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That "simple process" requires equipment most people don't own or know how to operate, an oil most people don't keep in their cupboards, and is suggested in a book most people haven't heard of by a tech CTO they would not recognise the name of.

Honestly this is like the Dropbox comment all over again. Everyone is missing the point, it's glorious. :)

Most people cooking steaks don't care about the optimal way to cook steaks, or want to find out.

Most people building software today don't care about the optimal way to build software, or want to find out.

That's TFA. That's the point. That's what we're discussing. :D

Corn oil is cheap and available at costco. A sous vide is a fancy french name for a $150 device from target that keeps water at a specific temperature...

This "simple process" is much, much simpler than most meals one cooks at home. It's not much harder than microwaving something.

You are missing the point. With a small change in the way you do something, the really good thing can be made.

I read corn oil while I expect 3 star Michelin steak. What are we talking about oO

Sous vide are even cheaper now, $30 for a basic one, provided you've got a stock pot or something large enough to set it in.

You need something to vacuum seal the food. Is that included in the $30?

That can be just a ziplock bag and the same water bath you're going to use for the sous vide anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrZPLF0ezw8nn

you really don't for most things. Ziplock is fine for things that take an hour or two.

I used to sous vide steak in college with just some hot water and my roommate's six-pack cooler. Water should be no more than 5F warmer than the cook temp. For a medium rare steak, cook temp is 129F so get close that. Salt the steak no more than an hour before you start. Steak goes into a Ziploc bag, submerge it up to the zipper to let water pressure force out the air and then seal it shut. Close the lid and come back in an hour, two hours if it's a thicker steak. Take it out of the bag, blot it with a paper towel, apply some steak seasoning, and toss it on a pan at the hottest temperature you can make it. Wait 3 minutes and flip, wait another 3 minutes and serve immediately. Toss a pat of butter on top while in the pan if you're a hedonist.

Only prerequisites are a cheap kitchen thermometer, a ziploc gallon bag, and a cheap cooler. Everything is available at your typical supermarket or even goodwill. This is a very hands off cooking method and requires no experimentation, just follow the recipe and you get a perfect steak every time.

The key is that a cooler holds hot things just as well as cold things but without a circulator and heater to keep the water warm, you're at the mercy of the cooler's R-value. The water will eventually get too cold to effectively cook the meat so you're limited in the length of time you can sous vide. Doing a 24 hour chuck roast is simply not going to work unless you're refilling the cooler every couple hours.

The sous vide is not the hard part here.

It's the deep frying for the sear.

Not many people are willing to deep fry in their kitchens. It's messy, potentially dangerous, and not only stinks up the entire house for days but leaves a layer of oil over everything in the home that builds up and you can never really fully remove.

There's a reason restaurants have massive powerful vents above the deep fryer, and that people who regularly deep-fry at home do it outdoors.

My problem with deep frying (besides the points you bring up) is the waste. I can't stomach the amounts of oil I end up disposing even if I get several uses.

yes, it is the annoying part. I just use a wok. Since I'm only deep frying for 30 seconds and it's fully submerged in the oil, it's... not tooooo bad. But it's annoying to do and quite dangerous.

Simple answer, don't deep fry a fucking steak. I have never seen anyone do that and I can't imagine why you would need to do it. Just put it on a hot cast iron pan (you can buy one cheap at good will).

- Meat thermometer (you should own one anyway, keeps you from under/over cooking chicken) - Sixpack cooler (again, very common to own one, very cheap to buy 2nd hand) - gallon sized freezer bag (probably costs about $0.05-0.10 depending on how big of a box you buy) - Cast iron pan (can probably get one for $5 2nd hand or just use a normal stainless steel)

No oven needed which means you can make this with a single electric hotplate.

It does sound crazy. You don't need to do it. But it works remarkably well.

Why wouldn't you have corn oil?

Where I live corn was never used for producing oil. For that purpose we used rapeseed/canola, sunflowers, olives and pumpkin seeds. Corn grown here is mostly used for corn flour, cornmeal (polenta), or for animal feed.

Ah, we've got pretty much all of that here, although way more rapeseed is grown than corn.

Reminds me of recipes like brining a turkey in Dr Pepper... sure it may taste fine, but I'd rather not eat food prepared in plastic bags with processed oil.

Then don't go to a good restaurant. Sous vide is extremely common, and oils of various types are used liberally.

Yeah, that's (one of the reasons) why eating out frequently is unhealthy.

The discussion is about a good steak....

Steakhouses, and most restaurants, do not sous vide the meat. It takes too long.

Many do. They don't start when you order....

Exactly this. It's all done ahead of time. The grill cook only has to throw it on the grill, sear it, warming it up enough to eat, but making sure the interior doesn't go above whatever the original sous vide temperature was.

Yes I'm aware that Outback and Chilis use sous vide. I mean a real steakhouse, not a family restaurant masquerading as a steakhouse.

Chili's uses a microwave :)

> I mean a real steakhouse, not a family restaurant masquerading as a steakhouse

Exactly. Outback and Chilis has awful steak, but that explains the steak cooking advice here. Mortons is probably the best chain restaurant steak in the US. Texas Roadhouse for a cheaper almost-as-good version, but still far and away better than Outback

Since we're deep enough in this thread where we're talking about steak rather than AI, I'd like to lean into that.

I used to sous-vide a lot. It was certainly great to get perfectly-done steak. but I still didn't love the result and it took me a while to figure out.

Specifically: sous-viding at 130 doesn't reliably render fat. So it's great for a lean filet mignon like your suggesting, but kept giving me rubbery fat in anything with more fat or significant marbling. I eventually switched away from sous-vide (I usually either grill or reverse sear, depending on my effort/time availability) for most cuts these days.

Sure - but you shouldn't be running a ribeye, as an example, at 130. Run it at 138 for 4 hours.

The internet loves using 137 for Ribeyes for the reason you said. I've had good luck going with 135 for ~4 hours.

Same! Unless I'm doing a filet, I just prefer grilling. Or reverse sear if you don't mind running the oven.

If the problem is that the temperature is too low for the cut, you can just use a higher temp?

a filet better than most restaurants.

Bad restaurants, sure. It does not hold a candle to any half decent steakhouse.

Sous vide is fool proof, you cant mess it up. All you have to worry about is the sear, and that's easy too.

I went to the second rated steakhouse in NY at the time and got a steak some ten years back. I would have preferred my home-sous-vide by a wide margin. I have only had a better steak twice, and only once from a restaurant

You leave it unseasoned until the end?

For a filet for 1 hour, you can sort of do what you want. I add a tiny bit of olive oil and salt, but not much. If you start going longer times with the sous vide, you can get different reactions so you have to be more careful.

It's pretty critical to salt fully (not just a tiny bit) at the start rather than at the end.

Meat where the salt is just on the surface, vs. meat where the salt has fully penetrated, is like night and day.

> Go to costco, buy prime filet. Put it in a ziplock [...]

What in the world are you guys in this thread doing to steak? Absolute blasphemy. Costco steak? ziplock bags? drowning it in warm water? deep frying in corn oil? meat thermometers?

Steak is not this complicated. The important part is the meat itself. Find a decent butcher (preferably one that dry-ages) or use a grocery store's butcher cuts over stuff they bulk package. Also, ribeyes (bone-in but if not still ribeye), other cuts are for steak and egg omelets.

Lightly salt (or season, oil, dry-rub, etc); Pan sear, preferably blue steel cookware; then broil.

Don't stab the meat with a meat poker...after cooking enough steaks the same way one can simply tell what temperature is. Ask me to cook anything else outside steak and eggs and I will absolutely butcher it, but steak deserves better than ziplock bags and deep frying

Today I learned that lots of people think they know how to make a great steak, but give terrible steak-cooking advice.