In Fact, You Should Take a Sous Vide Break From Grilled Meats.
Most sous vide recipes follow a fairly standard format: put the meat in a plastic bag, place the bag in a water bath set to your desired temperature, cook the meat for about an hour, then grill or super. hot frying pan. It’s a wonderful, seemingly impeccable sequence of events, but a little rest between bath and toasting will help you not overcooking (or slicing) your steak.
You’ve probably been told that you don’t need to “rest” the sous vide meat, as the lack of a temperature gradient inside the sous vide steak or chop means you don’t have to worry about juicing. will pour out if you chop too early. All of this is true, but if you put a hot steak in an even hotter pan, its temperature will rise even more, which means – especially in the case of thinner cuts – the piece of meat that you just cooked slowly for an hour or so is now larger “Done” than you wanted. (The reverse fry method takes this into account – you intentionally slowly cook the meat to a temperature that is 10-15 degrees below your target temperature, as the frying process will bring it to the target temperature.)
If you usually finish grilled meat on a sous vide system, you probably did not notice this; by the time you take the meat out of the bag, dab it, walk over to the grill and play a little with the grill (grates tend to hang), the temperature is likely to drop. But if you’re the type to preheat cast iron before the steak comes out of the bag, you may have overcooked it trying to get the perfect crust.
But don’t take my word for it, let’s take a look at some numbers. I cooked two pork chops, sous vide the night before, for an hour and a half at 135 ℉. One chop was fried immediately after being taken out of the bath, and the other was fried after a 10-minute rest on a cutting board. In just a few minutes, after browning both sides (and greasy edges) to a pleasant deep golden brown, the fickle chop reached an internal temperature of 147 ℉, which is much hotter than I wanted. it should be. (And yes, I often rolled over to dissipate the heat.) However, the rested chop dropped to 127 ℉ during sleep, and rose again by 137 ℉ after being fired, just two degrees above the bath temperature.
Fortunately, none of this really matters, and you can easily avoid overcooking your precious steak or chop like a sous vide. Just let the meat sit for about 10 minutes while you heat up the cast iron skillet and season salad or whatever. Saute it, leisurely, for a few minutes, allowing this beautiful crust to form without worrying about crossing the awful medium to medium line.