How Do You Reheat Precooked Chilled Sous Vided Foods? – Ask Jason

Note: The following article is an edited transcript from the video.

That's a great question, one that a lot of people ask about. It surpsiss some people but sous vide meal prep is an excellent tool. You can cook a large amount ahead of time, chill it with the three step method in an ice bath or cold water, throw it in the fridge and then reheat it throughout the week when you're ready to eat.

Reheating in the Sous Vide Machine

If you're doing something more fancy or upscale like sous vide prime rib for a nice dinner, I recommend reheating it in the sous vide bath at the temperature or below where you originally cooked it at. It's a really easy way to do it since you only have to heat it through.

For example, if you're doing a sous vide chuck roast or a chuck steak it takes 36 hours to initially sous vide it. Then you chill it in an ice bath or cold water and put it in the fridge. It's only going to take 1 or 2 hours to reheat.

How Long to Reheat For

Our Sous Vide cooking Times by Thickness article which goes into more details about heating and cooking may be a helpful read. In addition our Sous Vide Timing Ruler give you a quick reference for tender cuts of meat.

Since your food has already been sous vided, it is now considered a "tender meat" so you just look up how thick it is on the sous vide heating and cooling times. A 2-inch steak normally takes 2 to 3 hours to reheat all the way through without losing any quality from the original sous vide.

Reheat In the Sauce

If it's a less fancy meal or if the sous vided meat is going into something else, you can reheat it in whatever you're cooking. I've done shredded sous vide pork shoulder and instead of reheating it in the sous vide machine, I put it right in the tortilla soup shortly before serving time. It just needed to be in the soup long enough for the pork it to reheat and then eat.

I've done that with curries and lots of other dishes like my Sous Cide Chicken Tikka Masala recipe. You throw it in the sauce to only reheat it, not to overcook the already perfectly cook pork. So don't reheat it in the sauce for the 45 minutes that the sauce is cooking, but just long enough for it to come back to temperature.

There are a few different options on how to reheat sous vide food, but that's how I normally approach it.

If you like this you can get more than 85 inspiring recipes to get you on your way to sous vide success. It's all in my best selling book Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Sous Vide - Get Your Copy Today!

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