This is something I have been dying to try. No, you don’t need to have a water bath or a Sous vide machine – you have a steam oven!
We have tried the slow cooked 60/60 eggs here which are magnificent and we have been eating and talking about trying a steak since eating two really good steaks last year. The first one was a 12oz rib eye in a steak restaurant in Bellevue near Seattle, USA and the other was an eye fillet at a French restaurant in Surry Hills. Both these steaks had been cooked with this method. You can guess this. The give away is they don’t ask you how you would like your steak cooked. Don’t be alarmed, it is probably going to be the best steak you have ever eaten!
We had further inspiration from a fantastic book that I brought Simon for Christmas, Modernist Cuisine at home by Nathan Myhrvold with Maxime Bilet. It is a huge book (probably the biggest cooking/reference book I have ever seen) which also comes with a great ‘kitchen manual’ with wipe-clean pages. Sensible, I liked that. This is the book for the closet scientist. Every budding Heston Blumenthal must have a copy as you will be stunned by the level of detail, explanation and beautiful photography. I loved the articles on the kitchen appliances, particularly the combi steam oven which they say “The combi oven is the most versatile kitchen tool we know. It can do just about anything a conventional oven, convection oven, steamer or sous vide water bath can do: steaming, proofing, incubating, dehydrating and baking.”
The 400g aged rib eye steak I have purchased is already vac packed. Perfect, I don’t even need to bag it. If you do need to bag your meat then put each piece into individual snap-lock bags with a dash of olive oil and seal tightly so there isn’t any air in the bag.
Put it onto a perforated steamer tray. I have also added some halved potatoes to cook at the same time. For this 400g steak I cooked it @ 56°C for 50 minutes for a medium rare steak.
In the book there are several ways to sear the meat after the slow cooking process. I used the simplest method which is preheating a frypan with a touch of oil until smoking hot and searing the meat for one minute on each side. Season before cooking with sea salt and ground black pepper. You will notice that meat cooked like this doesn’t really need to rest after searing which is strange as we are so accustomed to resting so just five minutes or so seemed to be enough.
The result was the most tender, juicy and succulent medium rare steak. Restaurant quality meat. I wouldn’t be cooking steak in a traditional way for a large dinner party after trying this method. Why don’t you try it too?
Another attempt was cooking a giant 750g steak for four people. I cooked it for 90min at the above temperature and it was perfect!
Note: The potatoes needed to be quartered then another 10 minutes @ 100°C to cook. I thought as much, root vegetables will not cook at a lower temperature. Delicious made into a quick potato salad with a mixture of good quality mayonnaise, natural yoghurt, spring onions, parsley and chopped, grilled prosciutto. Yum…..
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hi trudy, I’ve done this steak a couple of times and it is has been perfect. Just wondering if you can help I am having dinner party for 10 people and was thinking of doing eye fillet instead. Is it possible to do a whole eye fillet like this or do you know approx times if I was to cook 10 individual eye fillets? Does the quantity make difference to cooking time or just thickness/weight of each steak? I read somewhere that you cannot overcook with sous vide as it won’t go past the temperature of bath. Is this the same when steaming? I notice your temp and cooking time is very precise. Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks
Hi Jackie,
No I haven’t done a eye fillet this way. I would always roast but you don’t say if you have a combi steam oven? If so roast whole on combination mode as per my ‘roasting table’.
If you have a steam oven then you can try doing thick individual steaks 200g each, I would probably drop temp to 50o for rare as by the time you sear it that will cook it more. Try one first as a tester! No, it doesn’t matter how many you have in together as long as they don’t overlap and are in separate bags.
Good luck, let me know how you go.
Regards Trudy
I have a combi steam oven. Just wondering, why put the steak in a bag in the steam oven. I understand the idea of it being in a bag, but could it then be in a usual oven? Is there any advantage to this being in a steam oven as well as the bag? Also, if it was steamed without the bag, how would this impact the steak? Thanks..
Hi Irene,
Sous vide cooking is traditionally done in a water bath so that you can get extremely low and accurate temperatures. The reason for the bag is two fold, it contains the flavours in the food and you can also add additional flavours such as herbs and spices. If there was no bag, either in a sous vide water bath or the steam oven the steam/water will dilute these flavours. The reason you can’t cook it in a normal oven is that you can’t accurately control or get temperatures as low as 40-56oC in a conventional oven. Also you wouldn’t be cooking in a plastic bag with any radiant heat. Try cooking my Thai beef salad recipe with the meat cooked in the steam oven and you will see what I mean. The texture & tenderness is also different cooked at a lower temperature.
Regards Trudy
Thanks, that’s really helpful. I’m just starting to experiment with the steam oven, so really grateful for your advice!
Hi Trudy, I have just tried your sous vide technique in my combi steam oven with great success. We cooked three eye fillet steaks weighing 150g,140g and 100g g respectively at 55C full steam for 30 minutes, taking the smallest steak out after 20 minutes. Next time, we would leave the 100g steak for five minutes longer!
Two queries: how long can the steaks stay in their plastic bags before searing them, and do you think the method would work with good quality rump or indeed any other steak.
Hi Irena,
About to fly out so will answer your query now.
I wouldn’t pre-cook the steaks if that’s what your thinking. Left in bags they would be cold in the middle & searing won’t heat enough.
Rump is usually too thin but you can try any cut you prefer but as you’ve experienced you need to test it out yourself.
Regards Trudy
Hi Irena,
I have been cooking traditional sous vide for a couple of years now, but as I’ve only found this site today (and have already subscribed!) I’m going to try cooking the fillet steaks I was going to sous vide in my combo steam oven – except I’ll use full steam. Re your query about how long the steak can stay in the bag before searing, remember that sous vide uses lower temps, so food safety can be an issue if you leave the steak to go cold without refrigeration. But I leave steaks in the water bath until I’m ready to sear it, so you should be able to do the same thing in the steam oven. It’s the temp that determines how rare/well done the steak is, not the length of time – time only alters the texture. So, technically, you should be able to leave the steak in the oven for an additional 30 minutes or so, but I wouldn’t take it longer than that. For your second query about rump steak, again it’s the time that’s essential for tenderising the meat. For a good thickness rump steak, done medium rare, you could try 58c for about 3-4 hrs. If you use a zip-lock bag rather than a vacuum bag, you can take it out to check on its tenderness and alter the time accordingly. If you want to get ALL the air out of a zip-lock bag, which is ideal for even cooking of the meat, zip it till it’s almost closed, then submerge the bag in water leaving only the unzipped part of the bag out of the water. Slowly submerge the rest of the bag, pushing the air out, until you only have the lip of the zip sticking out, which you then close. Voila! No air! Good luck and try it with different times rather than temps tho.
I tried this with a 750g Tomahawk Ribeye. 58c for 90 minutes with rosemary/ oregano/Olive oil). Then patted dry and did a coffee/Brown sugar/salt/garlic powder rub and seared on super hot bbq for 2-3 minutes each side.
Just fantastic. Best steak I’ve ever had.
Thank you so much
Hi Lew, I’m really interested in the rub you used. Could you specify the ingredients? Cheers, Irene