Although food in sous vide cooks slowly and retains moisture, it is still cooking. It is a great method for cooking something to a ‘medium’ without much danger of overcooking, and is practically the only method to really get a well-cooked but juicy pork loin or game fowl without doing a big infusion, but steak is almost always cooked to order with most enthusiasts preferring toward the more rare end of the spectrum.
Stranger
Well, you wouldn’t be hearing it to 140 — that’s overdone for a lot of people.
Come to think of it, I wonder now if my memory is mixing up cooking other meats sous vide and then finishing. With steak you also have the issue of various levels of doneness that would be requested. With chicken, you could just sous vide to 155 for breast or something for everyone.
Well I think the cooking of the steak is already well covered, but if you want to really make this shine, whip up a quick garlic butter or other maitre 'd butter and top the steak with it. And if you really want to go the extra mile, serve the steak with some caramelized onions, but start quick because that takes a while to really do right.
Thats why I use a hot cast iron,and with bacon renderings, I can even get a good bit of that flavor. Gets a real good sear and helps seal in the juices. To me, reverse sear drains a lot of the juices, so i end up melting butter on it.
We don’t have a cast iron skillet. Can we use a regular frying pan?
Not sure, my cast iron goes right in the oven. I dont use our non stick for that
Generally it’s advised you do not use a non-stick pan, at least. When searing, you get it up to pretty high temps, and with non-stick, you’re only supposed to go up to 500. I believe Teflon (or whatever) fumes start forming above that.
That said, there are some website that seem to say it’s okay. But there’s a lot that say don’t, and I’ve always been cautious about overheating non-stick pans.
Also, I’ve never had an issue with reverse sear seeming less juicy than regular sear method. Plus, searing does not seal in the juices.
Turns out we have cast iron Le Creuset Dutch Ovens. That might work.
Finishing with some garlic/rosemary butter is definitely in the cards.
I’m usually pretty solid in the kitchen (with minimal experience with meat outside of roasting or braising), but tonight I’m taking it easy: the vaguely upscale meat market I went to had some prepared asparagus and twice baked potatoes, so those are getting reheated (and the potatoes will probably move to under the broiler once I take the meat out to get a nice brown on them)… there’s not much for me to cut or prep (just a little garlic), which is a nice change of pace for me!
Stainless works as well for the final sear. Perhaps even better than cast iron. But a Dutch oven will absolutely do the job.
Yeah, cooking steak is absurdly easy once you settle on a method you like and you use a thermometer. It’s really difficult to screw up badly if you have a Thermapen or whatever. You just get it up to the temp you like (or a few degrees shorter because of the sear), you sear it, oh and you REST it for five minutes or so, and you’re good to go. Easy clean-up.
You seem to have a lot of experience and I’m sure your system works great. However I once saw a YouTube video series on cooking that showed how much heat 90 seconds of searing on one side added to the steak interior. They used a thermal camera to compare to flipping the steak every 15 seconds or so over 2 minutes. Almost all the building heat dissipates while flipped. I think this is even more important if you don’t have a thick steak. Anyways, not a hill to die on. lol BTW, my Safetway now sells dry aged beef, which I have also made in the past in my fridge with a membrane bag. I buy dry aged ever time it is on sale. Would rather have less dry aged rib steak, than any other steak.
Also, in the realm of gilding the lily, is finishing salt on a steak.
FWIW, I’ve had really good luck with this thermometer:
I don’t use a smart phone, but the time my wife was home and we’d loaded the app, it did notify her that the steaks were done 
This is for a thick (1.5-2 inch) loin cut to get a finish (caramelization); if you keep flipping it, that “building heat disssipat[ing]” is going to ruin the finish. If you are cooking a flank steak or veal cutlet, obviously with the minimal thickness and thermal mass you are going to have to much less mass and you don’t want that kind of finish, especially if it is going to be covered in a chimichurri or garlic velouté sauce. That being said, it’s your steak and you should do what works for you.
Stranger
or do what I suggested and compare by weight.
I’ve made overnight caramelized onions sous vide.
yes someone has done a cake sous vide [I use it for custard in the little glass canning jars]
Honestly, the reverse sear will do the steak just fine, but you actually should invest in a sous vide setup [we have an anova stick, and this giant sort of tupperware-ish 12 liter container designed for using the anova with. Check out reddit, they have a hell of a sous vide community, also one for r/meat in general.
You will see a lot of comments on 137 degrees, that is a good generic meat temp, 4 hours at 137 and the connective tissues break down and stuff gets mad tender. [the melted connective tissue is why a pot roast ends up so melty tender after hours and hours of gentle cooking - and there is nothing like a good chuck roast for flavor when cooked low and slow. ]
Actually what I’ve read is that if you can, salt it 40 or more minutes out, or salt it right as you put it in to cook. Anything less than 40 minutes tends to draw moisture out, but doesn’t let it reabsorb.
And flip as much as you like, it doesn’t make any difference. Both things are discussed in the article below by well known chef, food writer, and culinary mad scientist Kenji Lopez-Alt.
The Food Lab’s Definitive Guide to Grilled Steak (seriouseats.com)
Personally, I’d stick with the reverse sear rather than sous vide. Not because there’s anything fundamentally wrong, difficult, or unsafe about sous vide, but because of the simple reason that the longer, slower time in the oven at low temp dries out the surface better, and as a result you get a far better sear on it at the end, as opposed to sous vide, which never quite seems to be as seared as I’d like, without overcooking some of it.
I’ll admit ignorance here - I’ve read about steak sous-vide a number of times but haven’t tried it myself. I just do the reverse sear into a cast iron pan or onto a grill.
Question: what if you let the steak dry for 24-hours in the fridge before the sous-vide? Still problematic?
I like my steaks Pittsburgh medium-rare. Charred steak is delicious (talk about maillard effect!). If you’re less adventuresome, go with Pittsburgh-medium. If you’re more adventuresome, go with black & blue. If you like it cooked more than medium, get a hamburger instead.
This article explains how and why: