To understand how to sous vide steak, we need to know the basics.  By definition, Sous Vide simply means ‘under vacuum’ in french.  In reality it is slightly more complicated, but not by much.  Here’s what you need to know–
Sous Vide is pronounced “Soo Veed”.  It is accomplished by vacuum sealing ingredients in a bag, and cooking the bag of ingredients in hot water.  Thats all.
Why is Sous Vide Steak awesome?  Thats easy… if done correctly, Sous Vide Steak cooking enables us to cook things to Perfection.  Not great, not excellent, not even superb… PERFECT.   If you are a steak lover like me, this means you can enjoy the most tender, juicy steak you could ever imagine.  And the best part is, it’s easy to do at home.  Read on to learn how to sous vide steak at home!  If you need more information be sure to check out sous vide steak on wikipedia.  If sous vide steak isnt for you, why not try Sous Vide Salmon.

I have sous vide steak many different ways.

Depending on the equipment you have at your disposal there are several ways to successfully sous vide steak… though your results can be significantly better with some methods over others.  The very first time I sous vide I actually used my bath tub… I had heard about sous vide through some website, might have been this life hacker article on sous vide steak - and decided to give it a try myself.  The experiment actually went fairly well for my first try!  I borrowed a vacuum sealer from my cousin, seasoned my tri-tip steaks (still my favorite!) with salt and pepper and nothing more, vacuum packed three or four steaks individually in food-saver bags and started the  sous vide steak process.  This is how I sous vide steak in a bath tub.

If this is your first try at making sous vide steak you will probably want to buy or borrow a nice thermometer.  I luckily had a digital thermometer I used for brewing beer (though through this experiment i found out not all thermometers are created equally, and for sous vide steak you want an accurate one… mine was nearly 5 degrees off which resulted in over done sous vide steak down the road when I started doing longer sessions… back to the bath tub:)  So with a little googling i determined i was going for a water temperature of 131.1 (which seems to be the minimum safe temperature for beef.. even though any food safety class tells you it is 140 – it appears it is really 131.1)  so I cranked my bathtub water as hot as it would go and checked the temp.  It was hovering around 120 so i found the biggest pot of water i could find and put it on the stove to boil.  When the pot was boiling i filled up the tub to about 8 inches with water from the tap, and slowly added boiling water while stirring with a wooden spoon until it was at a temperature of around 140 (in hind site this was a little high, as i overestimated how much dropping the steaks in would lower the temperature.).  I dropped the steaks in and monitored the temperature.  It dropped to around 135 fairly quickly.  From then on I simply kept an eye on the temp and added boiling water as necessary to maintain approximately 132 ish (i overshot most of the time so i actually was closer to 135 for the majority of the cook.
This first batch of Sous Vide Steaks were sous vide for approximately 1 hour.  I figured this was a good place to start.  when i had about 20 minutes to go i got the coals started on my webber bbq.  I recommend LOTS of coals.  it seems like the hotter the better as we are just trying to sear the beef, not cook it any more than it already is.

After searing the sous vide steak on the bbq for a couple minutes a side the sous vide steaks were ready to eat! (im sure you can get away with less, but i didnt know just how hot the grill needed to be to get it to sear quickly.  And a tip for searing:  dont try to sear a whole bunch of sous vide steak at the same time.  With an extremely hot grill it is extremely difficult to keep them all turning quickly enough to keep them from burning!)

I can honestly say that this sous vide steak was absolutely incredible.

Especially considering it was my first try at sous vide steak, and they were cooked in a bath tub!  As i mentioned earlier, there are many other ways to sous vide a steak, and the bath tub method is certainly not the most ideal way to do it.  It is however a great way to begin if you dont want to invest in any of the other gadgets to get the job done.  If you are going to attempt to sous vide steak I would only recommend that you buy a good digital thermometer to ensure safe water temperature.  I would also recommend you substitute the bath tub for a beer cooler with a couple towels wrapped around it for extra insulation! (the cooler actually works much better due to its insulation).

Good luck, and Thanks for Visiting SousVideSteak.com!