Prime Cuts

Everyone has their personal concept of how a steak should look, feel, and taste when cooked to the doneness of their liking.  These concepts can and do vary from consumer to consumer and from chef to chef. It is one of those inherently simple yet complicated subjects.  This particular post is intended to get people thinking about what exactly goes into cooking a steak to temperature and how you should think about ordering/cooking yours to best enjoy it.

There are several variables to the final doneness of cooked steaks including: thickness of the cut, type of cut, temperature of the cooking medium, resting period, and for restaurants-their base temperature guidelines.

Thickness
The thickness of the cut of steak can influence the level of doneness greatly.  Think of the way rare would look and feel for a very thin steak vs a very thick steak (i.e. thinly cut top sirloin vs. a thick center cut filet mignon).  The thin rare will have much less red center simply because it has much less center and vice verse.

Type of Cut
The type of cut of steak can also affect how the finished product will look and feel.  Some types of steak are naturally very tender or tough, and densities of the different types of steaks vary greatly too.  For this reason, if you are unsure how to order steak of any given type, ask how your chef or butcher to suggest a recommended temperature for the most tender possible preparation, and you will definitely see great variation for one cut to another.

Temperature
The temperature of the cooking medium, lets say the grill, will change how the finished steak will look and taste at any given doneness.  Think of a medium rare steak that has been cooked quickly at a very high heat-it will be very well cooked on the seared outer edges and will fade with little transition from gray to red as you cut into the center.  A steak cooked on a lower temperature will have the same doneness on the contact edges but will fade from well to medium-well to medium to medium-rare in the center with a much more gradual fade.

Resting Period
The resting period for both uncooked and cooked steaks will also allow for well transitioned temperatures vs. little transition.  A cold steak will maintain a red center longer than a room temperature one.  So if you like a black and blue seared on the outside, rare in the middle steak, cook with a cold steak and don’t let it sit long once off the grill.  If you prefer a more gradually transitioned doneness, let your steak sit at room temp for 20 min before grilling it, and then let it rest for 5 minutes before consuming.

Restaurant Guidelines
Finally are the specific restaurant guidelines to doneness.  Some restaurant’s rare is a lot more or a lot less rare than the competitions.  For the most part these guidelines will be displayed on the menu.  The best thing to do however is tell your server how you like your steak cooked and what it looks like when done your way.  That way they can tell you to which temperature that will relate to at their particular restaurant.

Finally, we just want to note that steaks are cooked to temperature and doneness which does not always translate directly to color.  If you think about it, the difference in color of the meat from cow to cow can vary greatly based on their diet.   If you look at the meat of a sirloin from a traditional corn fed American steer and then look at the color of a sirloin from a pasture grazed, grass-fed Argentine steer you will see that the grass fed sirloin is a much darker almost burgundy red color, while the corn-fed sirloin is a much paler light brick red color.  These reds will react to temperature change differently and if you cook both to the exact same temperature for meduim rare (or any temp) you will be looking at two different colors but the same level of doneness.   This is why we chefs use temperature as a difinitive guideline, and serious steak eaters should know what to expect based on the type of beef they are ordering because temperature cooked steaks are not always the same exact color.

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Contributing Writer: Joseph M. Gionfriddo
Photo by: Another Pint Please