Seen on Facebook, Lekker Braai - Hier praat ons net braai. The doneness of a steak is by-and-large determined by the maximum internal temperature it reaches during cooking. For instance, so long as a strip steak does not rise above 130°F (54°C), it will never cook beyond medium-rare. With traditional cooking methods, there is a very short window of time during which your meat is perfectly cooked. A minute too long will mean overcooked meat. With sous-vide cooking, on the other hand, that window of time is stretched into hours, which means your steak will be hot and ready to go whenever you're ready to sear and serve it. Temperature can have a major impact on juiciness and texture of a steak. Here I've collected juices expelled by three nearly identical steaks cooked to different temperatures: The one cooked to 160°F (well-done) lost more than 10 times as much juice as the 120°F rare steak. Additionally, with the well-done steak, you can see a distinct layer of rendered fat floating on top of the juices. I recommend cooking steak in the rare to medium range so that you minimize juice loss while also keeping those fats inside the steak where they belong, adding flavor and juiciness to each bite. Here's a rough breakdown of how steaks feel at different degrees of doneness. Rare (120°F): Your meat is still nearly raw. Muscle proteins have not started to contract much and will have a slippery, wet texture. Chewier cuts like hanger or flap meat will be particularly tough at this stage. Fat has not yet started to render, so fattier cuts will have a waxy texture. I only recommend cooking very lean, tender cuts like tenderloin to rare. Medium-rare (129°F): Your steak is still nice and red, but muscle proteins have begun to tighten and firm up. You lose a bit of juice due to this tightening, but what you lose in juice you gain in tenderness. Medium-rare steaks have a cleaner bite to them: instead of muscle fibrils mushing and slipping past each other, as they do with very rare steaks, they cut more easily between your teeth. I recommend medium-rare for all types of steaks, though particularly high-fat steaks benefit from being taken closer to medium. Medium (135°F): Your steak is a rosy pink throughout and has lost about four times more juices than a rare steak. With a well-marbled piece of beef, however, the rendering softened fat should more than make up for this extra juice loss. Coarsely textured cuts like hanger, skirt, and flap meat also become firm and juicy at this range. I recommend cooking very fatty or coarse pieces of beef to the cooler side of medium. Medium-well (145°F): Your steak is well on its way to dryness. At this point, you've lost nearly six times as much juice as a rare steak and the meat has a distinctly cottony, grainy texture that no amount of excess lubricating fat can disguise. If you must have your meat cooked medium-well, I suggest using very rich cuts like short rib, skirt steak, or hanger, which suffer less than finely textured cuts like ribeye, strip, or tenderloin. Well done (156°+): I get it. Some people like their meat well-done. However, there is no real reason to use a sous-vide precision technique if you like your steak well-done. Just grill or pan-roast until it's as done as you like it.
