I just watched an interesting Youtube sous video by Sousvideeverything (3 Brazilian brothers now living in the US who do a lot of sous vide experiments - well worth watching). In their latest they cook 3 rib eye steaks for two hours at 129, plunge them into an ice bath for 30 minutes and then into a freezer. They take them frozen in a cooler on a glamping trip, warm them up for 30 minutes in their sous vide container, sear them and declare them every bit as good as the fresh sous vide seared steaks they eat at home. From their videos they seem to be steak connoisseurs so I believe them. What this tells me is there may be no need to put steaks in an ice bath in the morning and start them cooking an hour or so before returning home. Sous vide and freezing them in advance should work just fine, especially since 30 minutes to warm them up seems to be enough. Plan to give that the try when my Anova arrives today.
If you haven’t seen them, check out their sousvideeverything Youtube channel.