Sous Vide Striploin Technique

Translated from French as “under vacuum”, sous vide is a technique widely used in fancy restaurants to achieve consistent results. Meat, fish or vegetables are sealed and vacuum packed in a food-grade bag and cooked in a water bath for an extended amount of time at a very low temperature.  The benefit, especially for cooking meat, is that the finished product is very consistently cooked, and the margin of error (or “overcooking”), is extremely low. A medium rare steak will be pink from edge to edge, and all the cook has to do is brown the outside of the steak in a ripping-hot pan to get a golden brown, crunchy exterior. This all sounds a bit space-aged, but once a cook uses this technique, they tend to fall in love with the perfectly cooked and tender results. Note that you will need both an immersion circulator and a vacuum pack machine to do this properly.

Basic Sous-Vide Technique for a Steak

1.  Insert an immersion circulator into a large pot. Fill the pot with water to one inch above the minimum water level line on the circulator.

2.  Program the circulator to the desired temperature.  For a medium-rare striploin steak that would be about 130°F. The temperature of the water reflects the finished internal temperature of the meat. Let the water heat up (it takes about 20-30 minutes).

3.  Season the meat and place it in a pouch/bag with some other aromatics (garlic and thyme are great here, as is a knob of butter). Vacuum seal it as per your machine’s instructions. (You can use a zippered freezer bag for this; place the meat in a zippered bag, press out as much air as you can and seal it, leaving an inch of an opening on one corner).

4.  Place the bag with the steak into the water and cook for two hours. If using a zippered bag, place the steak into the water but leave the zipper end of the bag over the container’s edge and clip it onto the side so that it doesn’t fall in. The pressure from the water will push the remaining air out of the bag as the steak cooks.

5.  Once the steak is cooked, remove it from the bag and dry it off well with a paper towel. Discard the aromatics, but save the juice (add it to some beef stock, reduce, and emulsify with a knob of cold butter to use as a sauce).

6.  Sear the outside of the steak in a very hot, preheated heavy-bottomed pan over a high heat.

7.  Slice and serve.