im looking for rare as i will sear on the grill to finish. Approx 5 gallons of water how long and at what temp to get to finished target?
Thanks!
bag them separately or side by side. (not in a stack). I would do 132f for an hour. I always thought prime rib was a little better at med rare while filet mignon is better at rare. Just my opinion. Also if you’re not using a hotter than hot charcoal grill, (ie gas) I would use a ripping hot cast iron skillet on the side burner. Gas grills take too long to sear.
Thanks for your help. Really looking foreword to this!
Happy cooking! I hope you’ve got some homemade horseradish sauce to go with it!
Jimmy, is this your first cook using Anova? That’s a lot of water to heat for 4 pieces of meat. Rare steaks cooked sous vide are significantly different than grilled rare steaks which can have a gradient of doneness. You’ll see.
Later on, you will discover you will have better results cooking thicker steaks, particularly since you intend to sear on a grill. Most people prefer medium rare which could be what you will have searing on the grill. Not all gas grills perform well in searing and most don’t. My Napoleon gets over 800F at surface level which is useful, however I still prefer to use my 12" cast iron skillet which provides more surface contact and yields a better outcome even being at a much lower temperature than the grill. Plus, i have never had my steaks engulfed in flames using cast iron.
For a truly rare rib steak i use 120F to 125F with a quick sear that results in a rare steak. You are going to have to sear very quickly to keep those 1" steaks rare, an almost impossible challenge.
Be sure you grill is preheated, 5 minutes would be the minimum time. I hope you have 18" tongs, any shorter and you are going to cook your knuckles if you don’t have protective mits. Don’t attempt to sear your steaks when there’s a chance of being distracted or called away from the grill. You will be almost continuously busy as the steaks need to be turned about every 20 seconds. Twice on each side should do. Any longer and you will be approaching medium rare steaks.
You refer to the meat as “prime rib”, not “Prime rib”, so i am guessing your meat is a run of the market product, maybe the first four cuts from a sub-primal rib, and not heavily marbled. If so, as Whybuy suggests an hour will do and you could cook them as long as 2 1/2 hours for a little more tenderness. It’s a matter of your preference.
2 Likes
Man this forum is hopping! Yes this is my first cook sous vide. I have a 55000 btu propane burner that i will use to heat the cast iron skillet. Im going to skip the grill all together. Thanks for all the great input!
1 Like
Sweet! I envy you high rollers that can afford to eat high on the hog (or cow) I use avocado oil for a ripping sear as the smoke point is around 550. I’m sure your guests will be in debit to you!
Actually got this meat over the holidays at Jewel 5 bucks per pound for prime rib. Couldn’t pass it up. Loaded up.
Good buying Jimmy. And i’m relieved you are skipping the grill.
So it’s small P prime rib. I’d give them 2 1/2 to 4 hours cooking time and a little higher in cooking temperature. Here’s why, - at that price they most likely don’t have much aging and they certainly are not grass-fed. Thus we have to compensate with a longer cook time and a little higher temperature, about 129F, to get you through the tough stage in those steaks. They’ll be just fine if you do that, maybe at the very high end of rare, but still good eating.
The searing is going to be tricky but you are well equipped to manage that. Work fast.
We’d appreciate hearing from you on the details of what you do and your results. We can all learn from each other here. Since you are loaded up on those steaks you will want to record how you cook them.
I agree–125 and then a sear. Perfect every time!
If you are really wanting rare in the middle steaks shoot for 120 or less. I did a one & a half inch ribeye the other night for an hour and it was perfectly cooked. I had one steak in a gallon or 2 sized cooler. It was only my second cook but seemed to work well. Best of luck!
So I read to go a hour on that sized steak, and going too long can change the texture of the steak. That won’t happen here? What does the longer cooking time and higher temp do? Is it because the raw meat is inherently not as tender as prime? Would it matter if it was bone-in or boneless? (he doesn’t mention)
Thanks!
It needs to be cooked long enough for the core temperature to reach the temperature of the water bath, known as temperature equilibrium. This will take approximately 30 minutes per half inch of thickness (1 hour per inch). With naturally tender steaks it is not really necessary to cook any longer than this. But even cuts that should be naturally tender will vary due to age of beast or even breed (Black or Red Angus for instance are leaner breeds and even unworked muscles can be less tender than that of a steer that carries some intramuscular fat). For this reason it is often desirable to add extra time to your cook to allow some time for collagen breakdown. Even low work muscles have collagen.
With sous vide your temperature is set by the temperature of the water bath. This sets the ‘done-ness’ of your steak (I’m sure there’s a French term for this as there is in all cooking, but it eludes me at the moment.) Increasing the temperature at which you cook will increase the ‘done-ness’ of your steak.
Increasing the duration of your cook will increase the tenderness as collagen denatures and converts to gelatin. This is one of the reasons why sous vide is a very forgiving cooking method. The product being cooked can never go over the temperature set by the water bath and extended time will usually only result in a more tender product. There will be a time, of course, where the collagen has all broken down and the piece of meat loses any desired ‘chew’ but that is going to be hours of ahead, not minutes.
One thing to mention here is the food safety factor. It is usually recommended that a cook not extend beyond 2-4 hours at sub 130F temperatures.
Bone in or bone out doesn’t really make any difference when we’re talking of something like steak. The bone makes up such a small proportion of the product. And steak bones are usually less dense than say a shin bone. When cooking lpieces of meat with a solid, dense bone in the middle there are some cooks that suggest an increase in temperature of approximately 2F to allow for the solidity of the bone disrupting heat transfer through the product. I’m not really convinced that this is necessary in a long cook.