Culture and fashion have nothing to do with it. It’s chemistry. How many times does that have to be explained?
Go ahead and burn your steaks but you should at least be aware that you can save yourself a buck by not paying extra for qualities which will never make it to your plate. Not understanding that very simple point is indeed unsophisticated.
Nonsense, I worked a hot line and do know how to properly prepare meats. mrAru likes his steaks well done, and I like mine walked to the table and hit on the head [ok, black and blue=)] and believe me, there is a very big difference in the taste and texture. No amount of resting will redistribute the lack of moisture in well done to make the meat tender and the fibres lubricated. Plain and simple, fully coagulated proteins will be tough. I think well done is disgusting, but it is what he was raised eating and likes. I have no desire to force him to eat his meat any way but the way he prefers.
FWIW, I do NOT use different cuts of meat for mrAru and I. If anything, I will rare cook the least marbled piece for myself and the more marbled piece for him. AND I also like a judicious amount of a1, bulgogi or tonkatsu sauce to dip a corner of each bite in.
Chronos, read pulykamell’s post. It explains the difference between types of meat that can and should be cooked for a long time (the strong muscle parts of the cow) and the parts that don’t have strong muscles (like the filet) You just can’t cook a steak to well done without some (if not a lot) of loss in quality. Just like you can’t cut a brisket into steaks, and cook it under high heat, and have any reasonable expectation of being able to eat it.
Dude. It’s just meat.
Ack!
Seriously, though, this sophistication argument is a sideshow for me. Even if I hate a work of art, I don’t want to destroy it. Preparing a truly good steak is culinary artform that takes a great deal of time and care, and cooking such a fine cut until it’s brown in the middle is, quite simply, destructive to what makes it a fine cut. I know it’s just a piece of meat, but…I love that piece of meat so!
Alas, I shall be lost on page three…
The big contention is that high quality meat has more fat–and particularly well-marbled fat. (Speaking entirely from likelihood, not actual knowledge) this has come to be viewed as “good” meat because since olden-times the only people who could have fat cows were the people who had surplus food to waste on their livestock. I.e. nobility. Poor people of course had to eat their meat off of their own scrawny cow. So in a class system, which would be viewed as the “proper” cut of meat is going to go with what the nobility got.
Now, if you like fat mixed in with your meat, then cooking the meat less comes out with a nice meat plus a slight bit of greasiness on top that can boost the meat flavor.
However, that little bit of extra boost that you get is less than you get by choosing a less fatty cut and cooking it all the way through. The cooking really accentuates the meat flavor–again, much more than fat does–and adding fat into the meat just gets you grease which essentially waters down the meat at higher temperatures.
As to tenderness:
And that’s the final nail in THIS coffin. Brilliant!
This is all an interesting exercise in theoretical speculation, but it’s simply incorrect on many points.
Not at all. It’s not in the least a cultural artifact; it’s all about mouth feel. Beef that’s not as well marbled with fat is denser and drier; it’s quite objectively (as near to objective as you can get with such things, at least) not as pleasant in your mouth.
Again, not at all. If it’s the right proportion of muscle to fat, and if it’s well distributed, there’s no “greasiness” at all. There’s simply a good balance of firmness to tenderness, and flavor, etc. That’s what’s good about the marbling: the fat “mixed in” with the meat is no more evident on its own than the eggs “mixed in” to the cake batter. It’s just part of an overall balance.
This is simply not the case, and is not how cooking, or tasting, works.
I hear you saying you like well done meat better. Fine. But I also hear you trying to justify somehow that well done meat is demonstrably “better,” and more flavorful, universally; and that people who like their meat marbled and less well done are gullible victims of cultural fashion. This is of course hilariously wrongheaded. I’m glad you like your meat well done, but you shouldn’t feel the need to prove that everyone else is stupid in order to feel “right” about that preference.
You simply have no idea what you’re talking about.
You’re talking about the fatty strip on the OUTSIDE of a piece of meat–i.e., the NON-MARBLED fat. The soft, non chewy part is the fat; the chew part is gristle. The fat that is marbled throughout a good piece of steak is absolutely the opposite of chewy. I don’t know who’s charging you $100 for a steak shot through with gristle, but if he offers you a bridge you should get out of there, fast.
As I have said, some cuts of meat are better well done–skirt, flank, brisket, e.g.–so no one is contending that it’s impossible for well done beef to be good.
Yes! Food is just an arbitrary fashion, ever changing, following traditions old and new. It is subject to the whims of people. People who like it, people who don’t, and pretentious snobs who take it upon themselves to dictate what is gauche or the pinnacle of new taste. Ya know why you consider Chateu Lafite 1987 such a great wine? It’s because there are a bunch of people telling you that it is great based on a purely subjective sense. You are branded with the idea and the
pretention of something, not the object…it’s old grape juice ferchrissakes.
The height of good taste and sophistication in Iceland is eating Uremic acid, Ammoniac, rotten shark. Benchmarks are arbitrary in food, it’s what appeals in very broad senses to people and purely subjective. I’ll bet a lot more people would choose MD20/20 in a blind taste test against your Chateu lafite. Why is it that the more sophisticated something is, the more it resembles and tastes like Bullshit? Could it be that the sophisticates enjoy the taste of their Bullshit?
Actually, I had a great idea for a restaurant that serves all well done meat. I was thinking of a small street shop with a Yakkitori/Kebab crossover theme. Grilled meat with fresh sauces and condiments served with fresh baked pita or wraps. All meat, all well done, all delicious. I think there would be a market for it.
Have any of the well done steak lovers ever had to return a steak for not being of sufficient quality? I’d suspect they’ve gotten some. Bet you’ve never noticed.
As for burgers - in California you are not allowed to sell burgers cooked less than medium. Major bummer, though it is less than an issue than steak. I cook mine the rare side of medium, and never have had a problem.
According to you. My mouth says otherwise.
Not as pleasant if you feel that a denser meat is less pleasurable–which is based on what you have been taught, or personally reasoned to think of as good meat. It isn’t a foregone conclusion that more meaty-meat is bad.
There is if you like non-fatty, well-done meat. Emphasis on like.
That’s opinion.
It’s evident to someone who doesn’t like it.
It is if the way you are cooking is for lean, well-done meat.
Not at all, my point was that logically there is as much of an argument to be made for more meaty-meat as for more fatty-meat but that the reason meaty-meat has lost through history in the culinary world is because the only methods studied and taught to chefs for how to get the most of their cow is for preparing fatty-meat. Whether people like marbled-fat, rawer steaks or lower-fat, well-done steaks is up to the individual but both are perfectly good decisions. Coming down on that “only marbled meat has a good texture” is skipping even justifying your position and instead mandating it as fact.
In any steak I have ever tasted there was only red/brown meat stuff and white/transparentish stuff. The thicker white stuff is chewey, and the more marbled transparent/whiteish stuff is stretchy and definitely not like a nice buttery thing. If the big blocks of white are a separate bit from the little cell-walls of marbling, I had never realised. Whether they’re called gristle or fat, I just prefer that they be gone.
Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Metropolitan Grill, etc. Again, whether it’s gristle, or we have different opinions on the texture of fat, I don’t know. I thought it was all fat.
Many have in this thread. My post was a response to the general topic, not anything you wrote.
Dude, you have to realize that you’re revealing more about yourself than about other people? It’s ludicrous–verging on clinically paranoid–to insist on a conspiracy of people who would secretly rather be drinking MD20/20, but who instead drink something unpleasant just to make you feel inferior.
Some people don’t have tastebuds as sensitive as others’; some people have a different emotional response to food; everyone has a unique relationship with food and what they like and don’t like.
It sounds like you have a LOT more issues with the social implications of the food you eat than the sniggering cabal that exists, I assure you, only in your head.
Just because you like well done meat better than less well done meat in no way makes it necessary to insist that EVERYONE secretly feels the same way, only they’re afraid to reveal their nasty little secret. Your tastes are your own. I don’t know why you need to prove that your tastes follow some kind of universal standard, even if no one else has the courage, like you, to admit it.
I can’t speak for everyone else, but I can tell you most emphatically for myself, that I have eaten a lot of meat, of any and all possible degrees of doneness, and when I make steak for myself, at home, with the shades drawn, I make it medium rare. I have finally perfected my technique to get my steak exactly how I like it best, after many, many iterations of cooking time and temperature, and how I like it best is just past the cusp of red-to-pink. As it gets more well done, as the grey/brown encroaches on the pink, and as the center turns paler pink, the meat begins to lose some of the winey tartness of pink meat, and begins to taste a little duller, a little drier. You may not like that winey tartness; you may like the more rounded, smoother flavors of more fully cooked meat. Good on ya. But try to to tell me that, secretly, I do too, only I’ve been seduced by a cultural conspiracy.
I went through the same thing with red wine. Hated it. Bitter, nasty stuff. Then once, in a fancy restaurant–teenager, mom, broadway show (tuxedo!)–I had a glass of GOOD red wine. It was like a movie in a my mouth! It didn’t just slam into the back of my throat like a wad of bitter; it changed from second to second! The tarry bitterness I’d always associated with red wine was simply absent, and in its place were a series of delicate little flavors that told a story as they passed over the surfaces of my tongue and passed down my throat, as their essence passed over my nasal passages when I sighed in bliss. I was like Helen Keller kneeling in the mud! So THAT’S what it’s about! The unique stature that wine has as one of the single most essential components of the whole history of human culture is not an accident of fashion, nor is it a millennia-long conspiracy of snobbery. That night, I discovered the “magic” of red wine. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I can tell you emphatically for myself, that I would rather pay $50 for a great bottle of Zinfandel than be paid $50 to drink a bottle of MD20/20. And you to tell me that I’m just the gullible victim of a conspiracy of snobs is insulting to me, and paranoid of you. Have a little humility dude: your tastes do not determine the universal standard.
I don’t look down on you for liking different things than I do. I’m a bit bewildered, and it makes me wonder about things like individual variations in taste buds, and how important are the things we eat as children to the tastes we develop later in life. It piques my curiosity, but engenders no feeling of snobbery. Sorry, just not there.
Sagerat: Quite simply, fat is not chewy, and gristle is. If it was chewy,* ipso facto* it wasn’t fat. Fat liquefies. So saying “Whether they’re called gristle or fat” is like saying “Whether they’re called oranges or apples.”
It’s great that you have decided how you like your meat cooked, but there’s no need to invent cultural theories based on inaccurate grasp of the facts (the difference between fat and gristle; how marbling works; how mouthfeel works; how fat carries flavor; etc.) in order to justify your tastes.
Just cook–or order–your meat the way you want it, and quit being such a snob about it.
The last steak I wanted to send back was undercooked, I ordered it medium and it came to me medium rare. It was tough and bloody, stringy and without flavor. A heavy metallic tinge…Bleagh!
I ate it anyways, but I’m sure it would have improved in flavor and texture with a few more minutes on the grill.
What a way to start the week. I’ve just read patiently through this thread nodding my head sagely at everything lissener and Diogenes the Cynic have said. I’m sure they’re both bucked up no end at the validation. 
The only trouble is, now I’m hungry, and not for the sausage sandwich in my lunchbox, unfortunately.
With all the talk about what Bourdain said and meant here is what he does say:
‘Saving for well done’ is a time-honored tradition dating back to cuisine’s earliest days: meat and fish cost money. Every piece of cut, fabricated food must, ideally, be sold for three or four times its cost in order for the chef to make his ‘food cost percent’. So what happens when the chef finds a tough, slightly skanky end-cut of sirloin, that’s been repeatedly pushed to the back of the pile? He can throw it out, but that’s a total loss, representing a three-fold loss of what it cost him per pound. He can feed it to the family, which is the same as throwing it out. Or he can ‘save for well done’ - serve it to some rube who prefers to eat his meat or fish incinerated into a flavorless, leathery humk of carbon, who won’t be able to tell if what he’s eating if food or flotsam. Ordinarily a proud chef would hate this customer, hold him in contempt for destroying his fine food. But not in this case. The dumb bastard is paying for the privilege of eating his garbage. What’s not to like.
I haven’t the foggiest. If marbling fat also marbles gristle then I guess we have a solution, but otherwise, no idea.
boggles How is saying that “Either is equally potentially good if prepared properly for that style of meat” snobbish? 
Thank you