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
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
Oh man, cigars are so damn good. I hate how enjoyable a good cigar with some nice whiskey or brandy is. Shit, even one of the jazz black & milds are nice occasionally.
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.
Okay but I like the Smokey pain juice that makes me feel funny
Rum which is the superior spirit.
Serious question - how is rum a superior spirit?
Cos it taste good and I can easily find high proof variants. Works well neat as well as in many cocktails and mixers and it makes me a pirate
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Rum is my first love. I do think it's underrated among liquors.
Luckily, that keeps it affordable though.
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.
Cigars and whiskey are why we need revolution, tho. The man treats must be given to all people, regardless of gender or strength.
and whiskey all fall into the same category of "manly" shit that is actually just miserable.
My one vice other than coffee
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.
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.
That reminds me of the sort of tropey way food and cooking always seems to be talked about in anime and manga where characters will just stop to monologue about how crucial [super specific ingredient] is to some dish and wax on about how it has to be so fresh and high quality and it's not [dish] if it doesn't have the best ingredients, which is obviously a cartoonish caricature but it reminds me so much of how certain Americans talk about steak or some regional "specialty" like they think putting ketchup on smoked pork is some sort of trade secret or good at all.
And then I think of the more or less exact opposite: videos from a Thai chef, I forget who, talking about how to make a dish and just being like "yeah the authentic way is to use [specific local ingredient] but that's really just used because it grows all over the place and is easy to get there but it can be hard to find in the US, so just use this or that alternative instead and it'll be fine, and then you can use this or that general sort of thing for the main bulk of it, but really what's most important is that you're striking the right balance of flavors..." and being 100% correct about every part of that.
I've never had it but looking it up I think I can imagine what it's like enough to agree with that.
Vegan variant of kofta. First time I had it, I did a double-take over whether it was a meatball or not. 10/10 would wreckamend.
To me it doesn’t matter whether it’s pure or whatever because I finish it within 5 minutes and it all tastes the same
"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.
Cheap steak tastes nice enough to me, especially with some garlic - it's nothing special I guess.
But one time my dad took me to dine at a proper steak place - we shared a 'tomahawk' that cost about £65. It was god damn melt in mouth delicious. Just incredible.
Steak from restuarants that aren't higher end steak houses are always mid as hell. Buying a decent steak from a butcher and grilling at home is much better
chicken goated steak boring.
Chicken breast is the most bland tasting shit on the planet. You literally have to be a Michelin Chef or deep fry it to make it taste good.
Steak doesn't necessarily taste like the bees knees that every claims it does but it has enough natural flat and can absorb way more flavor than dry ass chicken breast.
You literally have to be a Michelin Chef
A michelin chef would like, serve it on wood chips with some potting soil and like a pate and caviar aspic or some shit, and it would be the most revolting thing you've ever tasted but it cost $1000 so you pretend it's amazing to save face.
it has enough natural flat and can absorb way more flavor than dry ass chicken breast.
Literally just marinade it in oil, vinegar, and spices first, then cook it with plenty of garlic. Or just fry it plain with some oil then chop it up and toss it in curry or some other sort of flavorful sauce/stew to soak up that flavor.
Generally the solution to something being bland on its own is to just use spices and sauces and work out how to cook them into it. That's what's so wrong with the like steak sort of approach to cooking where you're just throwing something at a pan and what comes out is kind of mediocre but palatable, because it's trying to turn laziness and not using spices into some intricate art of how to make that not turn out bad when you could instead just use better methods and also spices and get something much better with barely any more work.
A michelin chef would like, serve it on wood chips with some potting soil and like a pate and caviar aspic or some shit, and it would be the most revolting thing you've ever tasted but it cost $1000 so you pretend it's amazing to save face.
Lmao, that's not what Michelin starred food tastes like. Also, if you count Bib Gourmand food it's not even that expensive.
Michelin starred food tastes like
Smh hexbears are billionaires
The wood chip and dirt thing is from an actual michelin starred restaurant showing off their deranged, awful food in a video lmao (granted it wasn't served on the food, it was served in little cups next to it with the recommendation that people huff the dirt to make the food taste "earthy"). I did make up the pate and caviar aspic thing, but that was just to characterize all the other awful things they were including that I couldn't remember the specifics.
Was it Alinea? Alinea is known for doing some pretty wacky things with presentation but it's still known for being good food.
I do think that food and presentation is an art form and I would like to see fine dining made more common and affordable so it's easier to make and experience said art, even the questionable looking sort.
But my point is you have to be a fucking wizard to get chicken to absorb as much flavor as a beef. Marinate in a ziploc bag overnight and you’re still not even half way there to making a juicy, flavorful chicken breast.
Beef has its own extremely distinct flavor that can make it unwieldy when you just want something to give a meal a bit more substance. Chicken is like tofu in that you can just sort of adaptably fit it in and have it complement rather than take over a dish, whereas beef really needs a treatment like kofta to bring it into line by overpowering it with onions, garlic, and other spices.
I mean the juicy part is gonna be more about cooking than marinades or other prepwork, except maybe butterflying it so it cooks faster and more even.
Short of literally injecting fluid or some goofy stuff like that, the breast isn't gonna get much more juicy than where it starts, and while cooking it definitely isn't trivial it's not anything more than basic experience and skills applied.
And for flavoring it's probably easier for the most part to make a nice sauce separate to the chicken breast and add that on top.
The simple solution to this is to not eat chicken breast. Dark meat is cheaper, easier to cook, tastier, and better in pretty much every way. The only reason people eat chicken breast is cause it's lean meat so they think it's healthy.
Probably. But unless I taste your chicken breast, I'm going to guess it tastes like paper.
maybe it's just an american thing. maybe my body inherently dislikes steaks because it dislikes american imperialism.
I mean I doubt any country could credibly lay claim to invention of "slab of meat". But I'd bet America is the biggest consumer of steaks.
per capita? almost cerainly some Euro countries + Argentina, Uruguay, even Brazil have it beat.
Per capita, the US consumes the most poultry, the third most beef (second to Argentina and Zimbabwe), and the most Beef and Pork combined. Exclude fish and the US outstrips the next country by about 30kg/capita/year.
Depends a lot on how meat is prepared (and I can't find good sources on that), and your definition of steak. But given the enormous excess by which the US eats steak-y meats compared to others. The US is almost certainly either 1st or 2nd.
maybe it's just an american thing.
Argentina would like a word!
Steak is overrated and frankly the texture is all off. I prefer a tofu based dish or even chicken.
While steak as a whole is overrated, some really good steak really can be astounding. Personally I prefer some of the less bougie cuts like hamburger, tripe, and liver. Ooh, also tongue.
Tongue I can't get over the texture. It tasted like steak but felt like I bit into a huge chunk of fat. Liver and tripe are good, though.
It's been about 20 years since I had steak or chicken but I pretty strongly remember feeling that giving up chicken was trivial because all poultry just tastes like whatever it's cooked in and has minimal flavor of its own, while beef at least had a distinctive flavor.
Coming from a long time vegetarian it might not count for much but I flatly disagree that chicken is less boring than beef.
I think it's overrated, like most high status foods. Lobster, truffles, caviar, and steak are all pretty mid, and terrible when considering the price.
