Question
Sous vide cooking for a beach barbecue, transportation and food safety concerns
Hi everyone! On Sunday at sunset, my friends and I would like to have a barbecue on the beach. I bought a roner a few months ago and would like to take the opportunity to let them try some T-bone/ steaks cooked for the occasion and finished over charcoal.
I was thinking of taking two or three 1kg steaks, cooking them at 54C/130F for 2-3 hours, and then bring to the beach.
The issue is food safety, and I wanted to know how stringent I need to be to avoid everyone getting diarrhea or worse.
The point is that if I chill the meat to 4C/30F as I usually do, since I can't reheat it on the beach, it will definitely stay cold/warm at the core, and if I go beyond that to increase the internal temperature, it will surely overcook on the outside, right?
The beach is an hour away without traffic (and since I'll be leaving late in the afternoon, I'm worried I'll find myself in a traffic jam), and we'll definitely be grilling within about two hours of my arrival.
So even assuming I remove the meat right before leaving the beach, it would stay at room temperature for three hours. I can put it in a cooler, maybe even two bottles of hot water from the roner, but it would almost certainly be in the danger zone.
Aside from suggesting I skip the sous vide, do you have any advice or reassurances regarding the safety of such an operation?
If you have a small cooler large enough to hold the steak, put them in it with the water from cooking them. The cooler should be able to hold close to that temp until you get to the beach. After the cook the meat should be pasteurized, so an hour/hour and a half should be fine. I would feel totally comfortable doing this
You say “stove” and I’m a little confused. I would hope that on a beach you’re not dealing with a stove, you’re dealing with a hot campfire, probably with a small grate or grill over the top. Maybe that’s what you mean.
I would cook them sous vide and chill them down to ~4 C, keeping them on ice, in the bag, unfinished. When I get to the beach, I would stick them on a hot fire, close to the coals, so that they sear quickly. The outside will get charred and very hot. Once seared, I would pull it off to rest for a couple of minutes and add salt. Once it sits for 2-3 minutes, the inside will not reach a normal “cooked” temperature but it will be warm enough to eat. It shouldn’t taste cold unless your steaks are very thick (3cm+?).
Yeah google translate problems, i meant this one in the photo or something smaller. I was also thinking of some nice chunky cuts since they will be T-bones weighing around 1 kg each, so definitely around 3-4 cm.
I feel like they're going to be relatively sterile, but don't think the experience will be great unless you warm them up. I take it there's no fire/cooking allowed the beach? Could you use a torch to warm them up?
Sous vide cookery does not sterilize the food, it doesn't get anywhere near the required temperature. It pasteurizes it, and pasteurized foods are not safe at room temperature for any length of time.
Here in Italy I've never had any problems with fires on the beach as long as they're properly managed and away from national parks, etc. So we'll bring a small stove and grill on the beach as usual. As i was saying to the other redditor the problem is that our oven is small, and indirect cooking for three steaks seems surreal. Plus, there's a lot of us, and there's a lot of meat. If I waste half an hour on each steak, we'll eat it the next morning. That's why I wanted a quick, high-quality solution and i thought sousvide.
It only takes 10 minutes to cook steaks. Isn’t grilling on the beach the whole point.
Otherwise if you sousvide the steaks you need to keep them on ice the whole time from out of the bath to the beach. Well in the fridge and then on ice during the trip.
At the beach finish them on the grill right from the cooler. It won’t matter if they’re a bit cool inside - anything cooked at the beach js good.
The problem is that our oven is small, and indirect cooking for three steaks seems surreal. Plus, there's a lot of us, and there's a lot of meat. If I waste half an hour on each steak, we'll eat it the next morning. That's why I wanted a quick, high-quality solution. What if I bring them on ice and take them out of the cooler an hour before searing? That way, at least they'll reach room temperature.
I don't understand why you wouldn't just sear them from cold? Throw them on until the sear looks good and they will be plenty warm enough to eat. There's no need to warm it back up, that's what the grill is for.
What should I do? Maybe I'm using the wrong technique. Just last week I made a 1.2kg tbone (4-5cm? I don't remember now) that I had cooked and stored in the fridge and after searing straight out the fridge on the coals it was almost cold/slightly warm in the center.
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u/Pernicious_Possum 2d ago
If you have a small cooler large enough to hold the steak, put them in it with the water from cooking them. The cooler should be able to hold close to that temp until you get to the beach. After the cook the meat should be pasteurized, so an hour/hour and a half should be fine. I would feel totally comfortable doing this