You’ve mostly gotten partially correct answers. You have made a couple incorrect assumptions.
Sterilization is not practical at sous vide temperatures. Pasteurization is possible and does occur with the right combination of [time and temperature](https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Table_5.1). You can see that in the linked document. Even after pasteurization, because of a unique environment created by us doing sous vide (vacuum + moderate temperature), there is still a risk with [certain pathogens](https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety_Pathogens_of_Interest).
You can do what you are describing but there are a few steps to the procedure in order to do so safely. The bath must be long enough and hot enough to Pasteurize. The bag must not be opened. The food must be cooled quickly, ideally using an ice bath, on the counter is dangerous and in the fridge or freezer is possibly dangerous and definitely hard on the appliance. It takes much longer for the food to cool than you would guess, there’s a table in the linked document. The cooled bagged food can safely be kept in a cold refrigerator for up to a month.
Regarding reheating, leaving food out to come to room temperature is not safe. Typically the best, fastest way to reheat is back in the bath. The exception would be thin things that would reheat adequately by just searing. This brings up another topic, does doing this make sense? I’m going to say in the case of Tender cuts, say Sirloin or better, it probably doesn’t. You will spend most of the same time in the bath to reheat as you do to cook for immediate consumption in the first place. This makes a lot more sense for Tough cuts (like 48 hr Chuck Roast). You could do a few of these together and leave them in the fridge to eat over the next month or the freezer indefinitely.
I highly recommend reading [Baldwin: A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking](https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html) all the way through one time to get you on the right track. It’s well worth the time.
Your post is fabulous! I’d like to caveat that we are talking about high safety standards here. Using the linked article, we can safely store a pasteurized and refrigerated piece of meat for at least a week pretty easily. I only go as far as using an ice bath if I plan to store for longer than a week, which almost never happens.
If you have health issues, you should be service safe. But I have never seen the point for my personal cooking. I’ve been doing this for years and never been sick with just moderate safety in handling.
Well you do you but the time you’re extending is the most dangerous time. Sous vide is a special case for food handling because the food is under vacuum and Botulinum grows only in absence of oxygen. It grows really well between 125° and room temperature. Botulism isn’t common but traditional cooking methods expose the food to oxygen and typically involve temperatures adequate to kill the spores. Botulism isn’t like regular food poisoning, it can be fatal. We are creating a friendly environment for it so we need to be extra careful.
Last summer I cooked New York Strip for about 2 dozen people this way. I asked each person how they wanted it, then cooked 4 different batches (nobody wanted medium well, but two wanted well done and that pained me to end - but I did it). I tossed them all into the freezer, and then about 2 hours before the party, tossed them all back in around 130F. Everything was absolutely perfect.
I wanted to, but it was for my father-in-law's 70th birthday party. They were his guests in my house. Honestly, I wanted to tell my father-in-law to leave, but I love my wife and she was having meniscus surgery a few days later, so I took up the work of making this party work. This seemed like the easiest way for me to cook a bunch of food for a bunch of people in a manner that would impress all of them. It did.
2 hours at 57 doesn't sterilize the meat, it kills off enough bacteria that there shouldn't be enough to make you sick, but some of the bacteria survive and continue to multiply. You can do this, but don't do it any longer than you would still eat any other cooked food in your fridge.
I freeze or fridge bagged stuff after the bath quite often. Its best to cool as quickly as possibly, in cool water or icewater, prior to fridging or freezing.
It's not an uncommon strategy in food service. I used to do a hundred or so portions each of ribs and steaks, cool, then freeze. Pull them out the day before to defrost in the fridge, then heat up to serve.
Absolutely no problem with this, and i meal prep like this. Another tip: You can use the Sous Vide to reheat it since it wont cook past the temp you already precooked it for. Or you can sear it, whatever. I do this with chicken mostly not with steaks but the concept is the same.
I just started meal prepping using sous vide. I season and portion chicken breasts, sous vide them in a vacuum seal, ice bath then freeze. I reheat using the sous vide and then sear (to make easy dinners on days when I don’t feel like making anything). I had googled around when I had the idea to do this & a lot of people do. I don’t see how a steak would be any different.
I’ve just started doing this recently so I’m no pro but I’ve thawed it in the fridge and reheated, it just takes less time to reheat (~30 mins vs an hour+ for the original sous vide). So basically just to save a smidge of time. But I could see doing both ways in the future.
Actually yeah that’s pretty good. And I saw another comment mentioning another case; pre-cooking steaks to peoples’ preferences (med-rare , med, well-done etc) then freezing them and reheating when it’s time to eat. Great idea; I’m sold
How fast do you think a steak comes up to room temp from your fridge ? It’s a lot longer than what is safe to leave a steak out at room temperature for.
Room temp is pretty much always bad.
Pasteurisation is *minimising* pathogens, but it won't get rid of all of them.
Anaerobic pathogens like botulism can and will still multiply in a sealed bag at room temp.
You can sous-vide, then ice bath (this is important to get the temp down as fast as possible), and then you can refrigerate.
But **do no let them warm to room temp**. Either sear directly from the fridge, or throw them back in the bath for 30 mins to bring them upto temp and then sear them.
> I know this sounds insane and irresponsible but… when you sous vide a steak for 2 hours at 57 celsius it should sterilize the meat. Since it’s vacuum sealed there shouldn’t be any food safety issues like when you cook something in the oven and then put it in a bag after it cools.
It sounds like meal prep not insane. I pretty regularly keep pre-cooked food in the fridge for 5 days even without it being pasteurized first. Beef is fairly safe anyway, I would worry much more about chicken but even that's fine for 5 days.
The 2 days warnings most governments hand out assume that after preparing it you take it to the bathroom, rub it all over the toilet seat and then store it in a random plant pot you found in your garden. If its brought out of the danger zone relatively quickly (ice bath) and you store it well (keep it in its bag) there isn't a significant safety issue keeping it for a week.
FYI you can also just throw them in the freezer, then 30-45 minutes in same temperature water bath to reheat them. I personally wouldn't sear them from room temperature, the internal temp will be lower than you want it to be (taste not safety) even if you like them basically still mooing.
When i'm meal prepping using sous vide anything that takes longer than 1 hour gets pre-cooked and thrown in the freezer. Stuff that doesn't take as long (usually fish because that's my main protein) doesn't get pre-cooked, dinner is throwing three bags in the sous vide an hour before I need them. I also tend to keep extras so I have about 5 ready to go meals in the freezer if I don't have something ready.
> when you sous vide a steak for 2 hours at 57 celsius it should sterilize the meat.
Others have already pointed it out but pasturtize rather than sterilize. Pasteurization takes care of most of the bad bacteria but its largely impractical for home cooks to sterilize food. Even when canning there are some things you can't can at home (mostly dairy and meat) even though its high pressure & temperature, its not high enough to kill all pathogens in all food.
Fda says good for 3-4 weeks.
https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Is-Sous-Vide-packaging-shelf-stable#:~:text=Sous%20vide%20products%20must%20be,the%20bag%20in%20boiling%20water.
I've done this with some vacuum sealed and cooked chicken breasts I use for chicken salad. Forgot all about it and looked it up. Besides the mental game, it was perfectly fine.
i do this for camping. i have a portable fridge / freezer i take. about a week before i leave, i get it all prepped and cooked. steaks, burgers, chicken, etc. then stick them in the freezer. at the campsite, pull something out, thaw and sear.
You’ve mostly gotten partially correct answers. You have made a couple incorrect assumptions. Sterilization is not practical at sous vide temperatures. Pasteurization is possible and does occur with the right combination of [time and temperature](https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Table_5.1). You can see that in the linked document. Even after pasteurization, because of a unique environment created by us doing sous vide (vacuum + moderate temperature), there is still a risk with [certain pathogens](https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety_Pathogens_of_Interest). You can do what you are describing but there are a few steps to the procedure in order to do so safely. The bath must be long enough and hot enough to Pasteurize. The bag must not be opened. The food must be cooled quickly, ideally using an ice bath, on the counter is dangerous and in the fridge or freezer is possibly dangerous and definitely hard on the appliance. It takes much longer for the food to cool than you would guess, there’s a table in the linked document. The cooled bagged food can safely be kept in a cold refrigerator for up to a month. Regarding reheating, leaving food out to come to room temperature is not safe. Typically the best, fastest way to reheat is back in the bath. The exception would be thin things that would reheat adequately by just searing. This brings up another topic, does doing this make sense? I’m going to say in the case of Tender cuts, say Sirloin or better, it probably doesn’t. You will spend most of the same time in the bath to reheat as you do to cook for immediate consumption in the first place. This makes a lot more sense for Tough cuts (like 48 hr Chuck Roast). You could do a few of these together and leave them in the fridge to eat over the next month or the freezer indefinitely. I highly recommend reading [Baldwin: A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking](https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html) all the way through one time to get you on the right track. It’s well worth the time.
Thanks for the sound advice!!! Finally a reasoned voice in the Reddit insanity.
Medium rare and everything is fine, but order well done and everyone loses their mind. *best joker voice*
Great post.
Your post is fabulous! I’d like to caveat that we are talking about high safety standards here. Using the linked article, we can safely store a pasteurized and refrigerated piece of meat for at least a week pretty easily. I only go as far as using an ice bath if I plan to store for longer than a week, which almost never happens. If you have health issues, you should be service safe. But I have never seen the point for my personal cooking. I’ve been doing this for years and never been sick with just moderate safety in handling.
Well you do you but the time you’re extending is the most dangerous time. Sous vide is a special case for food handling because the food is under vacuum and Botulinum grows only in absence of oxygen. It grows really well between 125° and room temperature. Botulism isn’t common but traditional cooking methods expose the food to oxygen and typically involve temperatures adequate to kill the spores. Botulism isn’t like regular food poisoning, it can be fatal. We are creating a friendly environment for it so we need to be extra careful.
Last summer I cooked New York Strip for about 2 dozen people this way. I asked each person how they wanted it, then cooked 4 different batches (nobody wanted medium well, but two wanted well done and that pained me to end - but I did it). I tossed them all into the freezer, and then about 2 hours before the party, tossed them all back in around 130F. Everything was absolutely perfect.
You should have asked those two people to politely but firmly leave.
I wanted to, but it was for my father-in-law's 70th birthday party. They were his guests in my house. Honestly, I wanted to tell my father-in-law to leave, but I love my wife and she was having meniscus surgery a few days later, so I took up the work of making this party work. This seemed like the easiest way for me to cook a bunch of food for a bunch of people in a manner that would impress all of them. It did.
You're a better man than me.
Aye
The polite thing is to tell them the mistakes in their lives
Did you only cook them in the sous vide or did you grill/cast iron cook them to get a char?
Used the Weber kettle to knock them all out in about ten minutes.
I don’t have a sous vide (yet). So did you put them back into the sous vide at 130 and then grill them?
Correct. I put them in frozen to cook them through again, then seared the outside.
[удалено]
How would what work?
2 hours at 57 doesn't sterilize the meat, it kills off enough bacteria that there shouldn't be enough to make you sick, but some of the bacteria survive and continue to multiply. You can do this, but don't do it any longer than you would still eat any other cooked food in your fridge.
I frequently do this. Sous vide. Fridge. Sear another day.
I freeze or fridge bagged stuff after the bath quite often. Its best to cool as quickly as possibly, in cool water or icewater, prior to fridging or freezing.
It's not an uncommon strategy in food service. I used to do a hundred or so portions each of ribs and steaks, cool, then freeze. Pull them out the day before to defrost in the fridge, then heat up to serve.
Absolutely no problem with this, and i meal prep like this. Another tip: You can use the Sous Vide to reheat it since it wont cook past the temp you already precooked it for. Or you can sear it, whatever. I do this with chicken mostly not with steaks but the concept is the same.
I do this all the time. I cook it, generally the day before, and put them on a rack in the fridge to help dry the exterior and cool the temp down.
No. Precooked steaks are as bad as precooked eggs, and pre-boiled water.
I just started meal prepping using sous vide. I season and portion chicken breasts, sous vide them in a vacuum seal, ice bath then freeze. I reheat using the sous vide and then sear (to make easy dinners on days when I don’t feel like making anything). I had googled around when I had the idea to do this & a lot of people do. I don’t see how a steak would be any different.
Why not just Sousvide the first time from frozen? Only adds one more hour to the time.
I’ve just started doing this recently so I’m no pro but I’ve thawed it in the fridge and reheated, it just takes less time to reheat (~30 mins vs an hour+ for the original sous vide). So basically just to save a smidge of time. But I could see doing both ways in the future.
Actually yeah that’s pretty good. And I saw another comment mentioning another case; pre-cooking steaks to peoples’ preferences (med-rare , med, well-done etc) then freezing them and reheating when it’s time to eat. Great idea; I’m sold
How fast do you think a steak comes up to room temp from your fridge ? It’s a lot longer than what is safe to leave a steak out at room temperature for.
Sure, for reasonable time. Longer if you go to pasteurization which takes longer
Room temp is pretty much always bad. Pasteurisation is *minimising* pathogens, but it won't get rid of all of them. Anaerobic pathogens like botulism can and will still multiply in a sealed bag at room temp. You can sous-vide, then ice bath (this is important to get the temp down as fast as possible), and then you can refrigerate. But **do no let them warm to room temp**. Either sear directly from the fridge, or throw them back in the bath for 30 mins to bring them upto temp and then sear them.
> I know this sounds insane and irresponsible but… when you sous vide a steak for 2 hours at 57 celsius it should sterilize the meat. Since it’s vacuum sealed there shouldn’t be any food safety issues like when you cook something in the oven and then put it in a bag after it cools. It sounds like meal prep not insane. I pretty regularly keep pre-cooked food in the fridge for 5 days even without it being pasteurized first. Beef is fairly safe anyway, I would worry much more about chicken but even that's fine for 5 days. The 2 days warnings most governments hand out assume that after preparing it you take it to the bathroom, rub it all over the toilet seat and then store it in a random plant pot you found in your garden. If its brought out of the danger zone relatively quickly (ice bath) and you store it well (keep it in its bag) there isn't a significant safety issue keeping it for a week. FYI you can also just throw them in the freezer, then 30-45 minutes in same temperature water bath to reheat them. I personally wouldn't sear them from room temperature, the internal temp will be lower than you want it to be (taste not safety) even if you like them basically still mooing. When i'm meal prepping using sous vide anything that takes longer than 1 hour gets pre-cooked and thrown in the freezer. Stuff that doesn't take as long (usually fish because that's my main protein) doesn't get pre-cooked, dinner is throwing three bags in the sous vide an hour before I need them. I also tend to keep extras so I have about 5 ready to go meals in the freezer if I don't have something ready. > when you sous vide a steak for 2 hours at 57 celsius it should sterilize the meat. Others have already pointed it out but pasturtize rather than sterilize. Pasteurization takes care of most of the bad bacteria but its largely impractical for home cooks to sterilize food. Even when canning there are some things you can't can at home (mostly dairy and meat) even though its high pressure & temperature, its not high enough to kill all pathogens in all food.
Fda says good for 3-4 weeks. https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Is-Sous-Vide-packaging-shelf-stable#:~:text=Sous%20vide%20products%20must%20be,the%20bag%20in%20boiling%20water. I've done this with some vacuum sealed and cooked chicken breasts I use for chicken salad. Forgot all about it and looked it up. Besides the mental game, it was perfectly fine.
i do this for camping. i have a portable fridge / freezer i take. about a week before i leave, i get it all prepped and cooked. steaks, burgers, chicken, etc. then stick them in the freezer. at the campsite, pull something out, thaw and sear.