Freezing steaks after sous vide

[atomicsmoke]

Any concern with freezing steaks after cooking them SV? Then just thaw and grill/fry them?

 

[atomicsmoke]

So you think freezing after SV then thaw+fry would not yield the same quality as SV+FRY?

 

[sky monkey]

I don't believe you'll have as good of quality that way. I have prepared steaks for SV with seasoning and fresh aromatics, vacuum sealed and froze raw. Then weeks later pulled it out of the freezer and dropped it right into the SV at 130 for 2 hours and char finished. The quality was nearly as good as fresh into the SV.

 

[dward51]

I don't think I have seen where anyone has actually tried to freeze and later char sous vide cooked steaks.

I guess it will be up to "someone" to take the plunge on a couple steaks and post an opinion. I would think you would need to pull a steak out of a pack, sous vide and then freeze, and then a couple of days later reheat and char at the same time you do a 2nd steak from the same pack the tradition sous vide and char method. I would say then need equal time on the grill to char together to make the test as objective as possible. It will be interesting to see how this comes out when someone tries it and posts the results.

 

[atomicsmoke]

We tolerate precooked/frozen foods alright on this forum: pulled pork, smoked fish, turkey, chicken.

If the difference between just cooked and frozen/reheated is marginal the convenience beats the small loss in quality.

I wish we had the time to shop and cook from scratch daily. We don't so we go for the next best thing.

Btw, store fresh does not always mean what we think it does. It usually means never frozen. That pig might have been slaugthered weeks before.

Anyway....the steaks i am inquiring about are aged and we don't eat them that often. I can find the time to go thru the whole SV+grill pricess before eating them.

Thanks for chiming in.

 

[kit s]

Any concern with freezing steaks after cooking them SV? Then just thaw and grill/fry them?

Yes you can sv then freeze then thaw fry or q to finish in reheating and color char. Not as good but a lot of resturan

Any concern with freezing steaks after cooking them SV? Then just thaw and grill/fry them?

You can sv then freeze. But when you thaw put it back into sv to bring to temp, cool then fry or grill Just more steps is all.
kit

 

[dward51]

You can sv then freeze. But when you thaw put it back into sv to bring to temp, cool then fry or grill Just more steps is all.
kit

I thought about that also. If you are going to re-sous vide it after freezing to get the core back up to the same sous vide temp you were targeting in the first place, then sear, it's almost a "why bother" as you are doing the sous vide twice. Yes that 2nd time will not need to be at the target temp as long as the meat is already pasteurized from the first round, but for the slight difference in time, just do it once and eat the same day would be my thought.

This single point would be the end of the idea for me anyhow.