After trying beef short ribs teriyaki sous-vide, I decided to try rib-eye steak teriyaki sous-vide. The main difference between short ribs sous-vide and (rib-eye) steak sous-vide is that short ribs need 48 hours at 57C/135F to get tender, but steak is already tender and only needs to be brought to temperature. The teriyaki short ribs were a bit dry because the marinade had drawn out too much of the juices. For the rib-eye steak I decided not to marinade the steak before cooking, but only to marinade during cooking. This turned out well: the steak had a nice teriyaki flavor and was still juicy. Since I like to serve the steak medium rare, I’m only cooking it to 50C/122F before searing and glazing it with the teriyaki marinade. Please note that this does not pasteurize the meat, which should be fine if the meat is fresh. I like to use rib-eye steak because for a tender steak it has quite more intramuscular fat and thus more flavor.
Ingredients
Gratuitous meat picture (hi Conor — this one’s for you!)
For 2 servings
300 grams (2/3 pounds) steak, preferably rib-eye
2 Tbsp mirin
2 Tbsp sake
2 Tbsp Japanese soy sauce
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp butter
Preparation
Preheat the water bath to 50C/122F.
Start by making the teriyaki marinade. I always make it from scratch, but you could substitute with store-bought teriyaki. In a small saucepan, combine the soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar. Heat over low heat, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved.
Put the beef and the teriyaki marinade in a ziploc sous-vide pouch. Seal it with as little air as possible using the water displacement method (i.e. submerge the bag while pushing out the air and seal the ziploc just before it goes under water). Cook sous-vide for 1 hour at 50C/122F.
Just like with the short ribs cooked at 57C/135F, the teriyaki marinade and the beef juices that are released during cooking make a nice base for a sauce that, unlike other sous-vide meat juice, does not curdle!
Take the steak out of the pouch and reserve the marinade.
Sear the steak briefly in butter and take out of the pan.
Add the marinade from the pouch and cook over medium heat until you obtain a wonderful beefy teriyaki glaze.
Briefly return the steak to the pan to cover it with a teriyaki glaze on all sides.
It is now ready to serve. I served it on preheated plates with stir-fried pak soy and rice.
Lovely Stefan. However getting a Sous-vide bath is behind getting a pasta machine, a granite pestel and mortar (I have two wooden sets that are bordering on the useless), a new colander (one of the handles fell off), educating my children (why, I don’t know as they will probably leave anyway). Thanks for the reference, it made the Wife and me laugh.
Best,
Conor
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I agree that a wooden pestel and mortar is quite useless. I don’t know what tuition is like in Ireland, but you can likely get yourself a golden colander if it’s in the same ballpark as educating your children 😉
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You have convinced us to get a home sous-vide system. The meat looks perfect. Good post.
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Great! Would love to read about your own sous-vide experiments on your blog. Please don’t hesitate to ask any questions, I’d be happy to help.
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We will be taking you up on your offer- thanks!
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122 degrees seems very low, do you cook it at such low temperature because you know that the searing process will bring it up to a rare/medium rare finish?
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Exactly. By cooking it to 122 degrees, the searing process will bring it up to the rare side of medium rare (which I like). The added advantage is that at this temperature you get the maximum tenderizing ‘warm aging’ effect of the enzymes in the meat.
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