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Best way to reheat steaks (or any protein or veggie) cooked sous vide and chilled

sygyzy

Hi,

I haven't had much need for this in the past but I am interested in cook and chill for proteins, so I can prep for service (dinner) in advance. I understand the best way to reheat a chilled steak (for example), is to put it in a water bath at the same temperature as the desired doneness/serving temp. For argument sake, let's say this is 130F. I use a labatory water bath in a large (13L?) plastic bin and while it heats up fairly quickly, it still takes some time. I also don't keep this piece of equipment out in my kitchen since it takes up so much space. What is the time for a refrigerated piece of steak to reheat through so the center isn't cold when dinner guests arrive? 30 minutes? 45 minutes? Plus say the 30 minutes to heat up the water. Take the 45 mins to cook the steak initially, plus the 60-90 minutes of reheating time and it quickly makes sous vide impractical and time consuming, at least for cook and chill.

What is your advice for using sousvide to cook and hold, for a later service? Thanks.

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Comments

seijoed

Plunge in ice-bath, refrigerate it'll still take something like 20-30 minutes depending on steak, I find that prepping / searing the steaks, frozen works great, sealing and then keeping them frozen - veg you can easily do ahead of time, I tend to in bag blanch and then shock, finish in a sautee pan.

I make sure I have the time to reach a balanced temp for my baths, I usually also start from warm water. That way I'm pretty much at steak temp from the get go.

I guess I'd advice making room for a bath

Brendan_Lee_56950

I'm pretty sure @chris covered this before in a different post but he said that it will take the exact same amount of time for the food to be reheated to the serving temp as it would from fresh since that state of "doneness" doesn't have any impact on the physics of the situation. I would definitely try starting with warm to hot water to speed up that part of the process though.

sygyzy

So besides the consistency factor (of not having an overcooked steak), there is no time savings at all. In fact, cook and hold then reheat takes many times longer than just cook to serve using traditional (non-SV) methods. It's kind of depressing.

seijoed

Yes, apart from far superior texture, I think flavor and that you can achieve results that you simply cannot with traditional tools - no you don't save time as with a microwave.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Yup, no time savings in terms of cook time but I tend to think that I make up for that time in other ways since i'm not slaving over a stove trying to time the steak or chicken just right. I can instead be making sides, sauces, or picking my nose, either way the food isn't over cooking.

Jack_Mayer_85396

I'll happily trade a little extra time and/or the necessity of some advance planning for perfectly cooked food every time. I've been grilling steaks for 30-35 years and am pretty proficient, but I can't come close the the perfection and repeatability of SV cooking.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Someone was arguing with me the other day about SV steak and they were like "I prefer a texture gradient in my steak" and I was like so you're just justifying overcooking with fancy terms. They weren't too pleased!

seijoed

But that is entirely correct!

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Brendan, I like a texture gradient too - 1/2% on each edge with a hard sear and the 99% in the middle perfectly cooked!

Chris_Young_80640

@David Vo — Actually, there is still something of an advantage as far as timing goes. If you precook, chill, and then reheat you can pull the steaks early with less risk of having them be undercooked.

Imagine that you cook from raw and pull the steak 20% too early, so that your steak has a core temperature of 53 °C versus your intended 56 °C. Uh, oh, your partner/guest/customer isn't going to be happy.

But, instead, imagine you reheated a steak and pull it 20% too early. Yes, the core temperature will still be 53 °C, but it will have the taste, texture, and appearance of 56 °C. It would be very hard to tell that the center is still a bit cool. So working this way does give you an extra measure of flexibility on timing.

At a place like The Fat Duck, this helped more than once.

sygyzy

@Chris good point. Thanks for everyone's input.

Chris_Young_80640

@David_Vo you're welcome.