Sous vide times, and where they come from

Why sous vide is the one method where this reasoning holds

The pasteurization explainer argues that published time-and-temperature tables assume conditions a kitchen cannot provide — chiefly monitored humidity, because a drying surface shields bacteria from heat. Sous vide is the documented exception, and not by our reading: the USDA exempts processes where drying cannot occur, naming full immersion in liquid and cooking in a sealed, moisture-impermeable bag. The FDA Food Code says the same, treating a moisture-impermeable bag as providing 100% humidity.

A water bath also solves the problem an oven cannot. Baldwin measured surface heat transfer at 95–155 W/m²·K for consumer and restaurant water baths against only 14–30 for ovens, and notes that the core temperature is insensitive to that coefficient in a bath and highly sensitive to it in an oven. In plain terms: the calculation is robust to the one thing you cannot control, which is exactly why it transfers here and nowhere else.

Heating time — flat cuts

Time for the centre of a slab-shaped cut (steak, chop, fillet) to come within half a degree of the bath, starting from 5 °C / 41 °F. Measure the thickest point, not the weight, and round up — an underestimated thickness is the single most dangerous input on this page.

These are solved from the heat equation published in Baldwin's peer-reviewed 2012 review, not copied from anyone's table. The constants are stated below so the numbers can be checked.

Heating time — roughly cylindrical cuts

A tenderloin or a rolled roast behaves as a cylinder and heats considerably faster than a slab of the same thickness, because there is more surface per unit of volume. If a cut sits between the two shapes, use the slab figure: it is the slower and therefore safer of the two.

Where a cell says "not advised"

The USDA recommends limiting the time a product spends between 10 °C and 54.4 °C (50 °F and 130 °F) to six hours or less, and the NSW Food Authority applies the same limit independently. Every regulator that has looked at low-temperature sous vide has conditioned its acceptance on that constraint.

So this page computes that window and refuses to print a time when it is breached, rather than printing one with a warning beside it. A number on a page gets used regardless of what sits next to it. If your cut lands in a refused cell, raise the bath temperature or reduce the thickness.

Hold time, once the core is up to temperature

This table is quoted, not calculated. It is the FDA Food Code's holding table for whole intact roasts of beef, pork and lamb — current, in force, and citable, unlike the superseded FSIS tables discussed on the pasteurization page. We have no business deriving our own inactivation values, so we don't.

Add this to the heating time above; do not substitute one for the other. The BC Centre for Disease Control instructs kitchens to measure and record the two separately, and the same logic applies at home.

Holding time may include postoven heat rise. — FDA Food Code 2022, §3-401.11(B)(1)

What this page will not tell you

• Poultry below 74 °C / 165 °F. The Food Code requires that instantaneously for poultry, and BC CDC advises against sous vide below 60 °C for it entirely. See chicken breast for the straightforward answer.
• Fish. The Food Code restricts reduced-oxygen packaging of fish, and parasite rules apply on top. Salmon covers what is useful without the bag.
• Mechanically tenderized, injected, brined-by-injection, rolled-and-stuffed or ground meat. These are non-intact: the surface is now inside. Whole-cut times do not apply, and the NSW Food Authority calls extended low-temperature cooking of mechanically tenderized meat irresponsible. See ground beef for why grinding changes the reasoning.
• Cook-chill or storage. Pasteurization does not kill spores and nothing here is shelf-stable. Serve, or chill rapidly.
• Anything for a food business. Under the FDA Food Code a food establishment using sous vide must submit a HACCP plan to its regulatory authority before implementation. This page is written for home cooks.

Assumptions, constants and sources

Heating times solve T_t = α(T_rr + β/r · T_r) with a convective boundary condition, as published in Baldwin (2012), Appendix A. Thermal diffusivity α = 1.11 × 10⁻⁷ m²/s — the lower of the two values he gives, so the model heats slowly and errs long. Surface coefficient h = 95 W/m²·K, the low end of his measured range; conductivity k = 0.45 W/m·K. Geometry factor β = 0 for a slab and 1 for a cylinder. Starting temperature 5 °C / 41 °F.

A bath below 55 °C / 131 °F is outside this page's scope: the NSW Food Authority sets that as the floor at which Clostridium perfringens growth is prevented rather than merely slowed.

The method is Baldwin's; the arithmetic is ours and can be checked against the constants above. Both the NSW Food Authority and the BC Centre for Disease Control have reviewed and republished his work, and NSW notes plainly that his estimates are science-based but that regulators have routinely used more conservative values. Where this page had a choice, it took the conservative one.

Your circulator is almost certainly not calibrated. Check it against a separate thermometer before trusting a long, low cook — and read the methodology page for how this site treats sources generally.