First off, this is NOT a debate about what is the proper temp to order steaks, or a pit thread about people who always get steaks “overcooked” or “undercooked.” I’m genuinely curious about the temp “med well.” Let me explain what I mean.
Rare steak makes sense. You like beef raw, or damn close to it.
Medium rare also makes sense. You don’t like raw, but still like some red to your meat, as well as some pink.
Medium, again, perfect sense. You don’t want any red at all, just pink.
Well done is the same way. You don’t want any red OR pink, just brown.
But medium well is a curious sort…there’s pink in there. If you order med well, you’re saying that pink meat is ok with you, so why not just get medium? Assuming it’s cooked correctly (and heck, you can always send it back if it’s not, trust me, they won’t spit on it or do anything bad,) it will be just brown and pink, like med well, but juicier and more tender. Why is 1/4" of pink meat ok but 1/2" of pink meat not ok? (In a 1" thick steak, for instance.)
I suspect most of it is that people who order med well would be perfectly fine with medium, but are afraid of it getting a little undercooked and don 't want to bother having to send it back if it is, so order med well as a bit of “insurance,” and if it’s a little drier and tougher, then oh well, cause it’s just easier.
I prefer medium now, but was raised eating all my steaks well-done. for me, it was a step along the way to finding what I liked.
But it may give you, depending on the person/restaurant cooking it, some pink with a more crunchy outer skin. Either that, or I think you nailed it with your last paragraph.
I do medium well because I don’t want it overdone. If it comes out a little more pink than I like, it is correctable. If it comes out too done then you have to start over.
But that’s what I want to know. Why is a little pink ok, but a little more not ok? How do you decide that yes, this is the perfect amount, or no, that is too much? It’s all pink (and brown,) so why not just eat medium?
Because when I order “medium,” it generally comes medium-rare, and my guts are a little too sensitive to undercooked meat. However, if I order “well done,” it is generally too tough and dry.
You’re right in one respect - in my experience meat in restaurants is cooked less than what you order far more commonly than overcooked.
As for the second part, true “medium well” does indeed exude less blood/plasma/lysed organelle contents/whatever than rare meat, but is certainly nice and tender if the meat is a decent cut. But that starts getting us into the realm of the Rare Meat Aficionado Overlords and neither of us wants to go there.
How do you decide? Well, you eat it… and if it tastes good, then you’ve got just the right amount. It’s like putting salt on a steak. If you put a little salt on a steak, why not dump the entire shaker? Because having a whole lot of salt on a steak doesn’t taste as good as having just a little salt on the steak. For some people, having a lot of pink in a steak doesn’t taste as good as having just a little pink.
I’ve always eaten steak well-done. I was once in a steak restaurant and mentioned that though I liked steak, it tended to be a bit dry most of the time. The person I was with said, “Well, ya idjit, if you wouldn’t order it well-done, it wouldn’t be so dry.” I think it was my mom.
Mom turned out to be right and medium-well was really good. I’m working my way down the scale. I’m thinking about kicking it down another notch soon.
For me, it’s a partly comfort zone thing. I started ordering steaks well done, mostly because that was how my mother ordered them and my big brother did (at least when we were younger,) but then decided that I wanted to experiment. Knew that I didn’t want to go the other way of ‘extremely well done’, so I tried medium-well, found that the inside was a bit juicier and tastier like that, but could still be chewed well.
A couple times, like other people have mentioned, when I venture into ‘medium’ territory, I get something that seems much too deep a pink and is a bit rubbery to chew. That may well be ‘medium-rare’, but I just know that I don’t like it
IMO, a lot of MW orders are given as insurance that the steak won’t come too rare. In many fashionable eateries, red has replaced pink as the optimum inner doneness, probably because pink is a rather narrow window where you’ve really got to know your meats, plus nonbeef dishes bring more prestige and recognition to a kitchen and its chefs these days.
No it’s not. Almost all blood is drained out of the cow before it’s slaughtered and cut up into steaks. It’s merely water from inside the cells and the interstitial space. And before you ask, the color is from other things in the water, like iron and proteins.
You really just fucked up my post steak ritual of tipping the plate above my head and bathing in the blood.
Shelli - loyal steak orderer of “somewhere between rare and screaming.” In fact, at the one and only Dopefest I attended Sauron and Aries28 got watch me order it as ‘tear off the horns, wipe its ass and drag it across the grill.’
Tragically, in the Pacific Northwest a lot of restaurants seem to have decided that if steak should be rare and tuna should rare, then chicken and pork also should be rare. Not an excellent idea from either a culinary nor health perspective. I’ve never encountered this in New England.
That’s exactly why my missus orders it this way. She likes just a bit of blush in the centre of the steak, but would prefer the chef erred on the side of brown, than the side of bloody.
For similar reasons I’ve moved from ordering rare, to medium rare, after one experience in an “Argentinian” steakhouse that gave me a steak that looked like the aftermath of a car wreck.
To my way of thinking, there is no medium-medium. It’s either medium rare, or medium well. “Medium well” means you want it on the well-done side of medium, while “medium rare” means the reverse.
So are there really people who just order “medium”? Personally, I’d hear that and be waiting for the other shoe to drop. But then I don’t work in a restaurant. And if I did, I’d be lousy at it.
That’s also why I order it medium rare. Never ordered it rare but I am afraid of getting it a bit TOO rare. I’d do the exact same thing the OP is suggesting when I wanted a medium steak, order medium well.
Medium: Pink inside, but with the texture associated with being cooked (i.e., not rubbery, not red). Medium-rare: Seared outside but rare/red on the inside. Medium-well: Cooked most of the way through, with some pink in the middle.
Assuming it’s cooked correctly (and heck, you can always send it back if it’s not, trust me, they won’t spit on it or do anything bad,) it will be just brown and pink, like med well, but juicier and more tender. Why is 1/4" of pink meat ok but 1/2" of pink meat not ok? (In a 1" thick steak, for instance.)
