Hopefully you go to good places to get a rare steak. When I worked at Perkins many, many years ago… They basically weren’t set up to make anything other than “medium”. I got only one order ever for a rare steak, and I had to ask if he knew what he wanted. Not because I was judging but because of where he was ordering it. (Hell some Perkins will just microwave the thing, which given the cost of the steak is just an insult to everybody involved.)
I feel like a lot of people don’t really know what a well-done steak is, because they’ve never had a good well done steak. They’ve had something closer to char. Or a large chunk of dehydrated meat. But most restaurants don’t actually use meat thermometers, nor do most households have meat thermometers. So they use all sorts of bullshit methods that don’t actually hold up to scrutiny. And then you add on, the ‘general knowledge of what a well-done steak is supposed to be’… Where they’ll leave it on the grill for 5 to 10 minutes longer for some reason. Like a medium well steak starts at 150 and shouldn’t go higher than 155. And a well done steak is 160. And that pattern basically holds all the way down to rare. Small window of where the steak should be in a small window of no man’s land.
Hopefully you go to good places to get a rare steak. When I worked at Perkins many, many years ago… They basically weren’t set up to make anything other than “medium”. I got only one order ever for a rare steak, and I had to ask if he knew what he wanted. Not because I was judging but because of where he was ordering it. (Hell some Perkins will just microwave the thing, which given the cost of the steak is just an insult to everybody involved.)
I feel like a lot of people don’t really know what a well-done steak is, because they’ve never had a good well done steak. They’ve had something closer to char. Or a large chunk of dehydrated meat. But most restaurants don’t actually use meat thermometers, nor do most households have meat thermometers. So they use all sorts of bullshit methods that don’t actually hold up to scrutiny. And then you add on, the ‘general knowledge of what a well-done steak is supposed to be’… Where they’ll leave it on the grill for 5 to 10 minutes longer for some reason. Like a medium well steak starts at 150 and shouldn’t go higher than 155. And a well done steak is 160. And that pattern basically holds all the way down to rare. Small window of where the steak should be in a small window of no man’s land.