first of all, why do I have to tell the chef how to make the steak? “medium rare”? “well done”? those are words made up by wizards or something. second of all I don’t like how they taste. they’re super expensive and they just taste so boring. chicken goated steak boring. I’m in my early 20s so I’m getting used to some “acquired taste” things slowly like wine and coffee but steak is still so bland.
a steak as a concept is meant to be a section of meat from a non-locomotive muscle (fewer fibers = more tender) that is roughly proportional to what someone hungry would eat in a single sitting. tougher muscle groups require longer cook times at lower temperatures (like several hours, sometimes after an overnight soak in a brine to accelerate the breakdown of tougher fibers/tissues) or other processing (ground meat is basically mechanically pre-chewed so you can bite through it). that pre-chewing creates a food safety issue, because it much of the cut has been exposed to the air, so “undercooked” hamburger (red in the middle) can have pathogens introduced during the grinding process from exposure to the ambient air and unsanitized surfaces.
so a traditional steak cut is a cut that can be seared on its outer surface but safely cooked only minimally, preventing it from drying out or becoming too tough. i.e. it can be prepared to the eater’s desired texture and tastes easily and safely, which generally means it can be bitten through. there is a whole field of muscle biology dedicated to meat and objective measures of tenderness (sheer force test).
personally, i think steaks are kinda bullshit and something affluent people, especially affected-masculine types use to try and stunt on each other. “let’s go get steaks” “ill grill us some steaks” “i grill a mean steak”. as though it’s hard to put a few cuts of meat on a grill for a few minutes on either side and take it off. a no frills hamburger requires more effort and attention to do well, and people make fun of burger flippers as lacking skill.
even within the world of flesh eating, steaks represent the most disengaged eater who wants a meal made from the easiest to prepare and easiest to consume cuts of an animal, which represents a very small minority by weight of the meat of any animal. because everything is so easy, steak cuts command the highest per pound price. and frankly, a steak as a meal is just a big hunk of meat and some garnish. like a child making a sundae that is 95% hot fudge with a little smear of ice cream. there’s way too little plant fiber in that meal to be reasonable for anyone’s digestion, so it’s a decadent “celebratory” type of meal, i suppose. but it’s wasteful and pricey, imo.
to understand how to prepare less expensive/desired, common ingredients to feed, comfort and delight many people takes real skill and talent. steaks are the opposite of that.
a no frills hamburger requires more effort and attention to do well, and people make fun of burger flippers as lacking skill.
And this is considering the fact that making good tasting Hamburgers has the highest reward to effort ratio in the world. Grilling meat is even easier.
Basically the fast food of “real” dining, no matter where you are, you can order a steak and basically be satisfied with the same slop unless you eat at a legitimately bad place.
While the rest of the family tries interesting stuff, insecure dads can get their adult kids menu meals.
so “undercooked” hamburger (red in the middle) can have pathogens introduced during the grinding process from exposure to the ambient air and unsanitized surfaces.
Rare beef tends to have enough cysts already in it that you wouldn’t want to eat rare beef - for example the primary method of infection of toxoplasma gondii in humans is eating undercooked meat
The cysts themselves are tiny, like 25 micrometres (0.001 inches) so you can’t really tell if they’re there
Good steak tastes good. How do you get yours cooked? I try not to eat meat now, but back when I did I loved rare or medium-rare. The more you cook steak, the less flavor it has.
I think it’s like a decadence and wealth thing, because it feels like the whole idea behind them is that the cooking is just there to bring out the innate quality of the singular ingredient and anything but the mildest and most rote additions are treated as somehow sullying it, with the implicit idea that the quality is directly tied to how expensive and luxurious it is. It’s such a boring, gross, and fundamentally backwards way of approaching cooking imo, where instead of working with methods and available ingredients to make something good you instead start from the idea that you must not disrupt the natural quality of your expensive and luxurious one allowed ingredient and that it should be savored as the blandly decadent thing that it is.
Good kofta is better than even the “finest” and most decadent steak and I will fight anyone who disagrees.
Tbf that’s not an inherently bad way of thinking about ingredients, most sushi nerds will praise “real” sushi for not drowning the fish in spicy mayo and other extras to appeal to white people, but instead focusing on enhancing the rice and fish.
I fundamentally reject any sort of cooking that’s hyper focused on needing the most perfect and super special of all ingredients to work and that’s all about how awesome and cool the ingredients are. It’s far more impressive and valuable to be able to take whatever assorted ingredients and scraps happen to be on hand and produce something wholesome and good from it than it is to “master” the “fine art” of having something “amazing” to start with and not “ruining it” by changing or controlling where it ends up.
Haute cuisine is bad no matter where its from. Cooking should be something adaptable and vulgar, not rigid and prestigious.
That’s a fair viewpoint, I mainly bring up sushi because I think most hexbears are way more forgiving of the same kind of mindset when it’s distinctly non-white.
Most of the best dishes I’ve tasted and made myself are definitely on the side of using odd stuff and throwing things together to cook for a long ass time.
I’ve never had it but looking it up I think I can imagine what it’s like enough to agree with that.
Steaks are more a signifier of status than something actually good to eat. In my head steak, cigars and whiskey all fall into the same category of “manly” shit that is actually just miserable.
Whiskey tastes like fossilised underpants, cigars have no discernable flavour or fragrance and just burn my tongue and steaks taste like nothing regardless if its £1 or £100 and dry aged tastes like the steak was left behind a radiator and forgotten about. Anyone who has a different opinion is wrong
I love hexbear because we all roughly agree on some fundamentals and then I read a comment that feels beamed in from a world I’ll never know or experience
I get not liking whiskey. I fucking love scotch but I realize it’s not for everyone. But cigars? There’s a reason they’re addictive lmao
I like whiskey too, but it’s clearly a niche taste for a specific kind of weirdo, and shouldn’t be some symbol of masculinity any more than, say, having really specific tastes in ramen.
The only whiskey drink i like is an old fashioned but i feel like its more about the other ingredients that carry the cocktail then the whiskey itself. I could probably make one with rum which is the superior spirit.
Rum which is the superior spirit.
Serious question - how is rum a superior spirit?
In my head steak, cigars and whiskey all fall into the same category of “manly” shit that is actually just miserable.
I disagree. Cigars and whisky are amazing, although I prefer having them separately to enjoy my cigars better. As others said, they just shouldn’t be considered “manly chud” shit. Everyone can enjoy these, but it doesn’t mean everyone must enjoy them. It’s okay if you don’t like them, or the culture surrounding them, but when they’re good, they’re really good.
Buy Cuban cigars, support the Cuban Revolution.
“medium rare”? “well done”? those are words made up by wizards or something.
That’s just how long you cook it, it’s not just a thing with steak but all red meats. Most people prefer it to be at least somewhat “rare”, meaning less cooked with still some red juicy meat in the middle. “Done” is when you cook it all the way through, this tends to dry out the meat though and make it less flavorful.
