Please note that the cooking time in the water bath is the square of the thickness. Twice the thickness takes four times as long. A 3/4" steak will be done in 40 to 60 minutes while a 1-1/2" steak will take 160 minutes to four hours. I will try searing the meat first in the hope that searing will seal in more of the moisture. I have been searing as the last step until now. In any event my finding is that I can buy less expensive cuts and get very tender meats with my sous vide oven. Perfect steaks -- every time!
First of all, I have to say I was raised on a big commercial cattle ranch in Oklahoma.....have had steaks in Dallas, San Antone, KC, OKC, and everywhere in between. Needless to say, I know a little about steaks. I tend to shy away from NY Strips because they tend to be a little tough, I prefer Rib Eye. I followed this recipe exactly using my crockpot and these were the best NY Strips I have ever had. The only thing I did different was for the final sear, I used my charcoal grill. About a min, minute and a half per side, make sure you season them before the final sear. I've never had those kind of Mushrooms (Wegmans carries them) but can't imagine having a steak in the future without them. Overall, well worth the effort. Once you put the steaks in the water, they don't need much tending. To make it easy, experiment a few days in advance with your crockpot to maintain 131-135 degrees. I put mine on warm and tilted the lid a bit....maintained 132ish.....thermometer is very important. Don't get wound up over the time....it's not critical.....if it goes three hours, won't change anything.
For the first time I tried the sous vide cooking method with this recipe. I used 1 inch thick new-york strip loins, and maintained a constant temperature of 130 - 131 in my dutch oven. I first seared the salt and pepper seasoned steaks in a pan with olive oil, then transferred them into a zip lock bag and immersed them for 2 hours and 15 minutes. I proceeded to sear and crust the steaks after the immersion time. While the steaks were a perfect medium rare, I felt they lacked the depth of flavour I was expecting. When it comes to steak, I could have pan fried these strip loins and let them rest for 10 minutes and achieved as good or better results than the 2.5 hours using this method. It was an interesting exercise, but not worth the time or effort in my opinion.
So I decided to make this recipe after seeing the video turned out really good. I warmed up water and put it in a pot and after I grilled the meat (I used sirloin) I put three of them in a plastic bag and covered the warm water pot. I left them in for close to 2 hours grilled them and they turned out very juicy. I didnt have mushrooms but definitely would want to add them to this dish when I make them next time.
I tried this recipe everyone loved it. My stovetop gets too hot so I got out my crock pot put hot water in it got the seared put it in ziploc freezer bags and put it in the water I didn't watch the temp very good and cooked it more than I would have liked to but it was great the meat was so tender and juicy. Nezt time I will turn it down to warm after it gets up to 140 degrees. Thank you for sharing this recipe
I've been sous vide cooking for a while now and absolutely love the technique. Perfect every time with almost no effort. We cook this way so often now that I bought a little sous vide "oven" from Costco that has a permanent place on our countertop. If you haven't cooked this way you owe it to yourself to try.
I thought this recipe was wonderful. I had a hard time keeping my water at 130 degrees so the meet was more cooked than I wanted. It browned so beautifully before and after the water bath. I used brown portabella mushrooms. The sauce was so good. This was my first time doing sous vide. The meal was awesome served with pesto zucchini.
There must be a thousand ways to cook a steak that will give equal or better results. The flavor was fine. From all the hype, one would have expected a texture like prime rib. Nope. It was just a steak. Way too time consuming. If i am going to spend that much time cooking a steak, it better be able to walk over and put itself on my plate! Stick to your grills guys! Thanks for the gravy John.
This was delicious! Though, if you like rarer steak I’d definitely lessen the cook time. I had two 1” steaks, weighing ~1.5lbs total, and cooked them for 2 hours @ 130F in a sous vide appliance. The cook ended up being medium, which was too done for our tastes. However, they were still delicious, so I’ll definitely be doing this method again; will just lessen the cook time. The mushroom sauce should not be dismissed! Yum!
