Sous-vide Steak
I experimented with sous-vide market steaks. I cooked them to 126F (after vacuum sealing) in the thermal bath and then finished them with about 30 seconds on each side in a hot iron skillet. As usual the steaks were very juicy, but the lack of browning flavors was evident. The searing didn’t fix that.
Alternatives might be to sear the steaks first, change the time and temperature of the searing, or of course to give up and just do steaks the “old-fashioned” way.–David
Assaf replied:
What I do for steaks is the following:
I buy the entire steak (e.g . tenderloin for filet m.) and then clean the gristle which you must do for Sous Vide anyway as the temperature is not high enough to brown it and change the texture. I cut the meat into portioned steaks.
I do not discard the gristle. Instead, I fry the gristle in it’s own rendered fat in a pan on medium heat and let it brown. I pour a spoon or two of the fat and put some of the browned gristle with each steak I then proceed to vacuum.
March 30, 2008 at 9:29 am. Permalink.
Gordon replied:
I’ve ’sous-vide’d steaks for a couple of years now. What I do is make marinade for my steaks, bring that up to temperature, add the steaks to that, seal whole thing and drop into the hot water bath. Takes about an hour to bring the meat up to 125 degrees. Apologies for an extremely inexact method.
However, I think the most important part is finishing the steaks over VERY hot coals. 30-60 sec sear on either side. If your coals are hot enough, you get your browning, flavor and perfectly medium rare steaks.
April 7, 2008 at 7:29 am. Permalink.