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Depending on the quality of the steak, rare/blue to medium rare. Honestly, anything over medium rare is wrong and anything over medium is ruined. There is truth to the fact that very often if you order well done in a restaraunt you are going to be given a sub-optimal cut/piece of meat because 1. you personally won't be able to tell the difference and/or 2. the ruined overcooking of said meat will hide the imperfections as leather is leather.
Freakouts about other people liking meat well done are bizarre. Who cares? It's not like any body's prohibiting you from eating your meat the way you like it, due to their choice to eat meat that it well done.
I like my beef steak medium rare but usually end up with well down if I don`t cook it myself ...............beef burgers always well done and the hazards are real and the bacterial can make people ill as steak is clean on the inside , mix it up as burger and look out No steak tartare ..............pork must be well done as there are bugs and worms is some cuts which must be cooked , ........... chicken well down at the right temp but the juices still inside ............. lamb best well done ,.............. wild game well down ,................ and fish and shell fish well done and no sushi pieces uncooked
Jeepers. If my pork chop has bugs and worms in it, I ain't eating it whether it's well done or not!
I've worked as a chef most of my life.
A quality cut of steak of a grade choice or higher should never be cooked beyond medium.
Not only does further cooking toughen the meat and dry it out, but due to the loss of blood (or myoglobin, for purists) and meat juices, the cut will actually weigh quite a bit less post cooking, so that you are spending the same money for less meat.
Further, if you are ordering medium well/well done/burnt at a restaurant you have just let the kitchen staff know that you do not truly appreciate a quality steak. Actually, we sometimes like to see these orders come in, because then we can use up the oddly shaped end cuts with lots of gristle, nerve endings, bruising and soft or hard spots; these are the steaks we set in the back of the reach-in cooler until they really can't be kept any longer, or until a well-done order comes in.
One steak house I worked saute in had "Prime Rib Night" as a mid-week promotion every Wednesday- a 16 oz slice of rib with sides for $19.95, eight bucks off the regular price. And every Wednesday the same couple came in and ordered two well-done ribs. In a restaurant situation rib roasts are almost always slow roasted to rare, and held at that temperature-bringing them up to mid-rare or mid was easily accomplished. But just try and bring a pound of meat up to well-done from rare in the short period demanded by restaurant patrons.
The well-dones the couple ate week after week? These were left-over end cuts from the previous week's special that we would pull from the reach-in, boil in the au jus and finish in the microwave. Never had a single complaint, other than, "Can you cook this a little more?"
HAH!
Medium rare. I got so tired of ordering medium rare and getting well done that I now send a steak back if it is over-cooked.
I have a recipe for an excellent steak. Start nova heat coals in a Weber kettle. Start with a 1" thick steak at room temperature. Put it on the coals, replace the kettle cover, vents wide open, and grill it for 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Turn the steak over, and grill it for another 2 minutes and 15 seconds. That's medium rare. If you want medium, add 15 seconds per side.
I give zero fuarks about how other people eat their steak. If I were ever to open up a steakhouse, I would make damn sure that the chef would cook the cuts of meat to the customers' liking (whatever that may be) and have available salt and pepper, ketchup, A1 sauce, for anyone who's not satisfied with the house seasoning. While disclaiming responsibility for well-done steaks is necessary (all bets are off when you cook a steak 100% through), being a pretentious prick and demanding the customer order their steak according to your specifications is not. Chefs are artists on commission, and short of asking for something that will reasonably offend the other restaurant patrons, the customer is always right.
Ketchup? A1 Sauce? You are talking really lousy steak if the flavor needs to be hidden. I would expect a steak like that to plate for no more than $5. A well grilled USDA choice steak doesn't need seasoning, except for salt. I sometimes will use Lawry's garlic salt, no other brand need apply.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeavenWood
That said, it's highly irritating when people call the red juice in steaks blood, regardless of whether they happen to like or dislike it. Myoglobin, in addition to not being blood, tastes nothing like blood. If you really want to know what blood tastes like, order yourself a bowl of Czerina (duck blood soup). The taste is very pungent--almost acrid--and is something most Americans (regardless of how they like their steaks) do not find palatable.
Unless they're eating a cut of steak from an improperly slaughtered cow, anyone who tastes "blood" in their steak has simply psychologically associated it with the food--no more, no less.
Around here we call it au jus. Blood clots and is opaque, au jus is clear and does not clot. I usually don't get much out of a steak, but my London broils are really juicy when they are sliced. The meat ends up sitting in a puddle of au jus.
cooking pork to 145f is fine-use to be recommended to 160
overcooking pork is an ole wives tale to kill the trichinosis
does anyone here know of anyone who got trichinosis??
I have sold millions of pounds of pork,,for over 30 years,, and not one case of trichinosis
I love pork-- its cheap and tasty...
the only bugs/crawlers ive seen in fresh pork was butchering organic pigs,
contrary to popular belief , the reason they vaccinate cows and pigs,,,is to keep them more healthy,, ironically,
organic critters sound good, but have you ever cut one up????
Ketchup? A1 Sauce? You are talking really lousy steak if the flavor needs to be hidden. I would expect a steak like that to plate for no more than $5. A well grilled USDA choice steak doesn't need seasoning, except for salt. I sometimes will use Lawry's garlic salt, no other brand need apply.
While I would never use any of that stuff, the point is that if the customer wants to dress his/her steak up with condiments, an what position would I be to tell him/her otherwise? I'm personally fine with just salt and pepper--sometimes garlic if I have a hankering for an oven-broiled Jewish-style ribeye.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell
Around here we call it au jus. Blood clots and is opaque, au jus is clear and does not clot. I usually don't get much out of a steak, but my London broils are really juicy when they are sliced. The meat ends up sitting in a puddle of au jus.
Au jus isn't derived by cutting into the meat, though. It's the fat and juices that drip off of it while cooking that are then later turned into an accompanying sauce (with varying levels of intervention).
A well-rested piece of meat won't spill out its juices when cut into, though a small amount of liquid coming out is more or less inevitable.
I've worked as a chef most of my life.
A quality cut of steak of a grade choice or higher should never be cooked beyond medium.
Not only does further cooking toughen the meat and dry it out, but due to the loss of blood (or myoglobin, for purists) and meat juices, the cut will actually weigh quite a bit less post cooking, so that you are spending the same money for less meat.
Further, if you are ordering medium well/well done/burnt at a restaurant you have just let the kitchen staff know that you do not truly appreciate a quality steak. Actually, we sometimes like to see these orders come in, because then we can use up the oddly shaped end cuts with lots of gristle, nerve endings, bruising and soft or hard spots; these are the steaks we set in the back of the reach-in cooler until they really can't be kept any longer, or until a well-done order comes in.
One steak house I worked saute in had "Prime Rib Night" as a mid-week promotion every Wednesday- a 16 oz slice of rib with sides for $19.95, eight bucks off the regular price. And every Wednesday the same couple came in and ordered two well-done ribs. In a restaurant situation rib roasts are almost always slow roasted to rare, and held at that temperature-bringing them up to mid-rare or mid was easily accomplished. But just try and bring a pound of meat up to well-done from rare in the short period demanded by restaurant patrons.
The well-dones the couple ate week after week? These were left-over end cuts from the previous week's special that we would pull from the reach-in, boil in the au jus and finish in the microwave. Never had a single complaint, other than, "Can you cook this a little more?"
HAH!
Excellent reasons to stay at home and cook your own food as you like it. Morons taking it on their own to demand you eat it the way they want you to eat it. Feeding customers inferior products as punishment amounts to theft and deceptive practices. This type of thing can certainly, if discovered, conclude with a chef and crew being dragged behind the wood shed for a good ass kicking. (In some cases) It amounts to the same thing as spitting in a patrons food when asked to warm it up. Hopefully "your" chef days are over.
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