Sous Vide Steaks Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How long should you sous vide a steak? ›

Q: Can I add aromatics, like herbs or alliums, to the sous vide bag? Yes, you can. I like to add thyme or rosemary sprigs, along with sliced shallots or garlic cloves, to the bags with my steaks during cooking. Adding the same aromatics to the pan as you sear the steaks will bolster that flavor.

Seasonings – coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper is all that was used for this reverse-seared steak. Herbs – I used fresh thyme sprigs to enhance the flavor of the steak during the sous vide and searing process.

You should select a different cut of steak. A long trip in the sous vide bath is meant to break down connective tissue and tenderize meats. Flank steak is very lean, and inherently tough, so there is little connective tissue to break down, hence is stays tough.

For example, many chefs recommend that sous vide steak should not be cooked for longer than four hours because the connective tissue begins to break down and the steak can become mushy.

Here at Sous Vide Tools we often like to add a small amount of butter to the bag and find that for best results, flavoured butter works really well to add a little something extra during the cooking process. Our preference is to place butter into the bag itself, rather than on top of the product.

Another thing to note is that cooked meat doesn't absorb marinades, and the outside of meats cook in roughly 5 to 10 minutes sous vide, so you always want to marinate first before sous vide cooking — even if you leave the marinade in the bag.

To prep your steak for best flavor development during the sous vide process, rub it with a light drizzle of oil before applying spices. Many of the flavor compounds in spices dissolve in oil. The oil rub will help the meat absorb these flavors while it comes up to temperature.

Ziplock and Glad brand bags are made from polyethylene plastic, and are free of BPAs and dioxins. A good rule of thumb is that when a bag is rated as microwave safe (which requires FDA approval) you can use it for sous vide. Even Dr. Schaffner agrees.

Do you put butter or oil in sous vide steak? ›

Kenji Lopez-Alt said that he doesn't suggest adding fat (butter or olive oil) to the bag when cooking steak sous vide. He theorized that the added fat was absorbing fat-soluble flavor compounds from the meat and then being poured down the drain with the bag juice/butter.

Flipping it every 30 to 45 seconds will get you that nice little brown crust without raising the internal temperature. I know people that go 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and then they wonder why their food turned out overcooked. It wasn't the sous vide cooking's fault; it was the searing part.

For sirloin sous vide, set aside about one hour of time per inch of steak thickness. So, for a one-inch sirloin, you'll need about two hours, and a two-inch sirloin needs about three hours. Regardless of thickness and your preferred doneness level, you shouldn't need longer than four hours to sous vide sirloin steak.

By allowing for precise temperature control and long, slow cooking, sous vide helps to tenderize tough meat, prevent lean cuts from drying out, ensure that expensive cuts are cooked perfectly, and reduce gamey flavors.

Most steaks can be cooked sous vide for 2 to 4 hours and will result in a more tender version of how that steak traditionally tastes.