I just want to tell you that your post was really heightened by including those pictures.
I know it’s a bit more trouble to include those kinds of links. But it really heightens the nature of your post. It left me with my mouth watering and a huge craving for that beautiful roast in your second link.
Well done!
Thanks. And I need to correct myself. It’s Maillard, not Malliard, reaction.
I am going to host a Dopefest.
For some, I will offer a selection of single malts, perhaps a Springbank, an Oban or a basic The Glenlivet or Macallan. I will have an array of (room temperature) cuts of beef to choose from, purchased from Pino’s in SoHo. After selecting, I will place them in one of our Olvidas (a pan that makes old-school cast irons weep with jealousy), bring them outside and hit them with a torch to ensure an even, thorough, all-over Maillard jacket. The residual heat and the heat that transferred to the pan will finish them, and while they rest I will whip together a hollandaise for either steamed asparagus or artichokes (putting it on the fingerlings is optional, but there will be an herbed butter made from our neighbour’s cow’s milk). I will have used the egg whites from the hollandaise to make an array of delicate meringues, ranging from coconut to almond to toffee.
For others, we’ll start with well whisky served out of expensive bottles, mixed with the soft drink of your choice. I will have swung by Sam’s Club a few weeks ago waiting for a sale, so I’ll take the frozen cuts and thaw/pre-cook them in the microwave. I’ll finish them in the main oven, ensuring they are a perfect 170. There will be plenty of ketchup and A-1. For sides, I’ll put together a nice packet of McCormick hollandaise for your boiled broccoli, served alongside a green bean casserole. A selection of Chips Ahoy and Hydrox will be available for dessert (along with a jug of milk from our local convenience store).
Before dinner, the two, separate groups will be served crudités (this being the Dope and all, everyone gets crudités), during which I will ensure that this thread will come up. After some distraction (perhaps the corpse of a banned member popping up in a gotcha ya moment), it will be forgotten about until after both groups have dined together. At which time I will simultaneously reveal the nature of both group’s meals and that there is easy access to a set of PVC goat cannons in the next room.
Watch your mail for invitations.
Well, I’m not trying to eat my mouth, so your comparison fails. What is not to “get” about someone not enjoying the texture of a particular food? Rare beef Is like eating a bloody flesh sponge. No thanks.
Oh geez, I was joking there! I thought it was obvious that it was faux-outrage on my part. I thought the simple disparity between the triviality of the op and my over-the-top reaction to it would speak for itself. An emoji probably would have helped.
I understand that I broke the rules here but I must insist that I violated the letter of the rule but not the spirit. Please reconsider this warning.
See my explanation in post #70. When cooked right a cheap cut of meat at “well done” will be juicier and more flavorful than a filet. I recommend Cooking For Geeks; it does a good job of explaining the science behind good food, especially meats.
I get what he is saying. I used to avoid a lot of foods because I hated the texture. Then one day, I got over it. I don’t know why.
But I do get where Ambivalid is coming from.
Well, yes and no. High-collagen foods will end up being more tender when cooked well done, but it requires a lot of time to render that collagen into gelatin that tenderizes the meat. In my experience, when cooked for a short time to well done levels like is done typically with a steak, filet is much more tender than a high collagen cut, especially something like chuck steak. There is no possible way a quickly (I mean like 10-15 minutes, normal “well done” cooking times for steak) cooked well-done cheap cut like chuck is more tender than a filet cooked quickly to that same doneness. It takes several hours to get that high collagen cut properly tender, and anyone who’s made a stew has probably observed that, as the meat initially tightens up and becomes like chewy leather, and then a couple hours later, it “relaxes” and becomes scrumptious and tender. Seriously, try the experiment yourself. I hate well done meat, but, like I said above, my mother loves it and when I was a kid, all the steaks were cooked well. The filet was always much more tender than any other cut, even cooked well. I mean, hell, get a porterhouse or T-bone, cook it well, and try the strip part of the meat vs the filet part and tell me the strip is more tender. It’s not.
I share your definitions, but while I prefer medium-rare done perfectly I positively loath full-on rare. Better over-cooked in this case, so in any restaurant in which I am uncertain about the cook I order medium, because then a little under-cooked is usually perfect and medium-well for me is far more palatable than rare.
The whole idea behind a pot roast as well. I always use a fatty, gristly chuck roast for pot roast because they have the best tenderness and flavor after several hours in the oven ( with some appropriate liquid ). Leaner round roasts just don’t cut it IMHO.
Which, then, logically would imply that the best way to cook a steak would be to cut it into a thin sheet, grill it, and fold it back up.
That would be logical if the brown bit were the only one of interest in a steak (which, perhaps for some people, it would be, and hence thin cut steaks would b advised.) It’s a bit like saying the ideal cake is all frosting (which, once again, for some people, it probably is.)
My chef friend made me carpaccio from filet that was tissue paper thin. I’ve tried to reproduce it, but even lightly freezing and using my sharpest knife I wasn’t able to match his. Turns out his secret is he uses a medical tool (a dermatome) to shave incrediably thin slices.
I like rare.
I once had a coworker who said she always ordered her steaks well done, even for fine steaks. And - I am not making this up - she said she put ketchup on it. When she saw me cringing she said, “That’s how we do it in Kentucky!”
And she liked it?
Excellent! I’m always glad when people get food they like.
My wife tells our girls, when they make faces about what we eat, “Don’t yuck my yum.”
Words to live by.
I love chuck roast for this reason. Has anybody here tried putting a large chuck roast (7-8lbs) in a smoker, low and slow, like a pork butt? I want to try this as soon as the weather warms up.
Decide, no. Have an opinion, yes.
Why? We talk about anything and everything under the sun here at the Dope. Why do you think this particular topic shouldn’t be discussed?
Seriously, I’m kinda perplexed about your attitude here.
ETA: Sure, people are going to disagree vehemently (and possibly irrationally) about this topic, but that’s true about everything from guns to backing into parking spaces. That’s the Dope. We do that.
Yes. It works fine. I prefer brisket, but chuck works. It’ll be more shreddy meat, like the point of a brisket, versus the flat.
If cooking it well done means “turning it into shoe leather”, then you’re not cooking it to well done, you’re overcooking it.
Moreover, I can guarantee you that you can taste the difference between a well done filet mignon and a well done sirloin.
I agree that people should eat their food however it suits them, within the confines of appropriate* table manners of course.
But I, too, cringe when someone orders a filet mignon well done.
I don’t generally like my steaks rare; I’m more a medium-rare guy, by which I mean pink most of the way through, and I don’t mind a little bit of red and bloody in the center, but just a little bit, thanks.
But filet mignon is different, for whatever reason: it tastes better red than pink. Rare is simply the right way to cook it to bring out the flavor. Cooking it well done does away with the thing that makes a filet mignon an exceptional cut of beef.
Maybe a well-done filet mignon still tastes better than a well-done steak of a more run-of-the-mill cut; that I have no opinion on, because I don’t eat enough well-done meat to be able to say. But the difference between filet mignon and a more everyday cut, the value added by choosing the filet over the other, has to be greatly diminished at the well-done end of the cooking spectrum. But you’re still paying filet mignon prices for getting something only modestly better than cheap steak.
But hey, if you like it that way, it’s your money, and your taste buds.
*Meaning if you’re at a fine restaurant, you don’t pick up that turkey drumstick and bite into it, but if you’re at a picnic, you do.
People often remind me this board is dedicated to eliminating ignorance. I’m not sure whether you have done that or not. But it certainly seems to me as if the purpose of your post is to attempt to do exactly that.
So, thank you and Bravo!
I tried doing a little googling, but I couldn’t find any articles talking about what a well-done filet would actually taste like, objectively, compared to well-done cuts of other meat. If anybody has such a link I’d be interested in reading it.