Sous videing and torching a steak.

[Mosca]

I was talking about my Wagyu strip steak score. I decided to stop talking and cook it.




I decided to try my Secret Santa torch! But the steak is pretty thin, and I didn’t want to do it reverse sear. So I thought I should sous vide it. I never used a torch for this before, but I thought that it probably wouldn’t raise the internal temp as much as cast iron would, so I decided to set the temp to 128°. (The .5 was a mistake.)




After sous vide. Bad light, it is really sorta brownish gray.




The fun part!



The fat burns before the meat Maillards! I wasn’t expecting that.

Checking for doneness. This looks okay, but it’s really closer to dead medium. I didn’t temp it with the Thermapen, I can just tell. The snapshot is a little over saturated.



So this is a roundabout way of getting to my point, which is: that torch is REALLY FREAKING HOT. If you decide to do this, take your sous vide to about 120°. The torch will get you to 130° on a 3/4” thick steak.

The torch is a stone cold blast, though. In addition to being a flamethrower, there’s no cleanup! No cast iron to clean, no grill grates to clean, no charcoal to mess with. Torch for teh win! Highly recommended just for the feeling while using it.

[J-Melt]

My friend got me a torch for my unruly yard. Haven’t tried it there and am definitely scared of setting my house on fire. I was doing fried rice on my wok on my kettle and didn’t realize that my chimney of charcoal didn’t light. Decided to bring out the torch! Lots of fun and may have slightly traumatized my wife with how powerful the thing is!

[Mosca]

This isn’t big enough for weeds, it’s only about 18” or so. But when you think it’s on full blast you can give the knob some more gas and there’s at least another gear, maybe two!

[J-Melt]

Mine is probably 3 feet long. I need to play with the gas level and see if I can get it to shoot a smaller flame. It may just be too big for most cooking applications.

[JeffJ]

Interesting technique. My go-to for searing a SV steak is the cast iron skillet

[Mosca]

Same here. I wanted to try something different, though. And this steak was pretty thin.

[MBMorgan]

Welcome to the SVT(orch) club, Mosca ! It’s been a favorite method here for several years. Here’s a few pics from 5-6 years ago of a particularly nice prime tenderloin cooked SV then seared with my then-new Searzall torch:







… works just as well, if not better, on skinny steaks, too.

[mgaretz]

The secret to torching (or using an IR sear burner) is to pat the meat dry and then dust the steak with corn sugar (dextrose). That will give a nice crust and brown at the same time or before as the fat, and you don't need to heat the meat nearly as much because the sugars that cause the Maillard reaction are already on the surface.

You can get corn sugar from a local homebrew supply or online. It will already be fine. Use a shaker with a screen top like this one: https://amzn.to/4flhpP8

[Mosca]

Good advice, thanks. There is room for improvement.

[STEbbq]

So, how was the steak? 🤣

All of these flamethrower comments but no taste comments?

[Mosca]

It was excellent, just a little overdone. I’m so used to steak being steak that I don’t even think about it much. And I’m kind of over the American Wagyu thing. This was a good steak, but AW was a lot better 5 years ago. This was nothing special. A good Creekstone prime is better.

[Uncle Bob]

Little boys never outgrow playing with fire...

[OC Sandy]

Some little girls never outgrow it either.