Sous Vide Time Calculator

Estimate sous vide heating time from thickness and starting temperature.

Please note: Cooking guides only. Times and temperatures vary with oven calibration, altitude, starting temperature and cut. For anything where safety matters — poultry, pork, sous vide, preserving — use a probe thermometer and follow your national food safety guidance rather than a calculated time.

What the Sous Vide Time Calculator does

Sous vide timing depends on how long heat takes to reach the centre, which is governed by thickness rather than weight. Because heat penetration follows the square of that distance, a steak twice as thick takes four times as long — the single most useful fact in sous vide cooking.

Formula

Time ≈ (Thickness ÷ 25 mm)² hours for a slab from the fridge
Cylinder ≈ half the slab time — heat enters from all sides
From frozen ≈ 50% longer

Inputs explained

Input	Unit	Required	Notes
Thickness at the thickest point	mm	Yes	Accepts more than 0.
Shape	one of 2 options	Yes	—
Starting from	one of 2 options	Yes	—
Water bath temperature	°C	Optional	Accepts 0 or more.
Extra tenderising hold	hours	Optional	Time beyond heating through, for tough cuts. Accepts 0 or more.

How to use it

Choose Shape and Starting from.
Enter Thickness at the thickest point.
Optionally add Water bath temperature and Extra tenderising hold.
Select Calculate.

Worked example

A 40 mm steak from the fridge in a 55 °C bath.

Thickness: 40 mm
Shape: Slab
From: Refrigerated
Bath: 55 °C

(40 ÷ 25)² = 2.56 hours, so about 2 h 34 min to heat through. At 55 °C that gives a medium finish.

Frequently asked questions

Does a heavier steak take longer?

No — only a thicker one does. Weight is irrelevant to heat penetration; a wide, thin steak heats through as fast as a small, thin one.

Can I leave food in the bath indefinitely?

No. Above 54.4 °C food is being pasteurised and can hold for a long time, but below that there are strict limits. Texture also degrades eventually as enzymes break the protein down.

Method and sources

Method. Conduction heating time only. The centre of a solid reaches bath temperature in a time proportional to the square of its thickness, halved for a cylinder because heat enters from all sides rather than two. Frozen food is given a fixed 50% extension.

Assumptions

The food is a solid, uniform piece of roughly even density, fully submerged, with water circulating freely around it.
The bath is already at temperature when the food goes in, and holds it.
Thickness is measured at the thickest point — the figure that governs heating is thickness, not weight.

Limitations

This calculates heat-through, not pasteurisation. Reaching core temperature reduces no pathogens on its own; that requires holding at temperature for a further period which depends on the temperature, the thickness and the organism, and which this calculator does not compute.
Below 54.4 °C there is no hold time that reliably pasteurises, so results at those temperatures describe doneness only.
Bagged food that floats, is stacked, or is packed with a thick sauce heats more slowly than the model predicts.
Immunocompromised people, pregnancy, and cooking for the very young or very old are outside what any general table covers.

Sources

Published sous vide pasteurisation tables from a food-safety authority or a peer-reviewed source — Varies by jurisdiction. The hold times this calculator deliberately does not provide. The heating model here says when the centre is up to temperature; only a pasteurisation table says how long it must then stay there.