Cooking with KaHn - Fillet* Steak

oli collett said:
You can always count on steak threads to bring out some disagreements :)



I don't agree with this - but it depends on your definition of "medium". I can't remember at what temperature the fat begins to melt but either way, surely the flavour is going to end up being retained within the beef if it doesn't fully melt, otherwise it will end up in the pan instead?

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lol yeah...the steak threads on here are always a riot.

The logic behind it is that the fat bastes the meat and transmits the flavour that way. It is kinda absorbed I guess...If it doesn't melt it just sits as a rubbery piece of nastyness on the end or through the middle of your steak.

Medium is medium though..can't define it any other way.
 
Youstolemyname said:
The logic behind it is that the fat bastes the meat and transmits the flavour that way. It is kinda absorbed I guess...If it doesn't melt it just sits as a rubbery piece of nastyness on the end or through the middle of your steak.

Medium is medium though..can't define it any other way.
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I would have thought they were talking about the intra-muscular fat (marbelling) rather than the gristle type fat on the outside. It doesn't make much sense to me to worry about the fat on the outside when cooking steak, because even if you cook it well done it's not going to have released that much of it. So, when it comes to the marbelled fat, i go back to my original point - it's already there in the meat.

With regards to medium - in the UK it might, but in france they seem to think of medium as what we would call medium-rare. I had 2 steaks medium rare in france that were blue!


Youstolemyname said:
You sure on this? Every steak I have cooked from my butchers and eaten in restaurants has had some blood when cooked medium to rare. My butchers is one of the best in the North West having won many awards for its meat.

Even over in the States where the steaks make ours look and taste like tinned burgers there was blood.

I can understand correct aging reducing the amount of blood that ends up on the plate but to have no blood on the plate at all is odd if not impossible other than by cremating your steak...
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OK - first of all a quick point - it's not blood. It's the water contained within the muscle cells that also contains myoglobin. When the temperature gets high enough, this is squeezed out of the cells and as the myoglobin is exposed to oxygen it loses it's colour, hence why the meat begins to go a grey colour and why if you have an overdone steak the juices will be clear.

Secondly - this juice should not be running out of a steak when it is served, instead it should run out as it rests and the muscles in the steak relax. If juice is still coming out of the steak as you are cutting into it, it would suggest it has not rested enough.

Lastly - with regards to the ageing, i don't believe ageing has a great affect on the water content from within the muscle cells. However if the steak never reaches above ~57C, this juice will never actually be released from the steak, so if you are cooking it rare/blue it's unlikely you will ever get such juice run out of the meat other than that which would be released during the initial searing of the outside. I don't have any references to hand with regards to this but i believe this is correct.

I'm such a beef nerd :(
 
neil3k said:
Is this steak worth the £13 i paid for it ?
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Hard to say, you really can't see the colour of the meat properly from that photo.
I paid £12 for two ribeyes like the one below though, so if it's good steak it's not a bad price.
steak1.jpg
 
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