Sous Vide Temperature Guide & Doneness Calculator

Sous Vide Guide

How Sous Vide Works?

Sous vide (French 'under vacuum'): cook food in a sealed bag in a precisely temperature-controlled water bath. Key principle: food cannot exceed the water temperature. Conventional cooking: food surface 200°C+, centre 50°C — gradient. Sous vide: entire food reaches set temperature precisely. Advantages: impossible to overcook (within reason). Edge-to-edge even doneness. Tougher cuts become tender with long cook times. Convenient: cook ahead, finish later. Equipment: immersion circulator, such as Anova, Joule, or similar brands, clips onto any suitable pot and circulates water at a precisely controlled temperature.

What should I know about Temperature Selection?

Steak doneness by temperature: 50°C: blue. 54°C: rare. 57°C: medium rare. 60°C: medium. 66°C: medium well. 71°C+: well done. Sous vide at this exact temperature: perfectly cooked from edge to edge. No grey overcooked band around the perimeter as with grilling. Chicken safety: NHS recommends 75°C internal temperature for traditional cooking — but this assumes brief exposure. At 60°C held for 35+ minutes (or 56°C for 90+ min): equivalent pasteurisation. The Time-Temperature combination is what kills harmful bacteria safely, which is why sous vide recipes specify both figures together rather than temperature alone.

What's the key thing to understand about Time Selection?

Two factors: heat through time (time for centre to reach set temperature). Texture time (how long held at temperature affects texture). Heat-through times: 2cm steak from fridge: 30-45 minutes. 4cm steak: 1.5-2 hours. Whole chicken breast: 1-1.5 hours. Texture/tenderisation: tough cuts (chuck steak, brisket) become tender with extended cook times. Brisket: 24-72 hours at 60°C. Chuck steak: 24-48 hours. Pork shoulder: 24-36 hours at 74°C. Chicken: tender at 1.5 hours, dry after 4-6 hours at typical sous vide temperatures, since unlike tougher cuts, chicken breast doesn't benefit from extended cooking beyond its optimal window.

What should I know about Finishing — The Critical Step?

Sous vide alone produces pale meat — no Maillard reaction. ALWAYS finish to develop crust and flavour. Steak: pat dry, season, sear in screaming-hot cast iron pan with oil, butter, garlic, thyme. 30-60 seconds per side. Or torch with blowtorch. Pork belly: chill after sous vide, then crisp skin in hot oven or under grill (broiler) for crackling. Chicken skin: crisp in pan after cooking. Skin must be DRY before finishing. Fish: brief sear (10-20 seconds skin side) to crisp skin. Don't overcook in the pan while searing, since the sous vide bath has already brought the inside to the perfect temperature — the sear is purely for colour and crust, not further cooking.

What should I know about the Temperature-Texture Relationship for Steak?

Unlike conventional cooking where internal temperature is a rough proxy for doneness that varies by how the heat was applied, sous vide holds the food at EXACTLY the set temperature throughout, giving a uniquely precise and repeatable relationship between temperature and the final texture of proteins like steak: 54°C (129°F) gives a true rare with a very soft, almost raw-adjacent texture; 57°C (135°F) gives medium-rare, the most commonly chosen target, with meat that's noticeably firmer but still pink and tender; 60°C (140°F) gives medium; and above about 66°C (150°F) collagen in tougher cuts begins converting to gelatin more significantly, which is why tougher cuts (short rib, chuck) benefit from longer times at moderate temperatures (60-65°C for many hours) rather than the short, higher-temperature approach suited to naturally tender cuts like fillet or sirloin.

What do I need to know about Why Searing After, Not Before, Matters?

Sous vide cooking alone produces an evenly cooked interior but no browned crust, since the water bath never gets hot enough for the Maillard browning reaction (which needs surface temperatures well above 140°C) — this is why a hard sear in a very hot pan or under a blowtorch immediately AFTER the sous vide bath, rather than before, is the standard finishing step. Searing after sous vide (rather than before) is deliberate: searing first and then holding at a lower sous vide temperature for an extended time would partially cook the crust back toward the interior's doneness level, softening and essentially undoing the sear's texture contrast, whereas searing last, for just 30-60 seconds per side on blisteringly hot metal, builds a crust on meat that's already at serving temperature throughout, adding browning and flavour without meaningfully raising the core temperature above the carefully controlled bath temperature.

What do I need to know about Sous Vide Food Safety and Pasteurisation?

Because sous vide cooks at precisely controlled, often relatively low temperatures compared with conventional methods, food safety depends on both temperature and time together rather than temperature alone, following published pasteurisation tables (based on work originally developed by food scientists such as Douglas Baldwin and adopted by agencies like the USDA). At any given safe cooking temperature above about 54.5°C, there's a minimum holding time required to pasteurise the food to an equivalent safety level as higher-temperature conventional cooking, and that minimum time increases the lower the temperature is, since pasteurisation is a cumulative, temperature-and-time dependent process (bacteria are killed progressively, not instantly, at a given temperature). This is why sous vide steak cooked at 54°C for 1 hour can be just as safe as steak seared hot and cooked through conventionally, provided the full recommended time at that temperature is respected — cutting the time short, even if the food 'looks done', skips the pasteurisation step. Thickness also affects total time needed, since a thicker cut takes longer to reach the target temperature throughout before the pasteurisation clock (at the correct internal temperature) effectively starts. Poultry in particular needs careful attention to published time/temperature combinations, since lower sous vide temperatures for chicken require meaningfully longer holding times than equivalent beef or pork to reach the same safety level.

Worked Example: Time and Temperature for a 4cm-Thick Chicken Breast

Sous vide safety for poultry relies on holding a specific internal temperature for long enough to pasteurise it, rather than reaching a single instantaneous target the way conventional cooking guidance is often framed. Commonly published sous vide pasteurisation tables (based on USDA-aligned thermal death time science for Salmonella) show that a chicken breast held at 60°C needs roughly 48-60+ minutes of holding time at that core temperature to pasteurise (on top of the time needed for the centre to actually reach 60°C, which for a 4cm-thick breast from a fridge-cold start is typically around 1.5-2 hours total in a 60°C bath), while raising the water bath to 63-65°C cuts the required holding time at temperature to under 10 minutes, because pasteurisation time falls sharply as temperature rises. Many home cooks use 63-64°C for chicken breast as a practical balance between food safety margin and the moist, tender texture that lower temperatures preserve.

Why Vegetables and Starches Follow Different Safety Rules

Pasteurisation tables built around Salmonella and similar pathogens mainly apply to meat, poultry, eggs and fish, where that's the main safety concern; vegetables and starches sealed in a vacuum bag carry a different risk profile. Low-acid vegetables cooked sous vide sit in a sealed, oxygen-free environment at moderate temperatures for an extended time, which is exactly the kind of environment Clostridium botulinum spores can grow in and produce toxin if the food is then held too long in the temperature danger zone rather than served promptly or rapidly chilled. Food safety guidance for sous vide vegetables generally recommends either serving them hot shortly after cooking, or cooling them quickly in an ice bath and refrigerating promptly if cooking ahead, rather than leaving a sealed bag of cooked vegetables to cool slowly at room temperature.

Why Thickness, Not Weight, Determines Cook Time

Sous vide cook times are driven by how long heat takes to conduct from the water bath to the centre of the food, which depends on thickness far more than on total weight or surface area; a thick, compact cut and a long, thin cut of the same weight can need very different cook times because heat has to travel a different distance to reach the centre in each case. This is why sous vide charts and calculators ask for thickness specifically rather than weight alone, and why cutting a large piece of meat into two thinner portions (even if the combined weight is unchanged) meaningfully shortens the time needed for the centre to reach a safe, pasteurised temperature throughout.