---
title: 'Sous Vide Cooking: What You Need To Know | Techniquely'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=i53vyd4-eQk'
video_id: 'i53vyd4-eQk'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 795
---

# Sous Vide Cooking: What You Need To Know | Techniquely

> Source: [Sous Vide Cooking: What You Need To Know | Techniquely](https://youtube.com/watch?v=i53vyd4-eQk)

## Summary

Sous vide cooking has become popular for its ability to produce perfect results with minimal effort, especially for expensive cuts of meat. This guide covers the essential equipment, preparation steps, and cooking techniques to help home cooks achieve restaurant-quality steak. The key advantage is separating cooking from searing, allowing for flexibility and foolproof doneness.

### Key Points

- **Restaurant innovation** [00:23] — Sous vide allows chefs to create dishes like 72-hour short ribs that are tender and medium-rare throughout.
- **Efficiency for chefs** [01:13] — Sous vide saves time and money by cooking meat to perfect temperature, requiring only a quick sear before serving.
- **Equipment needed** [02:06] — Essential equipment includes an immersion circulator, a container (Dutch oven or Cambro), bags, and a lid (plastic wrap).
- **Water temperature** [03:17] — Set water temperature to serving temperature; for medium-rare steak, use 128-130°F.
- **Seasoning and bagging** [03:59] — Season meat with salt and optional herbs; avoid raw garlic due to botulism risk. Add oil to bag for flavor and air removal.
- **Removing air** [07:22] — Use water displacement method to remove air from zipper-lock bags for even cooking.
- **Flexibility in timing** [09:26] — Meat can stay in bath up to an hour after cooking without overcooking, offering flexibility.
- **Searing and sauce** [10:16] — Pat meat dry, sear quickly in hot pan, and use reserved bag juices to make a pan sauce.

## Transcript

- Sous vide got really
popular for two reasons.
One was really relevant
to restaurant chefs,
but over time it got to feel
a little bit like stunt cooking.
But it's not.
It can be really useful to the home cook,
and that's what we're
going to talk about today.
(energizing music)
Sous vide allowed chefs to create dishes
that hadn't been possible before.
One really popular one was
this, the 72-hour short rib.
These are short ribs that have been cooked
for three whole days.
And then before serving,
rather than getting seared in a skillet,
chefs preserve that
perfectly uniform interior
by hitting the ribs with a blowtorch.
These bright pink short
ribs have the texture
of a medium-rare steak, but a
lot more marbling in flavor.
In fact, if I've done this right,
I should be able to just
cut it with this fork.
It was kind of miraculous,
everyone wanted to try this.
For a steak that's just got salt on it,
no sauce, no spices, it's amazing.
So, short ribs are
typically served well done
because you have to
cook 'em for a long time
for them to become tender.
But sous vide allowed chefs
to make something new,
and diners flocked to restaurants
to try things like this.
The other reason it got popular
was it saved chefs time and money.
Sous vide let them cook all sorts of meat
to the perfect temp.
Their cooks just needed
to brown the outside
and then get the food onto a plate.
That is so much faster and easier
than teaching a cook how to cook something
so that the inside gets
to the proper temperature
at the same time that the
outside is perfectly seared.
Customers got perfect food,
things weren't sent back,
and everybody's job got a lot easier.
This second point, the
foolproof side of sous vide,
that's what I love about it.
Meat is really expensive right now
and being able to prepare it without fear
of getting the cook
wrong is such a relief.
Or maybe you're cooking for a crowd.
Knowing that all you have to do
is get the outside seared properly
because the meat is already
perfectly seasoned and cooked,
it makes entertaining so much
simpler and less stressful.
(energizing music)
Besides the immersion circulator itself,
you're going to need a
container to hold the water
and the food, some sort
of bag to put the food in,
and something to cover that container.
Hop onto the ATK app and
search "immersion circulator"
for our review of these appliances.
I've got a couple of ribeyes here
that I'll use for this demo,
but I'm going to keep the discussion broad
because this method can be used
for so many different types of meat.
So when it comes to the container,
the biggest consideration is,
how much food are you cooking?
You need something that's big
enough to hold all the food
and the water that surrounds it.
Smaller considerations are, how
hot is the water going to be
and how long is the cook time?
A good recipe will do
all of this work for you,
but if you're scaling a
recipe or experimenting,
then remember, the higher the temperature
and the longer the cook, the
more evaporation is possible,
and so the more water you'll
need to account for that.
Or just a really good lid.
So, for these steaks,
and for most projects,
a Dutch oven or a Cambro
is a great container.
Or if you do this a lot,
maybe you want to invest in a
dedicated sous vide container.
And for a lid, you don't
need anything fancy.
Plastic wrap works great.
Generally, you want to fill the bath
so that the food is fully submerged,
but that the water doesn't
exceed the max fill
for your circulator.
As for the water temperature,
you usually want to set it
to whatever the serving temperature is.
When we cook a steak, we
remove it from the heat
at 125 degrees for a medium-rare.
That's not the serving temp.
As it rests, that steak continues to cook
for a couple of minutes, and
the internal temperature,
it usually goes up three,
maybe five degrees.
So we want to set our water
bath to somewhere between 128
to 130 degrees.
I'm taking these to medium rare,
so I'm going to use 130 today.
These are the other
numbers you need to know.
Finally, you need a bag for the food.
A sturdy Ziploc bag like this
one, it's going to be great.
But before we get to that,
we need to get these
steaks ready for bagging.
(energizing music)
So I'm just going to season these ribeyes
before putting them in the bag.
Now, one of the nice things
about cooking sous vide
is you don't have to salt
your steak hours in advance.
When we salt a steak and let it sit,
we're giving the sodium ions
time to move into and season the meat.
Sous vide cooking,
though, it can take hours,
and that's plenty of time
for those sodium ions
to move in while the steak cooks.
We're also giving the chloride
ions time to work too.
Remember, salt is a molecule
that's made up of two ions,
sodium and chloride.
Chloride helps the proteins not contract
as tightly when they're heated,
and that keeps the meat juicy.
This is really important if
you're roasting or searing
or grilling, because all of those methods
bombard the surface of the meat with heat
for minutes to hours.
And that means that any
proteins within a quarter
to a half an inch of the surface,
they're going to be kind of
wrung out and a little bit dry.
Sous vide doesn't do that
because the water temperature
is comparatively low.
So food cooked sous
vide stays much juicier
and it doesn't need the
help of the chloride.
Okay, now that the steak is
seasoned, we're ready to cook.
You might find some recipes
that have you sear the meat
before and after bagging,
but I prefer searing just once, after.
It goes faster,
and because the meat doesn't
get exposed to high heat twice,
there's less overcooking at the surface.
When I use zipper lock
bags, I like to open them up
and then I like to cuff them like this.
This keeps any stray bits
of fat or oil or pepper
from getting stuck in that groove,
which is going to really make sealing it
a lot harder than it needs to be.
And then we just drop
the steak in the bag.
Now, the steak isn't the only
thing that belongs in the bag.
You can add other herbs
or maybe some shallot
or garlic powder.
I'm going to use thyme, and
I think two sprigs is plenty.
You definitely do not
want to use raw garlic,
whether it's smashed, cloves, whatever.
It's a potential source of botulism.
We don't worry about botulism
most of the time in the kitchen
because it can only thrive
in an anaerobic environment,
and that's pretty rare.
Sous vide is one of the few exceptions,
so, garlic powder is a much better choice.
It's been heat-treated, so it's safe.
I'm not using it today, but if I were,
I would just sprinkle a little bit,
maybe half a teaspoon over the steak,
kind of the way you'd
sprinkle salt over the steak.
Last up, we need oil. About
tablespoon, maybe even two.
Oil does a couple of things for us.
It keeps the food from
sticking to the bag.
It also helps to distribute flavor.
So, you can see that the thyme
is just hanging out right up here.
If I didn't have any fat in that bag,
really, it would just be
this area of the steak
that picks up that flavor.
But because so many of those
thyme flavors are fat soluble,
they're going to diffuse into that oil,
and the oil fully surrounds
the food and flavors it.
Last thing, the oil's going
to help us get all the air
out of the bag, and
that's really important.
So, why is air bad?
Think about it like this.
If you wanted to cook a
potato as fast as possible
and your choices are a 212-degree oven
or a pot of boiling water,
and remember, water boils at 212.
Which are you going to choose?
You are going to boil that potato, right?
It's going to go so much faster in the pot
because water is great at conducting heat
and air is terrible at it.
So, if you've got air in the bag
and it's between the food and the water,
then the food is going to
cook more slowly and unevenly.
If you sous vide a lot,
you might want to invest
in a vacuum sealer
to get the air out,
but it's not necessary.
Here's how to do it
with a zipper-lock bag.
You just need your tub of water.
And when you seal this bag up,
get as much air out of it as you can.
There's some in there, but that's okay.
So you want to lower it kind of slowly,
and as you're lowering it,
the water's going to press
that plastic bag up
against the steak itself
and force the air towards the top.
So, if you go slowly
and then open up a tiny corner,
you don't want to open up the whole thing,
because if something slips,
then you're going to
get water in that bag.
And then keep working the bag down slowly
and letting the air work its way up.
Now, this method isn't as
perfect as vacuum sealing,
but as you move the seal
towards the water level,
you should be able to work out
pretty much most of the air,
and then you just seal it back up.
So, I'm going to clip this
here and we'll do another bag.
So, I like to clip these bags
to the sides of the container
to make sure that the
seal stays above water.
If I'm using a vacuum sealer,
I just drop them right in.
So the only thing to remember is that,
for your food to cook evenly,
the water has to circulate
around it evenly.
So, if you have multiple bags in one bath,
you got to make sure they're not stacked
one on top of the other.
And if you have multiple items in one bag,
make sure they're spread
out in an even layer.
Now we're just waiting
till this is fully cooked.
And here is where sous vide really shines.
(energizing music)
Know how conventional cooking means
that you have to pay attention
towards the end of the cook time,
because if you don't, you have
to live with overcooked meat.
And on top of that, you need to make sure
that the outside is properly
browned at the same time.
Sous vide is great because it separates
those two steps entirely.
Recipes for sous vide take into account
how long it takes the meat
to get to the temperature
of the bath and how long
it takes for the meat
to get tender at that temperature.
Here's the thing, though,
the meat can't get hotter
than the water in the bath,
so it's not going to overcook.
This steak can hang out in this bath
after it's done for about an hour,
and you can get other things done.
Conventional cooking methods,
like searing or roasting
or grilling, they can't
offer you that flexibility.
That's why sous vide recipes
don't list a single
cook time for the food.
Instead, you'll see a
range, say, one to two hours
or 14 to 16 hours.
Within that window, the
food's going to be perfect.
If it stays in the bath too long, though,
it's not that it'll overcook,
but the texture's going to suffer.
Meat and fish become
mushy, eggs get too firm,
and some vegetables lose their
color and get really floppy.
So, once the meat is cooked
and you're ready to serve it,
the final step is to sear
so that you can get that
beautiful brown crust
and those great flavors and
aromas from Maillard browning.
Since the interior is at the perfect temp,
the searing step, it's
really quick and easy.
Just take the meat out of the bag.
And by the way, you want
to save those juices.
Once the steak's out of the
bag, pat the surface dry.
Any water that remains on
the surface of the steak
is going to splatter when we go to sear.
And so, the drier that steak,
the less messy the sear.
Now we need just a smidge of oil.
And once that pan's hot, we sear.
(pan sizzling)
Searing doesn't just improve
the appearance and flavor,
it also kills any microbes.
After you've seared the first
side and flipped the steak,
you can chuck some butter
in the pan and baste.
This is a really nice way to get heat
on the sides of the steak really easily.
Or you can just use your tongs
to give those sides a quick sear.
When the steak is browned
on all sides, it's done.
Remember how I said you
should save the bag of juices
after the steak came out?
Those juices are full of delicious flavor,
and they're perfect
for making a pan sauce.
There's nothing really tricky here.
We're going to follow the
usual pan sauce protocol.
I want to leave just a
little fat in the pan,
less than a tablespoon, and
then add some minced shallot.
It's going to saute gently,
and then I'm going to add minced herbs.
I use thyme in the bag this time around,
so this is minced thyme that I'm adding.
I want to give that maybe
15 seconds of cooking
before I deglaze with some red wine.
And then instead of adding the broth,
I'm going to add the juices.
So, I like to do this
by holding up the bag
and just snipping the bottom corner.
Not enough that any of the
plastic falls in the pan,
just enough to release those juices.
Then once all the juices have
kind of streamed through,
I'll give the bag a pinch
when the fat starts to come through.
It's totally okay if a little
bit of fat gets in the pan,
you just don't want all of it.
Now we're just going to let
this come up to a simmer.
Once it's reduced, I whisk in cold butter,
just as I would for any normal pan sauce,
check the seasoning, and then it's done.
(energizing music)
There's something so satisfying
about sous vide steak.
It's so easy,
and if you take a peek, the
cook on this is just perfect.
It's that edge-to-edge pink
that everyone talks about
and people go for.
And sous vide is, like, the one way
where you can absolutely get it.
I can't wait to try this.
Wow, the marbling on this is ridiculous.
This is incredibly tender.
It eats almost like a filet mignon,
except, because of all that
marbling that ribeyes have,
it's so much beefier tasting,
it's fantastic.
And this pan sauce, really awesome,
considering we just needed
you know, a splash of
wine and some aromatics.
If you want more info on sous vide cooking
so that you can experiment at home.
Or if you want just some
really well-tested recipes,
get yourself a copy of
"Sous Vide for Everybody."
It's a great resource.
Did I miss anything?
What's your favorite
thing to cook sous vide?
Let me know in the comments.
(energizing music)