The Perfect Sous Vide Steak

Sous Vide, which literally translates to  “under vacuum,” is all about temperature. Once you perfect that, you can make some of the most advanced meals you’ve ever tasted in your very own kitchen! A great place to start in your sous vide journey is with a classic steak. Give the following recipe for the perfect sous vide steak, excerpted from The Sous Vide Kitchen a try and you wont be disappointed!

For more info on sous vide cooking, check out our post What is Sous Vide?

This is it: the main event. Get excited because this recipe shows you how to cook a steak that is wall-to-wall medium rare—and you definitely won’t see that dreaded gray band of overcooked meat once you cut into it. While you might need to practice this recipe a few times to get it truly perfect, don’t be surprised if you’re soon making the best steak you’ve had anywhere.

The Perfect Steak
135°F/54°C | 2 hours (see Note) | serves 4 to 6

INGREDIENTS
4 steaks of your choice, approximately 1½ inches/4 cm thick (you can choose from rib eye, porterhouse,tenderloin, strip, hanger, flap,or skirt)
Salt and black pepper
4 tablespoons/56 g unsalted butter, divided
4 garlic cloves, peeled and halved, divided
1 bunch fresh thyme

Note: There’s not a huge difference in the way you cook different cuts of steak with sous vide, but you want to adjust the sous vide time and temperature according to the thickness of your steak; a really thick steak should be cooked sous vide a bit longer, and a thinner steak doesn’t need as much time.

DIRECTIONS
Preheat a sous vide water bath for the doneness level of your steak.

I recommend 130°F/54°C for medium rare, but here are the other options:

DONENESS LEVEL TEMPERATURE
rare 120°f (49°c)
medium rare 130°f (54°c)
medium 135°f (57°c)
medium well 145°f (63°c)
well done 156°f (69°c+)

1. Seal your steaks in individual vacuum seal bags, or 2 per bag, and cook in the preheated water bath for 2 hours.
2. When the steaks have ?nished cooking sous vide, start heating up your pan over high heat until it’s smoking hot (up to 10 minutes for a cast-iron pan).
3. While the pan is heating, remove the steaks from the bags, pat dry with paper towels, and rub a generous amount of salt and pepper onto all sides.
4. Once the pan is hot, add 1 tablespoon of the butter, 1 of the garlic cloves, and 4 sprigs of the thyme, followed immediately by one of the steaks.
5. Searing a sous vide steak is very different to the process of searing  raw steak.
6. First, when your steak comes out of the sous vide water bath, the interior meat is cooked to perfection.
7. All you’re looking to do is get some char on the outside, with minimum cooking under the surface.
8. This is why you want to get the pan as hot as possible and cook the steak as quickly as possible.
9. It’s also important for the steak to be patted dry with paper towels before frying, as any moisture on the surface will increase the amount of frying time needed to get a good char.
10. Fry just until you get a good sear, around 1 to 1½ minutes on each side, and set the steak aside on a wire rack. Wipe the pan with paper towels after ?nishing the ?rst steak, and repeat the process with the remaining steaks.

Note: If you want to use a blowtorch to add extra char, sear the steak for 30 seconds or so on each side. Then for the last two sets of 30 seconds, torch the side facing up while the side facing down sears in the pan. Cooking the steak for 1 minute less helps even out the extra heat added by the torch.

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Use sous vide to cook absolutely anything!

If you own a sous vide machine, chances are you’ve tried it out by cooking burgers, steak, and pork. But that’s just the beginning. For years, restaurants have used sous vide to perfectly cook a wide variety of foods—now you can do the same. Join sous vide recipe developer Christina Wylie and take your skills to the next level: Use sous vide to make the perfect soft boiled eggs, then go further and learn how to use it to make scrambled eggs, overnight oatmeal, and other breakfast staples. For lunch, try topping your salad with perfectly cooked sous vide tuna or salmon (the secret is a short brine). For dinner, the options are endless. Choose from Asian dishes like Char Siu Pork Loin and Miso-Marinated Cod, reinvent a favorite with the Deconstructed Beef Wellington or Spicy Southern-Fried Chicken, or enjoy a surprisingly simple 48-Hour Beef Brisket. Finish the meal with a sous vide twist on cheesecake or a nightcap of homemade spiced rum (speed-infused using sous vide, of course).

With recommended times and temperatures for every recipe, unique combinations of sous vide with other cooking techniques, and more than 100 recipes to explore, this book will help you get the most out of sous vide.