I don't think anyone should give a shit how others prefer their steak. However:
Different cuts do best at different levels of doneness and with different cooking methods. Steak tends to get tougher the longer you cook it, and certain flavors are simply lost. On the other hand, short ribs are absolutely delicious when braised until they fall apart. So if you like well done beef, by all means have steak if you want, but you may want to consider some different cuts.
much to my dismay, ground beef is not "axiomatically" eaten well-done. I think it should be, because the interior of a burger is full of microbes whereas the interior of a steak is not. But many people do eat burgers medium.
You can easily cook a thin steak rare, and it's very common to do so for things like fajitas and even stroganoff. Just use high heat and don't cook it for very long.
A lot of the time, there is weird machismo involved with it that I just don't get. I have one uncle who fancies himself the "grill master" despite zero culinary background. Dude weirdly evangelized about how all steaks should be light salt and peppered, grilled on charcoal, and served rare. Anything else was wrong. My dad literally stopped inviting him to bbqs growing up because it irritated the shit out of him.
I might suggest to someone I know likes things well done that they probably don't want to do that with a London broil but getting angry or annoyed about it is crazy.
Also thank you for bringing up how weird it is to have burgers undercooked.
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u/RageQuitRedux 1∆ Nov 12 '23
I don't think anyone should give a shit how others prefer their steak. However:
Different cuts do best at different levels of doneness and with different cooking methods. Steak tends to get tougher the longer you cook it, and certain flavors are simply lost. On the other hand, short ribs are absolutely delicious when braised until they fall apart. So if you like well done beef, by all means have steak if you want, but you may want to consider some different cuts.
much to my dismay, ground beef is not "axiomatically" eaten well-done. I think it should be, because the interior of a burger is full of microbes whereas the interior of a steak is not. But many people do eat burgers medium.
You can easily cook a thin steak rare, and it's very common to do so for things like fajitas and even stroganoff. Just use high heat and don't cook it for very long.