This is what I’m experimenting with tonight. I tossed a 2 pound flank steak into a Ziploc bag, pressed out the air, and put it into a beer cooler with 140 degree water. I’ll monitor the temp and let it cook that way for the next 24 hours, then do the final cooking on the grill tomorrow night to brown the outside. I’ve cooked salmon this way for much shorter times and it was delicious.
Here’s the Serious Eats post he mentions in the video, and here’s the instant read digital thermometer I’m using. The dial-type analog meat thermometers are often wildly inaccurate, apparently. I’ve got a Seal-A-Meal my wife bought at a yard sale, but I can’t get it to work right, so I’ve been using gallon Zip-Locs for the plastic bags.
LATER: It was delicious. I had eaten sous vide ribeye at a restaurant and the sous vide flank steak, though not as good, was similarly good. The meat was pink on the inside, like a medium rare steak, but uniformly warm. Thanks to the long, low temperature cooking times the meat is tender and juicy. Delicious. I want to try it with a flat iron steak the next time I find some on sale.
I took the cooler with me to work to maintain the water temperature. At lunch I cut off some of the meat. The meat was better then than later that night, so I think 10 or 12 hours is all a flank steak needs, and the 21 hours was overkill.
I almost overdid it with the grilling. I forgot how cooked the meat was from the cooler and left the meat on the grill longer than I should have. It wasn’t until I got towards the center of the grilled flank steak that I found pink meat. I preferred the flavor of the ungrilled meat. It just didn’t look as appetizing because it didn’t look like cooked meat normally looks. Next time I’ll just grill it on each side for a minute.
Previously – Word of the Day: Sous Vide
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My wife bought me a Sous vide supreme for christmas. So far we’ve done about a dozen meals in it, and we’re VERY happy.
We did flank steak tacos, cooking the flank for 12 hours in a home made adobo sauce… amazing.
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This sounds dangerous. Can’t you die from the germs and stuff?
This sounds interesting. As a home brewer, I know about temperature control. I se digital temperature controls for fermentation and refrigeration. Fermentation is usually around 55 to 70 depending on the beer type and refrigeration is about 40 to 52 depending on the beer. These controls could work with something like a crock pot to keep the temp relatively constant. For the beer, I use a chest freezer that plugs into the temp controler. A probe is inserted into the freezer to monitor the temp and the controler is set to the desired temp. It keeps it within about 2 -3 degrees F of the set temp. An example is here; http://morebeer.com/view_product/16666/102282/Ranco_Digital_Temperature_Controller_-_Wired
@Paul
Bacteria has a limited temperature range in which it will reproduce. That’s why you’re supposed to store cold food at 40F or lower and warm food should be kept above 135F. 140F is the lowest you can cook food that will still inhibit bacteria growth.
Paul: the 140 degree temperature is right on the ragged edge of bacterial growth. That’s why it’s important to use an accurate thermometer. The dial type analog meat thermometers can apparently be off by 10, 20, even 30 degrees. I bought a $25 ThermoWorks digital food thermometer to make sure I was getting an accurate reading.
Too, the final sear on the grill or in the frying pan cooks off any bacteria on the outside of the meat.
Cookingissues.com, a blog by instructors at the French Culinary Institute, go in depth about Sous Vide methodology, giving cooking times and temps for a variety of foods, from salmon, to eggs. It also goes into other exotic processes more commonly seen in research labs, but instead applied to the culinary arts – the immersion circulators commonly used in Sous Vide in commercial kitchens are just one example.
Bacteria is a concern, especially where you involve temperatures lower than 165F, where basically bacteria are killed instantly, BUT there is a time/temp graph at Cooking issues that shows how long you should cook something at what temp – at 135F, you need to do a minimum of 30 minutes, IIRC. Also, remember that you’re dealing with whole meat, so most, if not almost all bacteria are on the surface. This is also why Sous Vide and ground meat are a really, really bad idea.
Bacteria isn’t nearly the issue you would think.
Conventional wisdom is, the “danger zone” is between 40 and 140. Hotter or colder is safe, but in the zone is bad. In reality low cooking temps will still kill bacteria, just slowly. Some folks regularly cook tough cuts of meat at 130 or so for 36 hours. When they’re done the meat is pasteurized, and quite safe to eat.
Personally, I do chicken breasts, 4 hours at 162 F, and when I’m done I drop it in an ice water bath to chill. The FDA says I can put it in a 38 F fridge for 3 weeks before botulism becomes a concern. So I feel safe keeping it in a 32 F ice water bath for a week when camping. And no raw meat prep to worry about.
For the ribeye, I suggest you skip the grill. Just heat a cast iron pan on the stove, and cut open the cooked meat and drop it in. You aren’t cooking, you’re browning the outside so it looks better and has some flavor people expect. I’ve done a ribeye that was 2″ thick, 1/8″ of brown on either end then perfect pink the rest of the way through. For me, perfect pink is 133, YMMV.
Enjoy.
Here’s a tip, if you don’t have a vacuum machine and are using ziploc bags, ziploc makes a hand-pump vacuum sealer with special bags that are very cheap compared to buying a machine. It will remove all of the air from the bag. I love this idea. Thanks.
45er. I heard about those.
The trick I use is to lower the Zip-loc into the cooler before I seal it. The weight of the water helps push out the air. It works. The meat stays underwater. The only part that floats is the zipper part.
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