Sous Vide steak — yep
Take the stress out of grilling for a group.
We like steak on occasion. For quite a while, this was a bit stressful, getting it just right — particularly when cooking for a group of people. The doneness wasn’t an issue in that everyone seemed to like theirs done medium-rare. The trick was getting it cooked properly while playing host, socializing... and, er, well, drinking whiskey.
Enter the Instant Pot. I picked up one on Amazon after a pitiful amount of research and chose the Ultra model merely because it was being offered at a nice price. It wasn’t until later that I discovered that “Ultra” meant more than marketing: it was a setting that allowed one to precisely control the temperature in the pot for long periods. Aha! Enter Sous Vide.
The “done-ness” of a dish, be it meat, foul, fish or whatever, is generally characterized by temperature: in this context, “medium-rare” for beef means roughly 135 degrees Farenheit. How a food gets to that temperature is basically irrelevant — keeping it there is another story. And that’s the art to grilling meat, getting it to just the right temperature and then letting it “coast” up to your target while it rests. This can be a matter of seconds on the grill, and moments while resting. Which means you can’t afford to get distracted.
The sous vide process is pretty straightforward:
- Get steaks. Decide on a marinade (I may share my favorite later).
- Place each steak in a separate Ziploc bag, toss in some of the marinade, and let it rest for anywhere from a few minutes if you’re running late to a couple of hours.
- Remove the steel pot from the Instant Pot, place it in the sink and fill it pretty full. You want to do this because you’ll likely be displacing enough water to overflow the pot, and Instant Pot electronics are woefully exposed through the hole in the bottom of the heating unit. Don’t go there.
- With each steak, open the bag and then reseal it except for a tiny gap. I insert a chopstick into the bag, zip the bag closed around the chopstick and pull out the chopstick. Slowly lower the bag into the pot, allowing all air to bleed out of the chopstick-hole. Seal the bag. You now have a sort-of vacuum-sealed bag (“sous vide” translates to something like “without air” or “under vaccum”).
- Place all the steaks in the pot, fill the pot nearly full of water, and return it to the heating unit. Use the Ultra mode, set the temp to 135 and the duration to four hours, and hit Start.
The steaks will be ready in an hour, but you can leave them in the pot for up to 4 hours: they won’t get any more “done” because the temperature is held to 135. So you’ve got a three-hour window — just relax, it’ll all be good.
The next steps are easy. When people are chanting for meat:
- Heat up your grill to about 500 degrees. I like to put a cast iron skillet on the grill for cooking this way. Let it all get totally hot — that’s important.
- Remove all the steaks from the pot and from their bags. They’ll look a bit freakish, as they’re medium-rare pink all over. Slather one side of the steaks with mayonnaise (yes, mayonnaise) and maybe sprinkle on some cracked pepper.
- Toss the steaks on the grill or skillet and set a timer for about 60 or 90 seconds, depending on the sort of finish you like on the meat (I like a nice crust). Immediately slather the tops of the steaks with more mayonnaise (trust me).
- Flip the steaks and set the timer again for 60–90 seconds. Remove them and let them rest for a few minutes. You don’t need that much resting time because you’ve really only been searing the outermost part of the meat.
The first time I tried this I found the steaks, when cut, to be almost unnaturally perfect from top to bottom: there’s no range of done-ness like you get with normal grilling. The steaks remain juicy and tender, and the mayonnaise facilitates the searing of the top and bottom. I’ve used this method several times and it’s never failed me. Works beautifully for burgers too.
Purists may screech “this isn’t grilling in the purest sense!”. I agree. Enjoy.
