I have a friend who is much, much whiter than me. Whenever I cook red meat (be it steak, roast, chops - doesn’t matter) she always, always, ALWAYS put it in the bloody microwave :eek: until its will is contested and an appeal lodged to the High Court.
I’ll never know why ol’ freckles’ meat eating ritual begins with mocking entire meaty potential and ends with killing all sensory appeal, so I’m glad I came across this thread.
Not because anyone will be able to give me good reason to ever crucify choice steak in some kind of hellfire above 55°C - but because now I know why it’d be good to *google thread titles by pop-up OPs. (A shout out to you, Omega Glory!)
And just because I’m here and this might be a bit of useful something-to-know for someone:
If you really, really don’t like seared, rare meat, don’t ever think you might like kangaroo fillet.
Eating **half your own Coat-of-Arms is hard enough to swallow without making it impossibly tough and inedible. It has to be served like that - it has no fat so it has to be cooked quickly. Like a normal person does eye-fillet.
Kangaroo tail can only be stewed though, so you rarey-scaredies can eat that end.
I’ll still fight you for it. If I could ever be bothered. Which I never would be. Although every time I say ‘never’ something opposite happens.
*** Some of us eat the other half too, but it’s not as convenient and inexpensive when you factor in the cost of the fuckin’ flight to the Northern Territory. Ironic for a flightless bird, really.
Just out of curiosity - have you ever eaten a steak rare, or medium rare? I only ask because it seems like the thought of it disgusts you (like it does most people).
A good rare or medium rare steak is VERY hard to make. The high-end restaurants where the lowest quality steak is a hundred bucks can do it, but even then about half of them are just overcharging for mediocre food. A good steak is cooked on an extremely hot surface, probably twice as hot (or more) than you’ll be able to get on your grill at home. This makes that delicious sear on the outside that everyone agrees is great, without drying out the inside. If a place is using normal heat, but just less cooking time (or even worse, lower heat AND less time) then yes, a rare or medium rare will suck bigtime.
Hmmm, I break down any of those food associations as:
hot dogs - ubiquitous
crawfish - associated with the Deep South, specifically Louisiana
fried foods - associated with the South/Southeast, but spreading fast
fast food - ubiquitous
sodas - ubiquitous
sweet tea - associated with the South/Southeast, but spreading fast
beer from domestic mega breweries - ubiquitous
blended whiskey - ubiquitous
bologna sandwiches- ubiquitous
I was at Longhorn last night with the wifey. Longhorn, while not exactly “high end” does serve very good cuts of meat. Steaks range from $13 to $35+, depending on the cut. You won’t find many Longhorn Steakhouses in economically depressed areas, but clientele at the one where we dined last night was roughly the same as the surrounding demographics - about 45% white, 20% Black, 10% Asian - with one exception. While the county is 20% Hispanic, I noticed no obviously Hispanic diners. That thought didn’t even occur to me until I was reading this thread, now I find it a bit odd.
I’ve never been to a steakhouse that didn’t offer rare steak - and I eat regularly at Waffle House, so it’s not like I’m some hoity-toity diner. Blue, sure, that’s hard to get.
Thanks for that. I learned a lot from that article.
Yeah, Saltgrass and Texas Land and Cattle are in the same tier of steakhouses as Longhorn, and they have no lack of minority patrons as far as I can tell.
And to follow up a bit on what Mosier was saying, the hard part about making a good rare/med-rare steak is that since steaks are cooked from the outside in, there’s always a doneness gradient from the outside to the inside. You may have the very middle rare, but it’ll grade outward to well-done near the surface. The extent of the various donenesses in the gradient depends on the method and the temperature that you cook it at.
For example, it’s relatively easy to take something totally raw and sear the outside, leaving the inside raw. This is done to tuna steaks all the time- you just need an extremely hot pan or fire. And it’s easy enough to cook the whole thing to a relatively uniform medium-rare; just find some way to use a temperature of 130 degrees or so, and you’ll have it. The hard part is to use a charcoal or gas fire of 500-1000 degrees and somehow get that seared/charred crust on the outside without managing to cook 2/3 of it to well done in the process.
Many steakhouses probably cook the steak on a lower temperature grill or in an oven until it’s mostly cooked, and then very briefly put it under the super-hot broiler to crisp up the outside. Some more cuisine-oriented places may even cook their steaks sous-vide to exactly the temp they want, and then briefly sear it.
But Mosier’s right that it’s very hard, if not impossible to slap a piece of raw meat on a 1000 degree grill and cook it so that the outside’s seared and the inside is a nice medium rare. You’re much more likely to end up with totally raw insides, or mostly well-done insides.
That’s exactly what I do at home. Cook a steak slowly at about 250F to your desired doneness (usually takes about 20 minutes or so), and then get a cast iron pan smoking hot and sear a minute or so each side. Perfectly seared outside and very little doneness gradient inside. No blowtorches or salamanders required. It is not very hard to make, but it does require knowledge of technique.
Wait–so, you’re saying that black people never eat raw meat?
Gored gored and kitfo are Ethiopian dishes made from raw beef. The last time I checked, Ethiopians weren’t white.
Lots of other non-white people eat raw meat in some form or another. In Korea, people eat yukhoe (kind of like steak tartare) and ganhoe (made from raw beef liver.) Nepal has kachilaa, which is made of raw water buffalo.
In case the OP was talking specifically about WASP people, and not merely people who might be counted as “white” in the US, we could mention some Middle Eastern dishes. Lebanon gives us kibbe nayeh, and Turkey would give us the similar cig kofte.
If you really want to get crazy, partially freeze the steak ahead of time, then cook it in the oven on whatever your lowest temp is, until the inside hits the temp you want (you do have to have a leave-in probe thermometer). Then pull out and sear!
(all credit to “Modernist Cooking at Home”… I’m just paraphrasing their method here)
Yes, it helps if you have a good hood/venting. It will smoke a bit. I find that I need to heat up the cast iron for about 5-8 minutes on full heat, then I turn it down to about 8/10 for the searing stage. Heating the meat in a slow oven first not only ensures even doneness, but helps with the searing as it dries the exterior a bit. (I still pat it a bit before throwing it on the pan.) When done, let rest for about 5 minutes. I also use a very thin coat of oil in the pan, as in put some oil in, and wipe out with a paper towel. What’s left is just enough.
I’m rural and white. I like medium rare steak. Or even rarer. As long as it’s warm all the way through, I’m good. I probably like it because it’s what I grew up on. But my mom, who cooked my steak growing up, is non-rural. My rural dad grew up eating it well-done, and his family still does so. Drives my mother crazy when someone microwaves one of her steaks (his family members really did like the way hers were cooked, though, and were vocal about that, and wanted her to cook steaks for them, just cook them more). She never said anything to them, but she’d start up after they left.
Then again, this is a woman who would also talk about how wrong the way a cake was left after being somewhere were cake was cut like pie instead of like this (not the best looking cake, but first pic I found; of course we cut each slice as we’re ready to eat to keep cake from drying out). She’s always sure her way is the right way. Personally, I really don’t care what other people do with their food.
So, probably due to what I ate growing up, I like pink or red beef. I’m even fine with pink ground beef, despite the risk. Still want pork and chicken done (or at least close to done), because that tastes better to me.
EDIT: I prefer grilled steak, but I actually don’t like sear/char on my steak. Seems like a lot of people would disagree with me on that one.
I’m a Latino (or brown boy, if you will) and while I love my steak rare (the redder, the better), I have to admit I come from a country that overcooks everything coming from a cow. I’ve seen steaks served medium to my family (visiting the US from down south) and they call it “raw” and my mom has to look away when I’m cooking my steak in front of her, so wrong does she perceive it. When I’m down there visiting, I’m judicious about choosing my restaurant meals with this in mind. So while I know it’s a cultural thing from whence I came, I’m also personally glad that it didn’t stick with me.
Why do black people (or more likely just you and a few others rather than every black person) think that the juice in meat is blood? Have you never seen blood before? It’s a bit like comparing milk to elmer’s glue. They might be similar in color, they might both come from cows, but they’re absolutely nothing alike in any substantial way.
The internet has given voice to a shitload of self-absorbed assholes who grab any chance to whine about people who don’t share their tastes. “Oh, you don’t like your steak prepared the way I like it? you must not like steak.” “Oh, you can’t recite BMW chassis codes from memory? you must not like cars.”
Bullshit. $100 for a steak is insane. It’s almost impossible to find a single serving steak at that price in the US. The only restaurants that sell single serving steaks at that price are serving Japanese Wagyu (including Kobe) that wasn’t even allowed into the country before 2012, and there are scant few of them in the country. The absolute best steak houses in the country are selling USDA Prime steaks at $50-60 for the cut, maximum, unless you’re including large cuts served for multiple guests.
It’s really not that difficult to make an excellent steak. I can easily get my two burner gas Weber up to 600°F which is less than ideal, but more than serviceable. The charcoal kettle is easy to get up to ideal temp of 700-800°F. You don’t need temperatures any higher than that cook a perfect steak. If you’re cooking 2" steaks, you do need two cooking zones, but that’s fairly trivial on either grill.
Sorry, if you’re trying to come off as some kind of steak expert, you’re not doing a very good job of it.
does eye-fillet.
