Sous vide cooking allows you to prepare the perfect steak.
A steak that tastes of steak, cooked to your exact taste, perhaps served with a sauce, or herb butter, accompanied by a salad sounds simple. Getting it all right is not difficult, but getting it right consistently is somewhat harder. This is the great benefit of cooking sous vide.
First you need to start with a great piece of meat. Visit the butcher, and get a thick-cut piece of rump, with the large part of the fat, but not all, cut away.
The sous vide cooking temperature will determine how well done the meat is, and varies over a relatively small range between rare and well done. Rare is 49C, medium is 60C, and well-done is 70C and upwards. I haven’t actually tried to cook well-done meat this way, so let me know if you try it and what it is like. Our personal setting is 56C – medium-rare. See the pictures for an example.
We cook rump steak for 2 hours. Any less and we find the fat can be tough. Much longer will cause the fat to go somewhat gelatinous.
You can cook any kind of steak this way. The tougher the cut, the longer you cook it for. Blade or skirt steak is really flavoursome, but could take up to 4 hours to get the right texture. The temperature does not change – that determines how “done” the meat is.
It is important to sear the meat after cooking in the sous vide to get that attractive brown finish. This provides the Maillard reaction which provides one of the key flavour dimensions from a properly cooked steak. You can sear the meat on the BBQ, on a griddle, or even using a kitchen blowtorch, but you must not take too long, because you don’t want the searing process to overcook the meat.
sous vide rump steak
- serves: 2
- time: 2 hours
ingredients
- 600g rump steak
- salt
- pepper
instructions
- Pre-heat water bath to 56C
- Rub salt and pepper into the steak, then place into food pouch and vacuum seal.
- Place pouch into water bath and cook for 2 hours.
- Pre-heat a ribbed griddle over high heat. Remove steak from water bath and pouch, place onto griddle and quickly sear the outside of the meat. Do not cook for more than one minute per side.
- Remove from griddle and serve.
