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I've recently been experimenting with sous-vide cooking. The results have been good, except that I find that the food can sometimes seem unpleasantly cold. Obviously I tried reducing the time between removing from the water and eating but this doesn't solve the issue completely.

For example, I cooked fish fillets at 50 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. The flesh was beautifully medium-rare but after just a couple of minutes on the plate I found it far too cold for my taste.

Are there any techniques to heat up the food immediately before serving without over cooking it?

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The core technique is prevent the food from getting cold.

With sous-vide and other low-temperature cooking methods, pre-warming your plates is essential. Also, sauces etc. should be pretty hot and you plate the coolest food (the meat or fish) last. Serve immediately.

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    In a lot of cases, you don't just serve the sous vide'd thing directly from the bag -- for example, for a steak, you pan sear it or something for a bit which would help in this regard to some extent, I'd think.
    – Batman
    Sep 20, 2016 at 5:44
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    @Batman - Correct. But as OP explicitly mentions fish, I wanted to cover those cases without pan-searing or torching as well.
    – Stephie ♦
    Sep 20, 2016 at 5:46
  • Yeah. I'm not a big fish person, but pan searing a tuna steak or crisping up the skin of a piece of salmon would still keep some heat in and be reasonable things to do post sous vide.
    – Batman
    Sep 20, 2016 at 5:50
  • Thanks @Stephie, pre-warming the plates and serving with a hot sauce made a big difference
    – Ravi
    Sep 27, 2016 at 14:36

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