Dry sous vide steak

How do I stop my sous vide steak drying out? I have tried various temperatures and times from 55°C to 60°C and from 40 minutes to 4 hours. The colour and texture changes but the meat is always too dry to enjoy.

My mother eats steak well done conventionally and it is much more moist than this sous vide medium rare. The meat is still very red, so it's not over cooked.

I am using sirloin, about 20mm thick. It's 28 day aged, according to the packet. When cooked in a pan it is very nice, as it should be at £22/kg. I have tried presearing plus postsearing and postsearing only. Sealed in Sous Vide Supreme vacuum pouches. They then go into a 30l water bath heated by a Vac-Star Sous Vide Chef 2. The temperature is totally accurate according to my certified thermapen and does not vary at all.

I also tried cooking chicken breast with garlic butter potatoes and carrots, as per Douglas Baldwin's book. Carrots were delicious. Potatoes were hard and bland. Chicken was downright weird. Very unpleasant texture and very dry. I invited a couple of friends who are keen to try sous vide over during the whole process. All 4 of us agreed. The machine is going back.

Best Answer

The machine

I invited a couple of friends who are keen to try sous vide over during the whole process. All 4 of us agreed. The machine is going back.

My immediate first thought was that you had a bad machine. The Vac-Star Sous Vide Chef has excellent reviews on Vac-Star's website and it looks like you are using it within proper specifications. That would be my first hunch, as nothing else seems particularly out of place. If you are able to come back, since this was over a year ago, it would be curious to see if a different machine solved your problems.

_{On a side note, I looked up reviews for Sous Vide Supreme vacuum pouches and they seem good, too.}

Other things

I looked up for reviews of the I noticed the Beyond Salmon blogger had posted a follow-up experiment with sous-vide steaks that I found had useful data. This summarized it well:

What most sous-vide books and websites tell you is that you can't overcook using the sous-vide method. It all depends on how you define "overcook." The steak will not go above the desired temperature no matter how long you hold it in the water bath (well, dah!), but the longer you hold it, the more juice you lose.

I have noticed this from your post:

I have tried various temperatures and times from 55°C to 60°C and from 40 minutes to 4 hours.

Per her experiment, steak A, B and C turned out the best. They also had the lowest temperatures and cooking times:

Steak A: 121°F (49.5°C) water bath for 50 minutes

Steak B: 126°F (52.2°C) water bath for 50 minutes

Steak C: 131°F (55°C) water bath for 100 minutes

It likely would be a good idea to try lower temperatures, and stick to the lower-end of the time scale. Also from the article:

But if you are using an immersion circulator, you might be tempted to put meat in the water bath whenever it's convenient (in the morning before going to work, during kids' nap, etc.) and then have it ready for dinner. It will surely be very tender, but you'd better have a lot of demi-glace handy because it will be dry.

Hope this helps!

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Quick Answer about "Dry sous vide steak"

Cook sous vide for 4 hours for 1.5” thick cuts.

Put the steaks, while still in vacuum sealed bag, in ice water for a minute or two. ...

Remove the steaks from the bags and pat them dry.

Sear the outside of the steaks using your preferred method (blowtorch or cast iron skillet recommended.

Season with flaky salt.

Should you dry steak after sous vide?

Yes, because it takes a lot of energy to evaporate the liquid off the meat. You can't sear/brown wet meat, so that energy ends up cooking the meat while you're evaporating liquid. You should have plenty of flavour from the cook.

Does sous vide dry out meat?

Now this is overkill for a lot of sous vide steaks, sous vide pork, and even sous vide chicken. But when it comes to things like chicken wings or things with skin on it, it's a great way to dry them out fully. It's one of my keys to making sous vide chicken wings.

Why was my sous vide steak tough?

Mishandling fat When you cook a medium-rare steak sous vide, you're cooking it at a constant temperature of between 129 and 134 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, it takes quite a long time for fat to render. Because of this, many sous vide cooks complain of \u201crubbery\u201d fat, or fat that is overall unappetizing.

What is dry sous vide?

Sous vide is, according to Serious Eats, a form of cooking that involves taking vacuum-sealed bags and submerging them in a "temperature-controlled water bath," thus creating a slowly and gently cooked food, be it red meat, fish, chicken, or even vegetables.

Dry sous vide steak