Meat Blasphemy – Well-done Steak

[Tatoosh]

While I realize that for most folks here, a well done steak is simply blasphemy, it is a necessity for me. My wife loves beef but will not touch anything that contains pink.  I might be able to slip a medium well done in if I turn the lights down.  She is not from the USA and it is a cultural thing for the most part.  One that is not going to change any time soon.  So given that I love my wife (which I do) more than I love steak, I now need to find a way to make it as palatable as possible.  Why, you may ask.  She's eating it, I can have mine however I want.  No such luck. She insists on sharing.  

So I'm after the best technique to do a well done, no pink, steak and keep it as moist as I can.  I have read this page, Juicy Well-Done Steak (by MerelyMarie) and it looks promising. But before I start sacrificing cattle on the altar, I figured I would ask here.  I'm sure that some chef's or food buffs have crossed this path before and if there are tips or techniques for getting palatable results, I'd love to hear them.  

Thanks!    

[kayb]

Would "sharing" extend to buying one steak, cutting it in two, and cooking her half well done and your half the proper way?

 

I have a child who requires a very-little-pink steak. I cringe and cook it for her. I love her dearly, but I draw the line at sharing her steak.

[gfweb]

Well...if you must...Sous Vide will give you the least overcooked well done you can get.

 

How long you been married?  LOL

[Paul Fink]

I don't understand the "sharing" problem.

Why can't she have her piece & you have yours?

[chileheadmike]

My wife will only eat steak (pork, or chicken) extra super well done, usually a filet. I don't have any problem doing it. I load half of the Weber with lump charcoal and let that get screaming hot. I sear her steak and then move it to the side with no charcoal, let it sit until it's extra super well done. At that point, I start mine. 

 

Unfortunately, restaurants don't seem to be able to do this. For our anniversary dinner this last time, we went to one of the nicest restaurants in town. She asked if they could do it, they said of course. Then after the third try we gave up. 

 

I'm curious why she insists on sharing a single steak. 

[btbyrd]

I would insist on not sharing. Insisting on sharing is strange to me.

But to be fair, she should be allowed either to choose how well-done the steak is or be allowed to insist on sharing.

 

It's unjust for her to force her barbaric preferences on you. It's bad enough that she makes you cook it that way for her. But if she won't let you cook your own steak the way you like it, and forces you to eat the one that she made you overcook? That's starting to sound like she loves steak more than she loves you. Which I'm sure isn't true. But it's nevertheless a weird thing to do to your beloved.

Edited March 28, 2017 by btbyrd (log)

[Tatoosh]

No, no, no ... the shared thing is my fault, kinda sorta.  I used to do a lot of the cooking.  But these days not so much due to medical issues.  So she often is the one in the kitchen.  And the sharing thing is really cultural too.  She is from SE Asia and sharing food is a way of life there.  You throw a party and it is required you make way too much and then portion that out to the guests to take home.  Sharing with your family or even friends is ingrained.   They learn it in school and it stays with them all their lives.   

I really don't mind medium well done and if I can find an approach to a juicy, not leathery then well done will work too. I'll be happy to share.  So yes, we could cut the steak in two.  She does not eat large portions in general, even if she likes the food a lot.  It makes a lot of sense.  But not always easy to do depending on the cut you have.  We run to a strict budget these days.  

chileheadmike, you are killing me here.  We are living in a "charcoal free" apartment complex. Argh!  I love the Weber!  I wish I could do a chimney load of lump charcoal, get a nice ash coating and get things going.  Oh, those were the days.   

[Paul Fink]

35 minutes ago, Tatoosh said:

No, no, no ... the shared thing is my fault, kinda sorta.

 

Your a good spouse 

[paulraphael]

We just need a potion that can turn pink meat gray without changing the flavor. It would resolve so many epicure-barbarian standoffs.

[Anna N]

13 minutes ago, paulraphael said:

We just need a potion that can turn pink meat gray without changing the flavor. It would resolve so many epicure-barbarian standoffs.

 I have always thought blindfolds would do the trick.

[curls]

Does it have to be steak... would you be willing to enjoy other parts of the cow and have a nice pot roast or brisket? Just trying to think of cuts that are braised or do best with long cooks. So a very tasty piece of shareable beef dish that would not be pink (or red) in the center.

[gfweb]

2 hours ago, Anna N said:

 

 

2 hours ago, paulraphael said:

We just need a potion that can turn pink meat gray without changing the flavor. It would resolve so many epicure-barbarian standoffs.

 

I think  that is very do-able. Just leave meat out and, without cooking, it turns gray. Oxidizing perhaps?

[Fernwood]

I think some cuts and some qualities of beef tolerate more thorough cooking better.  Ribeye cap and skirt steak are two cuts that still taste good to me well-done.  And the more marbled the meat, the better it will survive.  Don't try this with lean sirloin, folks!  

[Thanks for the Crepes]

That is what I was thinking too. Cut a nice thick boneless rib eye in half and cook one portion gently to death and the other portion the way you like it.

 

I was so relieved when my husband, who grew up in Pennsylvania, not only knew what "Pittsburgh" steak was but joined me in relishing it. I think it might be a fundamental reason we have been together for 18 years. 

[jmacnaughtan]

3 hours ago, Fernwood said:

I think some cuts and some qualities of beef tolerate more thorough cooking better.  Ribeye cap and skirt steak are two cuts that still taste good to me well-done.  And the more marbled the meat, the better it will survive.  Don't try this with lean sirloin, folks!  

 

Agreed.  Just make sure it has plenty of fat in it to keep it moist.

 

I used to have my côte de boeuf (rib steak?  Beef rib joint?  The part that the ribeye comes from...) rare, and have come around to having it medium, even slightly well done.  It's a big piece of meat - normally around 1.2kg - with a lot of different muscles, so you'll get very well done on some, then progressively rarer as you get towards the bone.  This might be an option - when you carve, serve your wife the more done parts (which are still delicious), and keep the pinker meat for yourself.

 

And then, preferably when she's left the table, attack the bone

[scott123]

The stigma of well cooked steak is culinary bigotry, plain and simple, and the celebrity chefs that have perpetuated this prejudice will not be remembered fondly by history (I'm looking at you, Mr. Bourdain). These self appointed steak police just need to f off already. I'm uncouth for enjoying well cooked meat, am I? A 'barbarian?'  Who are you to tell me what tastes good?  Do these pompous elitist a holes point their fingers at burnt end worshipers and say "OMG! BBQ ruins meat!" Hell no! But cook a steak to a fraction of the wellness of burnt ends and the steak nazis go ballistic.

 

From the moment our ancestors made their first animal kill on the savannas of Africa to the inevitable end of this planet, great tasting meat has always and will always be about one thing. Fat.  Sure, take a garbage lean steak and cook the crap out of it, and you'll have leather. But singing the praises of this same inferior meat cooked to reddish pink? Please.  Garbage in, garbage out.  You took crap meat and, by cooking it less, you made it the tiniest bit less crappy.  Good for you.  Alert the Nobel committee.

 

Fat changes the equation entirely. In a sufficiently marbled steak, with extended cooking you get juiciness, you get succulence, while, at the same time, achieving a greater penetration of Maillard compounds.  This is why you can take a well marbled brisket, smoke it for hours, and end up with something orgasmic.

 

Don't believe me?  Take out a second mortgage on your house  and get yourself one of these.

 

http://amazingribs.com/images/beef/rib_cap.jpg

 

Cook it until it's well done, and, if it doesn't make your eyes roll back into your head, then come back and call me a barbarian.

 

I dare you 

 

 

[btbyrd]

My "barbarian" comment was tongue in cheek, but I stand by the sentiment that cooking "normal" steak cuts of normal marbling scores (choice or prime; strip, ribeye, filet, sirloin, etc.) beyond medium significantly diminishes their quality by causing the proteins to constrict too much, which both squeezes out moisture and makes the fibers tougher. Maybe you like that. I prefer it in some dishes, such as those where the steak is shaved thin and then used for stir-fry or sandwiches. But then we're no longer talking about eating "a steak." When it comes to actual steak-eating, my preferences -- like most of my comrades in The Steak Police -- is for meat that hasn't been so denatured that it toughens and lose its juice.

 

As the head detective in charge of the Logic Unit of the Steak Police, I do want to register a few complaints about your post. Comparing a well-done steak to well-done brisket or burnt ends is apples to oranges. Sous vide aside, you can't just take a brisket, bring it to medium-rare, and expect to achieve a tender, juicy, delicious result. You also can't just  throw it in a pan and cook it until it's well done and expect for it to be delicious. Regardless of its fat content, unground brisket is tough. It requires long cooking at low temperatures to break down and become delicious. The result will be beyond well-done (again, SV aside) but that's totally different from doing the same thing to a ribeye or a filet or whatever. That's like pointing to pot roast, braised Jamaican oxtails, or beef bourguignon as a counterexample to a medium-rare steak. Sure, well-done beef can be tasty. Literally nobody disputes that. And nobody disputes that "medium-rare" meat -- like brisket, or short ribs, or oxtail, or shank, or cheek -- can be freaking terrible. But these are cases in which (without SV) you are forced to make a tradeoff between retaining juices in the meat and rendering tough collagen into tender gelatin. This tradeoff is often worth making, but it's not worth making on tender cuts like those you'd normally serve as a steak.

 

Likewise, comparing a wagyu ribeye cap to a "normal" steak isn't an apples to oranges comparison. When you're cooking higher-end wagyu, your concern is not so much about how to cook the meat but how to manage the fat content. And since the higher end wagyu is %50 + fat, you'll typically cook it much differently than you'd cook a normal steak. You're essentially cooking streaky fat rather than a steak, and you'd never serve -- or you shouldn't serve -- someone a 24oz wagyu ribeye the way you'd serve them a normal choice or prime ribeye. Unless, of course, you'd be comfortable also serving them 12oz of pure beef fat or butter and expect them to experience their meal as balanced (and experience their GI tract as undistressed). 

 

At any rate, so much of this is a matter of preference. If you love yourself a well-done steak, then by all means eat it. But generally speaking, for the sorts of cuts you'd normally serve as a standalone steak, juiciness and tenderness decrease while doneness increases. Most people value tenderness and juice-retention, so people tend to view those who like well-done steaks as enemies of quality. But if you like tougher, dryer steaks for some reason, then go for it. Extra ketchup!

 

All joking aside, eat what you like. But keep an eye out for The Steak Police if you're going to chow down on a well-done, top-Choice filet mignon and claim that it's more delicious than the same thing cooked to a lower degree of doneness. You may be asked to explain yourself.

 

And you may do a perfectly excellent job. It's all a matter of taste, remember.

[btbyrd]

For those looking for that Magic Potion, Dave Arnold mentioned on Cooking Issues that he's looking into what factors affect meat color to see if he can figure out a way to create gray beef that's medium-rare (or rare) without it also tasting oxidized (since oxidation is the main culprit in producing "warmed over flavor" that you get from eating a day-old steak or burger that wasn't vacuum sealed).

[weedy]

Yes it's promised to be in his forthcoming Low temp cooking book. 

 

Meanwhile,

what about shabu or hot pot style?

that is quick cooked but tends to come out grey. 

Edited March 29, 2017 by weedy (log)

[btbyrd]

When you shave meat extremely thin, it doesn't take long to cook when it's immersed in very hot broth.

[scott123]

5 hours ago, btbyrd said:

As the head detective in charge of the Logic Unit of the Steak Police, I do want to register a few complaints about your post.

 

So you're copping to being the steak police, huh?  As long as your body cam doesn't mysteriously malfunction, I think we'll be fine

 

Seriously, though, if you really want to split this many hairs, okay... let's start splitting

 

First of all, you're overlooking an absolutely critical aspect of the protein denaturation equation. Fat.  In lean meat, sure, protein molecules will latch on to each other and squeeze the liquid out, but, just like wheat protein molecules have trouble latching onto each other in fatty pastry crust, muscle fibers have issues latching on to each other in fatty meat. Less cross linking = weaker bonds = less water loss. Well marbled steak, when cooked until well done, is still very tender, succulent and juicy.

 

Secondly, how, exactly, did you become the arbiter of 'normal' marbling?   Was that part of your training at the academy?   I would think, that, within these walls, when the topic of steak is brought it up, unless cost is specifically mentioned, it's in the context of 'good' steak, the context of well marbled steak. Is well marbled steak hard to find? Absolutely.  But just because it's difficult to source doesn't mean that all steak related discussions should only focus on typically inferior supermarket fare.

 

Third, the ribeye cap that I linked to wasn't Wagyu.  Just about all ribeye caps have that level of marbling, even in choice meat. In your typical ribeye, the cap will only be a small fraction of the entire steak.  I'm not presenting ribeye cap as being typical or in the slightest bit common.  I'm only using it as an example to show how incredibly delicious well done extremely well marbled steak can be.  Once someone has tasted well done cap, any stigma they might attach to well done well marbled steak will be obliterated, as it was for me.

 

Fourth, this isn't about my own personal taste.  Cook a ribeye cap, any ribeye cap, well done, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn't do backflips after tasting it. When you move towards the leaner end of the spectrum, towards well marbled rather than extremely well marbled, the appeal will be less universal in comparison to medium rare, but it will still have it's adherents.  And this group will consist of far more food aficionados than one or two odd ducks.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see 3 out 10 people prefer well done well marbled meat in a double blind setting.

 

Fifth, have you ever pan fried brisket?  If it's fatty enough, it fries up beautifully.  Does connective tissue/collagen play a part in the burnt end equation? Of course.  But I guarantee you that the lion's share of what makes people go so incredibly nuts over burnt ends relates directly to the fact that the ends of brisket tend to be the fattiest.

 

 

When all is said and done, none of this hair splitting is all that relevant. I'm not the one looking down my nose at fellow food lovers. I'm not the one calling anyone names- in seriousness or in jest.  To make my case, I don't have to prove that well done steak is always comparable to less cooked steak.  It obviously isn't in every instance. All I have to prove is that, depending on the fat content, well done steak can be phenomenal, and that, if the food snobs could actually taste a well done well marbled steak, I'm not saying that they'd prefer it, but they'd see enough value in it to end the derision.

Edited March 29, 2017 by scott123 (log)

[btbyrd]

We're getting quite off the original topic, but since the topic is "Meat Blasphemy" with respect to well-done steak, I suppose someone has to stick up for the orthodox position on what such blasphemy consists in...

 

5 hours ago, scott123 said:

 

So you're copping to being the steak police, huh?  As long as your body cam doesn't mysteriously malfunction, I think we'll be fine

 

Seriously, though, if you really want to split this many hairs, okay... let's start splitting

 

Split away! We split a lot of hairs (and carcasses) at the Academy.

 

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First of all, you're overlooking an absolutely critical aspect of the protein denaturation equation. Fat.  In lean meat, sure, protein molecules will latch on to each other and squeeze the liquid out, but, just like wheat protein molecules have trouble latching onto each other in fatty pastry crust, muscle fibers have issues latching on to each other in fatty meat. Less cross linking = weaker bonds = less water loss. Well marbled steak, when cooked until well done, is still very tender, succulent and juicy.

 

Nobody is arguing that well-marbled steak isn't perceived as juicier than leaner steak. I'm agnostic on this point, since I don't know whether or not it's true (or whether or not fat literally preserves juiciness rather than simply enhances the perception of juiciness). I don't want to fight you on the meat science on this one, but my understanding of denaturation doesn't depend on fibers grabbing onto one another, but rather proteins within each fiber unfolding. Either way, fat is good. We both agree. Gelatin is also good. We both agree there. Where we seem to disagree is that if juiciness is your goal, cooking your meat to a lower temp is better. Or maybe we both agree about this too, and the discussion is about whether or not well-done meat can ever taste good. But we already both agreed that it can...

 

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Secondly, how, exactly, did you become the arbiter of 'normal' marbling?   Was that part of your training at the academy?   I would think, that, within these walls, when the topic of steak is brought it up, unless cost is specifically mentioned, it's in the context of 'good' steak, the context of well marbled steak. Is well marbled steak hard to find? Absolutely.  But just because it's difficult to source doesn't mean that all steak related discussions should only focus on typically inferior supermarket fare.

 

It was part of my training at the Academy. Given that Prime accounts for about 1-4% of graded US cattle (depending on the sources you consult) and that it's almost unavailable in supermarkets (none of my local markets carry Prime, and I live in a city of more than a quarter of a million people), it definitely doesn't count as "normal" by most plausible conceptions of the term. The Academy agrees. And even low-grade Prime beef doesn't really have *that* much fat in it. Top Prime is a different story, but even that pales in comparison to even lower grades of Wagyu on the BMS and A grading scales. But given that Wagyu is definitely abnormal, and Prime is rarity (and isn't even that fatty), the Academy taught us that top Choice to be in the upper range of "normal". And it should be remembered that American Top Choice, even if it's not all that great, is still much better marbled than most beef in the world, owing to our illustrious feedlots and abundant production of garbage corn-and-soy-based "feed" that has not yet been embraced by Europe or Australia.

 

The Academy considers cooking top Choice (or below) steaks to a well-done temp barbarous. You accuse us of being Nazis. Yet you accuse Choice beef of being garbage. I suppose we all have our own bigotries.

 

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Third, the ribeye cap that I linked to wasn't Wagyu. 

 

 

Yes it was.

 

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Just about all ribeye caps have that level of marbling, even in choice meat. In your typical ribeye, the cap will only be a small fraction of the entire steak.  I'm not presenting ribeye cap as being typical or in the slightest bit common.  I'm only using it as an example to show how incredibly delicious well done extremely well marbled steak can be.  Once someone has tasted well done cap, any stigma they might attach to well done well marbled steak will be obliterated, as it was for me.

 

I like ribeye cap as much as the next person. In fact, it's my favorite piece of meat on a cow (and I love cow-meat). I'd like to point out that it's not a paradigmatic cut to be served as a steak. I've had it well-done, and it can be delicious. But my personal preference is to cook it sous vide and finish it by deep-frying it in tallow.

 

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Fourth, this isn't about my own personal taste.  Cook a ribeye cap, any ribeye cap, well done, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn't do backflips after tasting it. When you move towards the leaner end of the spectrum, towards well marbled rather than extremely well marbled, the appeal will be less universal in comparison to medium rare, but it will still have it's adherents.  And this group will consist of far more food aficionados than one or two odd ducks.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see 3 out 10 people prefer well done well marbled meat in a double blind setting.

 

The issue isn't whether or not there are things that can be cooked well-done and still be delicious. The issue is whether or not most tender steak cuts at most of the better-but-still-not-mail-order level of quality are better cooked well done. And I've yet to see anything to suggest that they are (if juiciness and tenderness are your concern). 

 

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Fifth, have you ever pan fried brisket?  If it's fatty enough, it fries up beautifully.  Does connective tissue/collagen play a part in the burnt end equation? Of course.  But I guarantee you that the lion's share of what makes people go so incredibly nuts over burnt ends relates directly to the fact that the ends of brisket tend to be the fattiest.

 

Only when it's been jaccarded and sliced thin. Mechanical tenderization is key. At any rate, I agree that fat is a big draw on burnt ends. But so is surface area and crust maximization. But we're not talking about steak anymore, so...

 

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When all is said and done, none of this hair splitting is all that relevant. I'm not the one looking down my nose at fellow food lovers. I'm not the one calling anyone names- in seriousness or in jest.  To make my case, I don't have to prove that well done steak is always comparable to less cooked steak.  It obviously isn't in every instance. All I have to prove is that, depending on the fat content, well done steak can be phenomenal, and that, if the food snobs could actually taste a well done well marbled steak, I'm not saying that they'd prefer it, but they'd see enough value in it to end the derision.

To be fair, I didn't call anyone names. I just said that a certain preference is barbaric. Likewise, you didn't call anyone names. You just said that most people's steaks are garbage. We're both snobs. I don't think that's a bad thing. But whatever, my whole point is that for most cuts of beef served as steak -- not brisket points, not Wagyu ribeye cap (or even Prime ribeye cap) -- it's best to cook them less rather than more if your goal is to retain juiciness. Even if they're fatty. That's the official view at the Steak Police. The more you cook something, the less juice it retains. Dem's the facts. 

 

To reiterate our case: Top Choice or even Prime cuts of tenderloin, ribeye, striploin, or sirloin are juicier and more tender if they're cooked less. And most people prefer juicier and more tender meat. That is all we're saying.

 

Of course, the Steak Police agree with you that more marbling is better than less -- within limits. (At a certain point, like with high BMS Wagyu, you're not really serving steak anymore, but fat laced with steak). But we're not sure whether or not the perceived juiciness of well-marbled meat at higher levels of doneness is due to fat's ability to preserve juices or due to fat's mouth-coating ability to enhance perceived juiciness, even at diminished moisture levels (as is the case in falling-apart chuck roast).

 

But we digress...

 

We agree again that none of this really matters to the debate at hand. 

Edited March 30, 2017 by btbyrd (log)

[btbyrd]

In related news, tonight I'm having some very much well-done but still quite delicious grassfed skirt steak. SV for four hours at 130F with a salt-free (except for MSG) spice rub, then cooked to crispy death on a super-hot grill, covered and cheese, and broiled to a bubbly finish.

 

Skirt is so thin you pretty much can't get it anything less than medium-well, and it's eminently splittable. A possible cut for bliss in the OP's household? Not really a "steak," but...

[jmacnaughtan]

5 hours ago, btbyrd said:

In related news, tonight I'm having some very much well-done but still quite delicious grassfed skirt steak. SV for four hours at 130F with a salt-free (except for MSG) spice rub, then cooked to crispy death on a super-hot grill, covered and cheese, and broiled to a bubbly finish.

 

Skirt is so thin you pretty much can't get it anything less than medium-well, and it's eminently splittable. A possible cut for bliss in the OP's household? Not really a "steak," but...

 

I disagree.  A lot of the skirt you get here is closing in on an inch thick in places, and it's excellent rare.  It's one of the few cuts I enjoy blue, mostly because there's so little fat

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

The only skirt steak I have ever been able to get here in my area has been at Torerro's Mexican Restaurant in Cary. Theirs is thin, but once, and only once, an apparently magical chef managed to get some reddish pink in the middle with a good char on the outside. It usually does come out pretty well done, but still so delicious. The linked photo is a lunch portion. The dinner portion is twice as large. It's always wonderful, and one of my very favorite cuts. So much beefy flavor in that cut. Some call it livery, but I just think of it as beef flavor on steroids. Not literally on steroid drugs, you know, just pumped up naturally. 

 

I wish I could find it raw. I think restaurants scarf it all up here.

 

If @Tatoosh could find this cut, it might satisfy his premise, because as an inveterate rare lover, I can testify that skirt is very satisfying when even well done. I would look for it in Hispanic grocers, of which we have a few, but sadly no skirt steak for me. Maybe he'll be luckier.