# How do you eat steak?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-steak/512842>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [October 6, 2009, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-steak/512842 "2009-10-06T19:38:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 8

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**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2009, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-steak/512842/141 "2009-10-14T01:33:12Z")

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Chose medium.

A large part of enjoying my meal is the texture and sight; I attribute this to having a relatively poor sense of smell, which is where I’m told most of the “taste” of food comes from. There are plenty of foods I probably would like if they didn’t look disgusting, the main one being eggs. Included in that is raw/rare meat, so I would rather my meat be “overcooked” than have the texture of undercooked meat. I’ve had “medium” steaks/prime rib that just didn’t have the right texture and had them sent back for more cooking; while they invariably will cook the meat longer than what I would prefer, I’ll at least be able to eat it.

And when I ordered a medium steak in England, it was brown throughout and somewhat tough. I’ve heard it said that the English are lousy cooks, but if that’s medium, what’s well done? Or did I just get a restaurant/cook/whatever who utterly failed in preparing my food?

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**Author:** ![SSgtBaloo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac91a4/32.png) [@SSgtBaloo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SSgtBaloo)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-steak/512842/142 "2009-10-14T22:04:57Z")

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> [@Munch](#):
>
> Even though this is an old post (and the poster since has been banned), this needs to be addressed.
> 
> Yes - well done will kill most germs. But so will cooking it rare! The germs people are paranoid about come from contamination after the butchering process - and they can only access the surface of the meat. If you’re looking to kill “most” of the germs, then cooking the outside surface (i.e. searing it) will get what you need done.

People who insist all meat is toxic until cooked good-n-dead are one of my peeves. Thank you for spelling that out in so many words, because some folks still aren’t getting the message. Beef is not pork or chicken. The outside of the steak is all you have to worry about unless you grind it up before cooking it.

> [@glowacks](#):
>
> And when I ordered a medium steak in England, it was brown throughout and somewhat tough. I’ve heard it said that the English are lousy cooks, but if that’s medium, what’s well done? Or did I just get a restaurant/cook/whatever who utterly failed in preparing my food?

I had a friend who insisted the English supplemented their cattle feed with recycled fish products. He claimed that if you had a “native” steak in England, it would smell and taste somewhat of fish.

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