on your sous vide immersion circulator to 135F for medium-rare (130F for rare, 140F for medium and 147F for medium-well). The length of time you leave it in for depends on how thick your steak is. Here are some guideline times:
1/2 inch steak = 15 minutes
1 inch steak = 45 minutes
1 1/2 inch steak = 90 minutes
2 inche steak = 2 hours
As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t leave a steak in a sous vide machine longer than four hours because after that too much of the connective tissue gets broken down and the steak becomes a bit of a mush.
Set the timer to whatever time’s appropriate for your particular steak and then come back to it when the time’s up. You’ll then need to take it out of the bag and ‘finish’ it. You’ll notice that it doesn’t look that attractive when it comes straight out of the bag, and what’s needed is a flash fry in a super-hot pan to char the outside. The steak pictured was finished in a pan with both butter and thyme to add a little extra flavor. The final touch is simply to season it with salt and pepper.