Easy + Delicious Sous Vide Steak

I’m sure you’ve seen this all over Instagram and Pinterest and might be wondering “I’m sorry sous what?” We’re here to help you out! “Sous vide (pronounced sue-veed) is a cooking that utilizes precise temperature control to deliver consistent, restaurant-quality results.” 

You’ll need a precision cooker, we use this one from Anova, to sous vide your protein. For this blog post, we’re going to utilize a steak but you can totally do this with plenty of proteins and even veggies! 

 

First, you’ll need to select what type of steak you want to make. We used a prime rib cap that we found at Costco but you could use whatever cut of beef is your favorite. I feel like since Joel is a butcher because we tend to get non-traditional cuts of beef which are pretty darn delicious. 

Then, you’ll need to vacuum seal your steak in a food safe plastic bag. This is really important so that your steak is evenly cooked while in its’ water bath. There are two ways to do this. 

1: Use a Food Saver machine to automatically suck all the air out of the plastic using directions for your specific model.

2: Fill your sink up with cold water. Place the steak in a gallon sized bag, but don’t seal it. Then, submerge the bag in water, using your fingers to manually remove all the air out of the bag, careful to not let any water in the bag. Once you get as much water out of it as possible, you can seal it. 

I don’t think either is a better idea, but it’s just whether or not you have a vacuum sealer available. The latter option is a bit more manual, but works just fine as you can seal in the right picture here.

Now that your steak is sealed and ready – you want to prepare the water bath! You’ll need a LARGE stock pot like this one here to fill with water. Hook your precision cooker to the side, plug it in and turn to your desired temperature. We cook ours to about 131 degrees F (bottom number) for about two hours in the water bath so we can sear to about medium rare in the pan. 

When you put your bagged steaks into the water, you will need to clip them to the side. Since this is a water bath, it rotates, kinda like a hot tub and you don’t want your bags to go under! We randomly bought these chip clips on Amazon and not gonna lie – they are amazing and super cheap You can grab them here. 

Here is just another close up of the bags – you can see that both are pretty air tight but just with different methods. As you’ll see on the right, there isn’t a big difference in the way they look! Like I mentioned above, we cooked ours at 131 degrees F for about 2 hours. There is a very helpful guide for temperatures and times over on Serious Eats and I highly suggest you check it out because it’s super clear and also because Serious Eats is the best. 

The chart over on Serious Eats is super helpful, but I’ll list a few of the guidelines we follow right here. I will also say that we’ve let our steaks cook longer than this and it just tends to make the beef a little bit softer. If you are eating a steak “as is” then I would stick to these guidelines but if you are making sandwiches or something like that, then you can get away with cooking it longer. 

• Rare
  • Water Bath Temperature: 125 degrees F
  • Timing: 1 – 2 hours 
• Medium Rare
  • Water Bath Temperature: 131 degrees F
  • Timing: 1 – 4 hours 
• Medium
  • Water Bath Temperature: 140 degrees F
  • Timing: 1 – 4 hours 
• Medium Well
  • Water Bath Temperature: 150 degrees F
  • Timing: 1 – 3 hours

Sorry, but I refuse to put well-done on here because you should never eat a steak well-done, that’s just rude to the cow. 

You might notice that we did not put herbs or seasonings in our bags with the steak. You totally can, but we tend to season after it cooks in the water bath before we sear it in the skillet. No real reason, but we think it creates enough flavor in the skillet that we don’t really see the need. 

Once you are ready to sear your steak, you want to make sure your skillet (we love this one) is nice and hot and then just sear it for like 1-2 minutes on each side until it gets that nice little caramelization. Even though your steak is cooked evenly because of the sous vide technique, you still want to temp it to make sure it’s your desired doneness. 

Then, you obviously need to serve it alongside these air fried brussels sprouts. Sous vide cooking can seem complicated but it’s actually SO simple and creates completely evenly cooked food – no worrying about “if my steak is cooked” because you control it with the water bath temperature. We bought our Anova precision cooker 2 years ago on Black Friday and I literally said to Joel, “I mean we can buy it, but I bet we’ll never use it” and boy, oh boy, did I eat my words. 

This is seriously one of our most used kitchen appliances and I hope it becomes one of your favorites too! 

If you want to learn more about sous vide cooking, I highly suggest you check out these two websites to learn more: 

• The Food Lab’s Complete Guide to Sous Vide Steak
• Anova Culinary, What Is Sous Vide?

If you like this blog post, you might like these other ones on The Beard and The Baker: 

• Secret for the Best Steak, Garlic Scape Compound Butter
• Balsamic Onions and Steak Sandwiches