Sous Vide Time & Temperature Calculator

Sous Vide Guide

What is Sous Vide?

Sous vide (French for 'under vacuum') is cooking food sealed in a bag, submerged in precisely temperature-controlled water. The food cooks to exactly the water temperature — never overcooking. Why it's brilliant: precision — set the water to your target doneness and the food can't exceed it. Edge-to-edge perfection — a sous vide steak is the same doneness throughout (no grey overcooked band near the surface). Forgiving — leaving food in slightly longer rarely ruins it (unlike pan-frying). Repeatable, precise results every time, since the water bath temperature — not visual judgement — determines the exact doneness achieved.

What's the key thing to understand about Temperature = Doneness?

In sous vide, the water temperature determines the final doneness exactly. Beef steak: rare: 49-52°C. Medium-rare: 54-57°C. Medium: 58-62°C. Medium-well: 63-65°C. Well done: 68°C+. Most people target 54-56°C for a perfect medium-rare. Chicken breast: 60-65°C (lower than the 75°C of traditional cooking — safe because of the time held, see safety section). 60°C gives very juicy, almost silky chicken; 63-65°C is more familiar texture. Pork: 58-62°C for medium — juicy, slightly pink, safe and delicious once held for the correct pasteurisation time.

What's the key thing to understand about Time = Thickness (and Tenderness)?

Two separate roles of time in sous vide: 1. Time to heat through (depends on thickness): the core must reach the water temperature. Thicker = longer. A 25mm steak takes about 1 hour; a 50mm one takes 2-2.5 hours. Roughly, heating time scales with thickness squared. 2. Time for tenderness (tough cuts only): tender cuts (steak, chicken breast, fish) only need heating through. Tough cuts (brisket, short rib, pork shoulder) need extended time (12-72 hours) to break down collagen into gelatin. Minimum time is dictated by thickness alone, but longer times beyond that minimum, up to a point, continue to tenderise tougher cuts without overcooking them.

What do I need to know about Safety and Finishing?

Food safety — pasteurisation: traditional cooking kills bacteria instantly at high temperature. Sous vide pasteurises at lower temperatures held over TIME. Chicken at 60°C held for the right time is just as safe as 75°C instantly — it's the combination of temperature AND time that ensures safety. This is well-established food science (the basis of milk pasteurisation). Key safety points: hold poultry and pork long enough for pasteurisation at your chosen temperature (the calculator's minimum time figures are built around this pasteurisation principle, not just heating the food through to a pleasant temperature).

What should I know about Why Thickness Matters More Than Weight?

Sous vide cooking time is governed by how long it takes heat to penetrate to the centre of the food, which depends on thickness (the shortest dimension through which heat must travel), not weight or overall size — a thick, compact 500g steak takes considerably longer to reach core temperature than a thin, flat 500g piece of the same cut, even though they weigh the same. This is why sous vide time charts are organised by thickness in centimetres or inches, not by weight, and why a recipe written for a 2cm steak will under-cook a 5cm steak even at identical time and temperature settings. Doubling thickness roughly quadruples the time needed to reach core temperature (heat penetration time scales with the square of thickness for a given material), which is a steeper relationship than many home cooks expect when scaling up a cut.

What do I need to know about Pasteurisation Time at Sous Vide Temperatures?

Food safety agencies specify minimum time-at-temperature combinations needed to pasteurise meat and poultry (reduce harmful bacteria to a safe level) that are different from, and generally longer than, simply reaching that temperature at the core. For chicken held at 60°C (140°F), USDA guidance requires roughly 35 minutes AFTER reaching that core temperature to achieve pasteurisation, while at a hotter 65°C (149°F) only about 1 minute of hold time is needed post-core-temperature — the relationship between temperature and required hold time is sharply non-linear, dropping fast as temperature rises. This is why sous vide times for safety aren't just 'however long it takes to heat through' — a thin chicken breast cooked at a lower temperature needs the full calculated heating time PLUS this additional pasteurisation hold time added on top, and recipes or calculators that only account for heat penetration without this extra safety margin can produce a result that's warm throughout but not necessarily fully pasteurised at lower target temperatures.

What do I need to know about Sous Vide for Vegetables and Eggs?

Vegetables and eggs behave quite differently from meat and fish in a sous vide bath, since their textures are governed by different mechanisms than protein denaturation. Vegetables are typically cooked at higher temperatures than meat, often 83-90°C, because at these temperatures pectin (the structural component of plant cell walls) breaks down enough to soften the vegetable, whereas meat's lower cooking temperatures are chosen to control protein texture and moisture retention rather than pectin breakdown — cooking vegetables at meat-style low temperatures would leave them unpleasantly raw and crunchy regardless of how long they're left in the bath. Eggs are unusually temperature-sensitive because the white and yolk set at different temperatures (whites begin to firm around 61-63°C, yolks around 65°C), which is why sous vide is popular for eggs — it allows precise control to produce a yolk that's a specific, consistent texture (from barely set to fully firm) by holding the egg at an exact temperature for a set time, something very difficult to replicate consistently with conventional boiling. Because eggs are cooked in their shells, there's no separate pasteurisation concern beyond normal egg safety, but time still matters, since a shorter time at a given temperature may not be enough to fully set the white even if the target temperature is correct.

What's the Danger Zone and Why Does Precise Temperature Control Matter for Sous Vide?

Food safety guidance defines the 'danger zone' as roughly 4°C to 60°C (40°F to 140°F), the temperature range in which bacteria that can cause foodborne illness grow fastest, and standard advice is not to leave perishable food in that range for more than about 2 hours (1 hour if the ambient temperature is above 32°C/90°F). Sous vide cooking appears to sit squarely inside this range for many dishes, which can look concerning at first glance — but it works safely because sous vide uses a precisely controlled, maintained temperature combined with a sufficient hold time to achieve the needed pathogen reduction, rather than simply leaving food to drift through the danger zone unmanaged. This is exactly why precise temperature control is so central to safe sous vide cooking: a water bath that's a few degrees cooler than intended, or a target temperature chosen without regard to the required time at that exact temperature, can mean the food never actually reaches a safe combination of time and temperature, even though it may look and feel 'done'.

Why Searing Doesn't Replace the Time-and-Temperature Hold

A hot sear before or after the sous vide bath adds flavour and texture (the Maillard browning reaction) to the surface of the food, but it only heats the outer few millimetres for a very short time — it does not meaningfully raise the internal temperature of the food, and it is not a substitute for holding the food at a safe internal temperature for the appropriate time during the sous vide stage itself. This matters because it's tempting to assume a confident, well-browned sear means the whole piece of food is safely cooked through, when in reality the centre's safety is determined entirely by what happened during the water bath, not by the sear. The sear should always be treated as a finishing step for flavour and appearance, applied after the sous vide hold has already achieved a safe result, never as a way to compensate for an insufficient time or temperature during the water bath stage.

Why Do Thicker Cuts Need Disproportionately More Time to Heat Through?

Heat moves into the centre of a piece of food by conduction, and the time needed for the centre to reach the target temperature scales roughly with the square of the thickness, not linearly with thickness. This means doubling a cut's thickness doesn't double the time needed for the centre to come up to temperature — it roughly quadruples it, because the heat has to travel twice as far through the same conductive process, and that distance has a squared effect on the time required. This is precisely why this calculator (and sous vide guidance generally) treats thickness, not weight, as the key variable for timing: a short, wide, thick roast can need far longer than its weight alone would suggest if its thickness (not its overall bulk) is the greater, while two differently-shaped cuts of the same weight but different thickness can need noticeably different cook times.

Worked Example: Converting a Recipe's Temperature Target Between Fahrenheit and Celsius

A sous vide recipe from a US source specifies a water bath target of 134°F. Converting to Celsius: °C = (°F - 32) × 5/9 = (134 - 32) × 5/9 = 102 × 5/9 ≈ 56.7°C. This kind of conversion matters because many immersion circulators and recipes default to one unit or the other, and a small error in unit conversion can shift a target meaningfully — mistaking 134°F for 134°C, for instance, would be a drastically different (and unsafe, water-boiling) temperature, so always double check which unit a recipe or device is actually set to, especially when following a recipe sourced from a different country's convention.

Note these are culinary doneness targets, not food-safety minimums for poultry or ground meat — always confirm the appropriate safe minimum internal temperature and required hold time for the specific food and cut before relying on a lower doneness-style temperature alone.