Butter in the Bag for Sous Vide Steak?

Does adding fat into the sous vide bag result in a less flavorful steak?

Result

However, I would rule the test to be flawed due to how the steaks were seared: The searing of the steak were done in a pan with an initial coating of olive oil. Steaks cooked later were done so a larger amount of rendered beef fat (from the previous steaks), this could have led to steaks cooked later having a beefier taste. 

At this stage, would recommend beef steaks to be cooked in gratuitous amounts of beef fat for maximum "beefiness".

Experiment

Disclaimer: I am by no means a scientist. Here, I have tried my best to document what I’ve done and my ‘findings’. Regardless of it all, I hope you enjoy what I’ve done and picked up something from it.

Origin of the experiment

In the midst of my research on how to better sous vide, what should be done can be counter-intuitive at times. One example being the use of raw garlic when cooking. Tossing in a few cloves of raw garlic into a marinade before stewing the whole concoction and you build on the flavors present in the dish.

Sous vide, however, operates at a much lower temperature, resulting in a stronger garlic taste being present in the food prepared. While it remains safe according to A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking (due to a mixture of time spent in an environment above the danger zone), using garlic powder gives you the flavor you are more used to.

When browsing the Serious Eats Complete Guide to Sous Vide Steaks for some casual bedtime reading, I read that:

Intuitively, you may think that adding a flavorful fat, like butter or olive oil, will in turn help create a more flavorful steak. In fact, it turns out that this achieves the opposite goal: It dilutes flavor. Fat-soluble flavor compounds dissolve in the melted butter or oil and end up going down the drain later. 

Sous Vide Steak Guide | The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt

All these time, I’ve been chucking in chunks of butter before sous vide-ing. One rationale of doing this is to ensure aromatics’ flavour are able to consistently spread across the whole steak as it cooks. Does it really make it taste less flavorful? Well, there’s only one way to find out!

Considerations

Now that I’ve had my steak-making worldview shaken, questions poured into my mind. I had to rethink everything.

1. Does the type of fat, i.e. Olive Oil vs. Butter make a difference?
2. Does adding more fat make the steak taste less flavourful?
3. What if I followed this YouTube comment on Lisa Nguyen‘s video that suggested browning the butter with garlic before pouring it in?
4. Will a longer cook time make a difference? i.e. the fat does not have the time to render out the flavours.
5. Is this a great excuse to cook up some steaks?

Keeping all these questions in mind, I went and got myself some steaks.

There were a few practical limitations that I had to consider as well:

1. The cuts of steaks will not have the same level of marbling or thickness. Due to budget constraints, I chose not to get a whole slab and have the butcher slice them to an equal thickness allowing for each cut to be as equal to each other as possible.
2. My searing technique needs work. The quality of it is not so much of an issue as much as the inconsistency. This will influence the texture and overall experience.

Cooking the steaks

With all the considerations in mind, and a bottle of soju in my belly, I prepared five different steaks to try:

1. Control – Steak, salt, pepper, one sprig of thyme
2. Olive Oil – Steak, salt, pepper, one sprig of thyme, 27g of Olive Oil (8.3% of steak weight)
3. Browned Butter – Steak, salt, pepper, one sprig of thyme, 54g of browned butter (20% of steak weight) with 20g of garlic
4. 5% Butter – Steak, salt, pepper, one sprig of thyme, butter (5% of steak weight)
5. 20% Butter – Steak, salt, pepper, one sprig of thyme, butter (20% of steak weight)

Each piece was salted 1 hour prior to being sous vide. The additional seasonings and butter/olive oil were added just before being placed in the sous vide water bath. The bags were then stuck in their hot bath for the next hour and half.

The different thickness of the steak resulted in different crusts being formed.

The outcome

I would like to state that at the end of the day, those are still five really tasty servings of steak that were finished at the end of the night. You could see the effects of sous vide with the edge-to-edge medium-rare present.

Results of the taste tests can be found at the start of the post. However, I would say the winning discovery is the creation of beef tallow infused with rosemary, thyme, garlic, and butter. This was then used as a base to fry up some fried rice.

I believe additional tests should be done for a more concrete result. The use of a blowtorch or searzall to create a more consistent crust and prevent cross contamination. Another variable to examine would be the cooking time as well as the marination period.

Another excuse to cook up even more steaks! What about you, do you add butter to your steak when sous vide-ing?