I have to stick with the steak=rare, burgers=rare to medium rare folks - and Kiros, that’s why I LOVES me some Fuddruckers - because they DO know how to make a rare burger. YUM - now I want lunch!!!
MrsB earned her doctorate studying e. coli bacteria. And we have a friend who spent two years in the quality control lab for a major meat processing company.
After hearing enough horror stories about renal failure, brain damage, fungal infections, bloody diarrhea, dehydration, working conditions, and just how frequently slaughterhouses and the like fail government inspection, there’s only one way I like my beef: on someone else’s plate.
Now I have to find where the nearest Fuddruckers is. Thanks 
I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking how you feel about sashimi . . .
Shit, I eat uncooked hamburger meat with salt because it TASTES GOOD. I prefer my burgers medium-rare.
Steaks, rare. Nothing past medium rare. Take your steak out of the fridge hours before cooking it, get it to room temperature, and just sear the outside for 2-3 minutes.
The only times in my life I think I’ve gotten sick from food, it was shrimp once, and oysters once.
SInce I’m quoted in the O.P. I guess I should gird for battle and join the fray. 
Brown is well done. People have lately curruped the rare-medium-well scale. But it is not relative for burgers, steak, or personal tastes.
Very-rare, Cincinnati rare, Philly rare etc:, Seared outside mostly blue inside.
Rare: Mostly red, some blue left.
Medium rare: Mostly red, blue cooked out, out edges turning pink.
Medium: a bit in center red, mostly pink.
Medium well: Mostly brown, bit of pink in the middle.
Well done, brown throughout.
Very Well done. Cooked beyond reaching brown.
That’s the scale. Learn it, use, it trust it. I feel so sorry for waiters who have a customer order medium-rare, then send it back because it’s not mostly brown, and blame the waiter.
As for me, It depends on the meat.
Hamburger-worse than chuck: Medium, the meat isn’t that good.
Hamburger-chuck: Medium-rare, the meat is good enough.
Hamburger-sirloin: Rare, good meat to taste the meat.
Steak-ribeye, Medium-rare, lots of good fat to be made melty by heat, rare just doesn’t make it oozy enough.
Steak- T-bone, loin, New York strip.: Rare, Not as much fat to melt, very tender barely cooked, great taste that shouldn’t be destroyed.
I love carpaccio, but only for the higest quality prime, cut thin enough for the fat to melt under mouth heat. Trying to pass choice off as carpaccio should be illegal. Never tried Kobe sashimi, but I would love to.
As for e-coli/food poisoning. Ehh. A healthy adult has little chance of getting it all, very low chance of a bad case, and nearly zero chance of dying from it. And a bad case just means you spend a day or too drinking lots of water staying near the toilet. Gives you time to read, and isn’t much worse that a bad flu.
Well, I don’t like seafood in general, so definitely no sashimi, no sushi, etc.
My ideal burger is not only brown, it is also very thin. It should hang out of the bun a little bit. I used to patronize the only hamburger joint in the state that cooked them this way, but obviously it wasn’t a popular choice because that place is now out of business. When I make them for myself, that’s how I do it.
Steaks–medium rare, pink to red inside, and very thick.
Depends on the burger really. Store bought should probably be browned all the way through, there is little taste advantage and probably more danger in having such burgers not cooked through completely. Which in terms of steak classification is well-done.
Home made thick burgers mad with fresh mince should be cooked as the eater wants them. For me that would be slightly bloody on the inside, ie medium-rare. I am healthy and so not at great risk from any surviving bacterior in the burger, and appreciate the flavour of the medium rare mince.
People are excessively fearfull of raw meat in general. If you are healthy and not pregnant, then raw beef poses very little danger. If you like beef rare then enjoy it that way. Myself I love some beef tartare, mmmm.
Burgers should be cooked medium rare, warm pink center
Steaks should be cooked no more than medium rare, warm pink center is as far done as I’ll go, otherwise the flavour is cooked out, I’d prefer rare/LIGHT medium rare…
seasoning for rare steaks should consist of no more than salt and pepper, or maybe a light amount of “Mrs. Dash” seasoning mix
using A-1 Steak Sauce on a rare/med. rare steak is an Abomonation unto Nuggan…
if I want beef jerky I’ll buy beef jerky, don’t cook out all the flavor in steak by going to well or well done
fish should be served raw and on a small ball of rice, or wrapped in seaweed and rice… (MMMM…Sushi!)
Burgers- medium rare. But I do not buy the packaged ground chuck at the store. I buy some decent cut of meat and have it ground, then grill it within an hour or so. More and more my burgers are turkey, though.
Steaks: The rare side of medium rare. For a really nice filet mignon, rare. And I love me some sashimi!
The tradeoff is that cooked meat is more tender, but raw meat has more flavor. Contrary to popular belief, fully-cooked (i.e., well) meat is not tough; it only gets tough if you keep on cooking it significantly past fully-cooked into “charred”. Personally, I value texture over flavor, so I prefer my meat more towards the “done” end of the spectrum. I like a little bit of pink in the center, which should be called “medium well”, but a lot of restaurants will go rarer than what you order, so at those places, I have to tell them “well”.
For burgers, the meat being ground means that it’s going to be tender no matter how you cook it (this is why tartare is ground), so you could go rarer than for whole steaks, but only if you trust the provenance of your meat. Yes, I’ve heard many people claim that they’ve never had food poisoning, but I think it’s much more likely that those people just never realized that they had food poisoning. Most cases of upset stomachs, nausea, and diharrea are caused by mild food poisoning, and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s never had those. Severe food poisoning (which kills or requires hospitalization) is admittedly rare, but even mild food poisoning isn’t any fun.
All that said, if I’m cooking for someone else, I will do my best to prepare their meat in the manner they request. If they want to take the risk of Montezu-moo’s revenge, that’s their call. And I’ve never met anyone who liked their meat shoe-leather done, nor can I imagine why anyone would, but if I did meet such a person, I’d make it that way for them, too.
I only cook meat to keep people around me from telling me how gross I am. Otherwise I’d never cook meat. Ever.
I’ve had food poisoning three times – each time from eating shellfish on a Sunday or Monday. Never had a problem with beef.
I like my steak medium rare to rare. If I’m cooking it, it comes off the grill at 130 F. When I cook burgers, which isn’t often, it’s ground chuck cooked to a little pink inside.
I never buy that cryovac ground beef from a big store; that was ground at a big packing house. When you read about E. coli outbreaks, the meat is always from one of those. I go to a small grocery known for its meat. When I go there for ground chuck, I know it was ground right there, that same day, and it has no “mechanically deboned” meat in it.
About bacteria: All meat contains whatever bacteria was in the muscle when it was walking (or swimming) around. Most of that won’t hurt you. When the animal is killed and taken apart, the innards are removed, and they’re, uh, fulla shit. That’s where the E. coli lives. The cutters have to be very careful to keep the shit and the meat apart. They are quite good at that, which is why we’re not all dying from E. coli.
Ground vs. whole: Intact muscle has most of its cells unbroken, and it’s not easy for outside bacteria to get inside the piece. Ground meat is much more vulnerable to contamination. Cell membranes are crushed willy-nilly, and the ground meat is exposed to the air as it comes out of the grinder in strands. It’s a cinch for airborne bacteria to get right into the middle of a lump of ground beef. Just because the opportunity is there doesn’t mean the meat got contaminated, though. Millions of people eat ground beef every day, and very few get sick.
Sounds like some of you would approve of my son’s recipe for steak (his kindergarten class made a “cookbook” for their moms). I posted this in MPSIMS, but I think it bears repeating here in this thread and I post it here, uncut and unabridged!
**Jason’s Steak
Get a piece of steak. Then put it on the grill. Let it cook for 10 seconds. Then flip it with a spatula. After you flip it let it cook for 19 seconds. Then take the steak off the grill and put it on a plate. Then cut it up and eat it.**
As for me, I like my steak with a warm, red center. Nice and juicy–delicious!
But it’s a different matter when it comes to a hamburger. Yeah, it’s a fact that I don’t like the risk of e. coli. But I also don’t like the squishy texture of uncooked ground meat, so even if illness weren’t a factor, I’d still want my burger cooked through. Just to the point of doneness though–not crisp and dry!
I like my meat brown all the way through. I don’t even mind if it’s burnt. I like it charred burnt yank-it-apart-with-your-teeth. I can’t even stand a hint of pink. I’m not afraid of food poisoning, I just like the taste.
Maybe I should be eating beef jerky instead.
I prefer my ground beef cooked rather rare – and I hardly ever grind it myself. I’m quite capable of grinding whatever cuts of beef I like myself, at my home kitchen, but I rarely bother to do so. Although I’ve not been sick yet, it’s a distinct possibility, I realize.
However, I don’t believe that raw beef has the potential to deliver the flavor which one associates with correct cooking. For that reason, steaks are cooked for me to medium rare. Certainly anything extraordinary, like a top-tier prime cut or the occasional (very, unfortunately) Wagyu must be sufficiently cooked; else, what is the point? Very rare or blue beef has, in my experience, not very much flavor at all. The sheer experience, however, of cutting into certain steaks cooked rare or to-raw, from veal, for example, may mitigate the relatively inspid, characterless quality of the flavor of such a cut as to make it all worthwhile.
That’s what I think - I must be a bit immune to it.
I’ve always eaten rare steaks and medium-rare burgers.
I’ve gotten food poisoning from the salad bar at Wendy’s one time, and once from bad seafood, but never from meat.
It’s all a matter of taste - I prefer my beef rare.
Unless the animal was dying of septicemia or something when it was slaughtered, there shouldn’t be a significant level of bacteria actually within the meat anyway.
Absolutely correct; not only are they full of shit, they’re often covered with it as well, either because they have been living in shit, or because they’re shat all over themselves and each other on the way to the abbatoir.