Sous Vide Short Ribs With Red Wine Sauce

This Sous Vide Short Ribs recipe, with a quick and easy red wine sauce or beef au jus, produces rich, tender and decadent sous vide beef ribs. They’re as succulent as our beef plate ribs and 3-2-1 ribs.

This beef short ribs recipe is a perfect pairing with creamy sous vide potatoes for your holiday dinner.

More popular sous vide recipes: Sous Vide Prime Rib, Sous Vide Tri Tip, Sous Vide Chuck Roast, Sous Vide London Broil, Sous Vide Ribeye, Sous Vide Lamb Chops, or Sous Vide Pork Tenderloin.

Sous Vide Ribs

Sous vide is our favorite way to make short ribs, a notoriously tough cut of beef. Beef short ribs are small pieces of meat, so it’s easy to overcook and dry out. As such it must be cooked low and slow to yield any edible results. 

Cooking beef ribs in water delivers restaurant-quality food at home as this is the method many high-end restaurants use. 

Sous Vide Beef Short Ribs

This sous vide short ribs recipe requires the use of English cut short ribs, not flanken. If you’re unsure of the difference, here’s a nice overview with visuals.

Red Wine Au Jus

The basis for the red wine sauce is the one we use when making Individual Beef Wellington. It’s created in two steps: the initial cook time that creates the sauce that goes inside the bag with the meat and then the final cook time which includes all the delicious meat juice.

If you don’t cook with wine you can always swap out the red wine sauce with our classic Prime Rib Au Jus or prime rib gravy.

Sous Vide Beef Ribs

Here are the main ingredients you need to make these sous vide short ribs. For the full list of ingredients, please reference the recipe card below.

Short Ribs

• Beef Short Ribs, English Cut

Red Wine Sauce

• Red Wine, Dry Varietals
• Beef Broth (we use Instant Pot Bone Broth)
• Shallot
• Garlic
• Rosemary or Thyme

Aromatic Ideas

Throw some aromatics in the bag for added flavor, if you like. Here are a few ideas: thyme, rosemary, oregano, onion, etc. Sous vide does bring out the concentration of the herbs, so use sparingly.

How To Cook Short Ribs

Making sous vide short ribs is remarkably easy to master. It does take pre-planning as it takes a full 48 hours to cook (at minimum 24 hours). The prep work itself, is a breeze. 

Consult the recipe card below for full details.

Step 1 – Pre-heat the sous vide water bath using a sous vide immersion circulator.

Step – 2 Sear the ribs in a very hot pre-heated skillet for 3-4 minutes per side.

Step 3 – Make the red wine sauce and transfer the sauce and ribs to a Vacuum sealed bag

Step 4 – Transfer the bag to your sous vide machine and set the timer to the proper length.

Step 5 – Remove from the water bath then transfer the ribs to a cutting board to rest while you make the red wine sauce using the juices.

Timing

The beef short ribs will be in the water bath for a minimum of 24 hours up to a maximum 48 hours, so plan accordingly. 

Temperature

Our preferred temperature is 149°F. It’s tender and as soft as butter at this temperature.

We’ve seen anything from 144°F – 150°F listed, but we found 149°F is the sweet spot, especially since we aren’t reverse searing, which increases the final temp.

Boneless Beef Ribs

This sous vide short ribs recipe can also be utilized with boneless beef ribs. No edits to the recipe are needed.

Back Ribs vs Short Ribs

Quite a few differences between the two cuts. Back ribs are from the upper back of the cow, while short ribs are cut from the lower portion of the rib cage. Shorts ribs have meat on top of the bones, making it easy to get to, which back ribs have the meat between the bones.

Sous Vide Equipment

• Sous Vide Immersion Circulator – Any brand will work! We use the Anova Immersion Circulator.
• Vacuum Sealed Bags – You can always use a Ziploc bag and use the water displacement method vs a vacuum sealer with a sous vide bag, if desired.
• Sous Vide Food Container – We use this sous vide food container for our sous vide beef recipes, but you can use any large stock pot.

How To Re-heat

The best way to re-heat sous vide short ribs is to heat them back up in a water bath! Heat the water to 5°F below the cooking temperature you used the first go round. Keep them in for 30 minutes, or until warm through out.

Expert Tips

• Reserve searing beef short ribs creates a LOT of smoke. Turn on the oven fan and/or open the windows, before turning the oven on, to get ahead of it a bit.
• Make sure to do a thorough job patting dry the short ribs with paper towels. To get a good pan-seared crust, the ribs needs to be dry.
• Make sure the meat is fully submerged in the sous vide bath. If the meat isn’t fully submerged it won’t cook properly. Do not even attempt as food safety would not be guaranteed.
• If your sous vide bag floats, try to re-seal or utilize something to weight it down in the sous vide bath. You can always add a few heavy spoons, or pie crust weights, to the bag before sealing or invest in sous vide weights.

Serving Ideas

Serve with Sous Vide Asparagus, Sous Vide Carrots or Garlic Mashed Potatoes for a complete meal.

It will also pair well with anything on our “What To Serve With Prime Rib” list.

Leftover Ideas

If you have leftover sous vide short ribs, here are a few recipes to consider using it in:

Short Ribs Chili (perfect addition to smoked chili)
Prime Rib Sandwich
Tri Tip Sandwich
French Dip Sandwich

Drink Pairings

Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Bordeaux, Spicy Zinfandel, Syrah or Merlot