Anova Culinary
Anova Precision Cooker 3.0
The default full size circulator: enough wattage to bring a 12 quart bath up quickly and hold it, with app control for long overnight cooks.
Sous vide time calculator by thickness
Updated
Quick answer
A 1 inch slab takes about 1 hour for the core to reach bath temperature, and a 2 inch slab takes about 4 hours, because heating time scales with the square of thickness. Weight does not enter into it: a wide thin steak and a narrow thick one of the same weight need very different times.
The formula
come-up minutes = 0.0930 x thickness(mm)^2 x shape factor shape factor: slab 1.00 cylinder 0.70 sphere 0.55 calibration: a 1 inch (25.4 mm) slab = 60 minutes
This is a one dimensional conduction model, not a measurement. It rounds long on purpose: in a water bath, overshooting the come-up time costs texture, while undershooting costs safety. The figure is time to CORE temperature, and a tough cut then needs hours more at temperature to convert collagen, which has nothing to do with thickness.
Gear that fits these numbers
What a repeatable bath actually needs
A circulator holds the temperature, a lidded container stops evaporation over a long cook, and magnets sink a floating bag so there is no insulated air pocket where the food never gets up to temperature.
EVERIE
EVERIE 12 Quart Sous Vide Container Kit
Container, hinged lid, divider rack and insulating sleeve together. The sleeve matters more than it sounds: less heat leaving the walls means the element cycles less and holds tighter.
ThermoWorks
ThermoWorks Thermapen ONE
One second and half a degree. On a page about pasteurization that accuracy is not a luxury, it is the difference between a figure meaning something and not.
TonGass
TonGass Sous Vide Weight Magnets, 8 Pack
A bag that floats has an air pocket, and an air pocket is an insulated spot where the food never reaches the bath temperature. Magnets fix that for under twenty dollars.
Anova Culinary
Anova Precision Vacuum Sealer Pro
A wet mode that pulls a shorter, gentler vacuum is what lets an external sealer handle a marinated steak without sucking liquid into the pump.
Inkbird
Inkbird ISV-100W Sous Vide Cooker
Full wattage at roughly half the price of the name brands, with a waterproof body that survives the splash a clamped circulator eventually takes.
Prices when last checked. They change often.
Why thickness and not weight
Heat enters through the surface and travels inward, so the only distance that matters is from the surface to the centre, which is half the thickness. Weight tells you nothing about that distance. Doubling the thickness roughly quadruples the time, which is why a chart organised by pounds is useless and a chart organised by inches is not.
This is also why the shape factor exists. A flat slab is heated from two faces. A cylinder is heated from all around its circumference, so it comes up roughly 30 percent faster than a slab of the same thickness, and a sphere faster still. That is the reason an egg in the shell cooks faster than its width suggests.
Come-up time is not pasteurization time
This calculator answers one question: when does the middle reach the temperature of the water. It does not tell you whether the food is safe at that temperature, because that depends on how long the core is held there, and that is a different calculation with a different source. Use the {{/calculators/pasteurization-time/|pasteurization calculator}} for that side of it, and read the {{/guides/how-sous-vide-pasteurization-works/|pasteurization guide}} before you cook anything below the published safe minimum.
Food safety note: Come-up time is not a safety figure. A vacuum bag is anaerobic, which is the condition Clostridium botulinum prefers, so keep bags refrigerated before the bath, observe the two hour limit in the 40 F to 140 F range, and chill anything you are not eating immediately in ice water.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a 1 inch steak take in a sous vide bath?
About one hour for the core to reach the temperature of the water, assuming it went in from the refrigerator. That is come-up time. A tender cut like a ribeye or a strip is ready at that point, while a tough cut is only starting, because collagen conversion takes many more hours at temperature and is unrelated to thickness.
Does a heavier steak take longer to cook sous vide?
Not because of its weight. Heating time depends on the distance from the surface to the centre, which is half the thickness, so a wide thin steak and a narrow thick one can weigh the same and need very different times. Measure the thickest point with a ruler and ignore the scale entirely.
Can I leave food in the bath longer than the calculated time?
For a short period, yes, and that tolerance is the main practical advantage of a water bath. The food cannot get hotter than the water. What does change is texture: proteins continue to break down, and a tender steak held for six hours becomes noticeably soft. Tough cuts are the exception and improve over many hours.
Does the model assume the food starts frozen?
No. It assumes refrigerator temperature, around 38 F. Cooking from frozen adds roughly half again to the come-up time, and it also means the food spends longer passing through the range where bacteria multiply, so it is worth thawing in the refrigerator first rather than in the bath.
Why does this calculator round long?
Because the two errors are not symmetrical. Leaving a tender cut in for an extra twenty minutes costs a small amount of texture. Pulling it twenty minutes early means the centre never reached the temperature you were relying on, which is a safety question rather than a quality one. A model that errs long is the safer tool.
How this calculator works: it applies the formula above to the numbers you enter. Where a figure is published by the USDA or FSIS we quote it and name the source. Where a figure is derived from a physical model we say so and state the assumptions. Where we have no defensible figure the calculator returns nothing and tells you why, rather than guessing. This is researched general information, not professional food safety advice.