How do you like your meat cooked?

[patrick1]

Do Americans have no taste in food or something?

From my experience, it is the Europeans, (well maybe just the British and Irish) who have a tendency to absolutely ruin the meat by overcooking.

I like realistic's answer- steaks rare and burgers medium rare.

[Sopranos Republican]

Medium Rare.

[dead0man]

I don't eat steak, well done burgers thankyouverymuch.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Well done, but only because deep fried wasn't an option.

In all honesty though, I ain't much of a steak person. Just tastes like leather to me.

Because you've clearly never had a good one... nor had it cooked well.

That's what everyone tells me. And I still don't get it. I've had pinkish, "nice" steaks, and I guess they're a bit juicier and more tender, but they still have that same irony taste. I dunno. Not my thing. I'd much rather just have a steak sliced up, pan-fried, slathered in teriyaki sauce, and thrown into a wrap.

[Smid]

Depends on the meat. I like poultry and pork cooked more thoroughly than beef and seafood.

Well chicken, yeah, no one wants rare chicken. But Bushie is talking about red AMERICAN meat. No one ever asks how you want your chicken cooked, and if they do, God help you.

My mind is recalling the warning at the bottom of most restaurant menus:

* Consuming undercooked meats, eggs, and poultry increases the risk of food borne illness.

That's true. But man, there is nothing worse than a well done piece of steak, unless you enjoy gnawing on shoe leather for a few hours. I can't imagine anyone wanting to eat red meat well done. It just boggles my mind, unless their parents raised them poorly and always fed them well done meat, and if that is the case, it is time to break free and try new things.

I prefer to make sure my steaks aren't still mooing when I eat it!  I don't like seeing a lot of pink or red in my steak.  I don't like completely well done as a lot of times it comes out burnt.  I prefer medium well.  I can do medium, but I will send back anything that is cooked less than that, and I prefer medium well.

Oh, heavens! Have you ever had a steak cooked properly? My best friend's parents had always cooked their meat well done, but last time we went to Peter Lugar's, I convinced him to try it medium rare, and his mind was changed forever and ever.

I was much like your friend, and someone convinced me to try medium rare (that would be more than a decade ago now), and like your friend, I've never looked back.

Polnut - I don't think I've had steak tartare, although I do love carpaccio. Next time you're down this way, we might just need to do my favourite Japanese barbecue restaurant (pending timing and all the normal things).

I want to try a blue steak sometime.

Well done, but only because deep fried wasn't an option.

In all honesty though, I ain't much of a steak person. Just tastes like leather to me.

Because you've clearly never had a good one... nor had it cooked well.

I think the words are "cause" and "effect"

[traininthedistance]

Restaurants save the really bad cuts of meat for people who ask for their steak "well done".

I usually say medium rare, or medium.  There's a point where it's just too bloody to enjoy, and the right amount of cooking makes it more tender.  And you do have to get burgers a little more well done- I don't worry about bacteria in a whole cut of meat, but when it's ground its more of a concern.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Restaurants save the really bad cuts of meat for people who ask for their steak "well done".

I usually say medium rare, or medium.  There's a point where it's just too bloody to enjoy, and the right amount of cooking makes it more tender.  And you do have to get burgers a little more well done- I don't worry about bacteria in a whole cut of meat, but when it's ground its more of a concern.

True, but a little pink in the middle almost definitely wouldn't be a problem.  That meat is still cooked and debugged.. but it'll be tender and moer flavorful.

By the way, I tried Mettbroetchen in Cologne... they are basically German hard rolls cut in half with raw ground beef (usually pork, but these people had beef).  You top it with very thinly sliced onions and salt and pepper.

The taste is alright.. but the slimy cool to the touch meat is just a turn off.

Have any of our resident Germans had Mettbroetchen before?  I don't know if it ranges beyond Cologne.. but I'm sure there are similar variations in other places.  

Language lesson:  Mettbroetchen directly translated is "Meat bread-chen"... the chen on the end of brot (which means bread) indicates a "smaller" bread, like a roll.

In english, there are still relics of this word construction in words that end with -kin, like napkin.  Napkin is a conjunction of nape (which means "cloth) and kin, which makes the object diminutive, thus indicating a "small cloth" or "towelette" ('ette' is the common suffix nowadays for such constructions).

[Platypus]

Hamburger needs to be free from all pink, probably medium-well done. Steaks should be medium rare if they're quality meat, medium if they're not or marbled.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Steak, rare.  Hamburger, medium rare.

[angus]

Do Americans have no taste in food or something?

From my experience, it is the Europeans, (well maybe just the British and Irish) who have a tendency to absolutely ruin the meat by overcooking.

I like realistic's answer- steaks rare and burgers medium rare.

That's not it.  Or it's simply not the most appropriate venue in which to make the observation.

If I order a steak in the US, I order it rare.  Actually, I specify rare but warm, which I take to be what others have called "somewhere between rare and medium rare."  (I voted rare for the thread.)  I'd also do this in Canada, Germany, Japan, etc.  But in most of the world I probably would not do that.  If you order a steak rare in China or Mexico, for example, they stare at you like you are mad.  I know this from experience.  And folks from the developing world generally, in my experience, think it a very strange thing for anyone to want uncooked or undercooked meat.

As for taste, warm is always more intense than cold.  It's a complicated dance between the thermodynamics and kinetics of the molecular interactions between tongue and food, but basically warmer foods, whether delicious or nasty, will have more intense flavor than the same food served cold.  This is why soft-serve ice cream took off in the 50s.  It allowed for all the weird ice cream flavors to be served at a temperature at which one's taste buds could more fully access them. 

If one wanted to intelligently comment about the lack of taste among North Americans, or Westerners in general, a thread about having cola and beer served "ice cold" would be a more appropriate venue in which to make the observation.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Well done. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but oh well. Had rare once and I could barely chew it.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Well done. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but oh well. Had rare once and I could barely chew it.

Most likely it was an inferior cut.  If you go to a place that serves really good meat, or buy the really good stuff, it melts in your mouth.   Next time you get to go to a good restaurant that specializes in good cuts of beef, try medium rare as a baby step.

[Knives]

All meats should be pink except for chicken and hamburgers.

[angus]

Well done. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but oh well. Had rare once and I could barely chew it.

Most likely it was an inferior cut.  If you go to a place that serves really good meat, or buy the really good stuff, it melts in your mouth.   Next time you get to go to a good restaurant that specializes in good cuts of beef, try medium rare as a baby step.

If you cross-reference this thread with another recent one that wonders whether humans are a "higher form of life" than other animals, I wonder if there is any correlation.

After all, a tiger don't need no stinkin' Doyon 20-gallon capacity circle air convection oven.  As for me, I like that we have learned how to distill fermented grain beverages.  That alone is enough to stand us above the tigers.  

Still, there are folks who like their meats cooked.  Early man, even before he made his way out of the fertile valleys of East Africa, and once he got used to the immense heat given off by the burning bush after a lightning strike, figured out that the giraffes and zebras were a little easier to digest if you denature the proteins on a flame.  Certainly fajita meat, although "inferior," tastes good when cooked, and even better with a little Cholula on top.  

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Well done. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but oh well. Had rare once and I could barely chew it.

Most likely it was an inferior cut.  If you go to a place that serves really good meat, or buy the really good stuff, it melts in your mouth.   Next time you get to go to a good restaurant that specializes in good cuts of beef, try medium rare as a baby step.

If you cross-reference this thread with another recent one that wonders whether humans are a "higher form of life" than other animals, I wonder if there is any correlation.

After all, a tiger don't need no stinkin' Doyon 20-gallon capacity circle air convection oven.  As for me, I like that we have learned how to distill fermented grain beverages.  That alone is enough to stand us above the tigers.  

Still, there are folks who like their meats cooked.  Early man, even before he made his way out of the fertile valleys of East Africa, and once he got used to the immense heat given off by the burning bush after a lightning strike, figured out that the giraffes and zebras were a little easier to digest if you denature the proteins on a flame.  Certainly fajita meat, although "inferior," tastes good when cooked, and even better with a little Cholula on top.  

You've been nipping on that flask in your filing cabinet, haven't you

[Hatman 🍁]

I prefer my steak to not be mooing when I eat it

[Torie]

MR

[Kitteh]

I like my meat to not be on my plate.

[opebo]

Generally speaking, I don't. As in, I only rarely eat it. When I do, burnt, basically.

What the heck is wrong with you?

[opebo]

Steaks rare, hamburger medium rare

Sounds just about perfect!

[opebo]

Do Americans have no taste in food or something?

Precisely!  They shovel burnt low-quality garbage into their mouths like threshing machines.  And grimace at you the entire time.

[opebo]

I don't eat steak, well done burgers thankyouverymuch.

Jesus, just as one might've expected.

[angus]

You've been nipping on that flask in your filing cabinet, haven't you

haha.  Actually, it's time to restock.

I did get 'hold of some broken meat over the weekend.  It had a funk but I decided to eat it anyway.  Rare.  Big mistake.  Copious liquid evacuate the rest of the day.

There are advantages to cooking it once in a while.

[Leftbehind]

Well done. I see you can't even escape the evangelist bores on here, falling all over themselves to chastise you for having the temerity to eat the steak how you prefer. BUT BUT YOU'LL RECEIVE THE CHEF'S CONTEMPT!!

I wouldn't mind as much if it weren't just fashionable and received wisdom by this point, usually parrotted off by people who oddly have no passion for food at any other point in time, and probably had Justin Timberlake on in the car on the way to the restaurant.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

This thread makes me sad.

Also, don't hate on JT.