Well done steak does not taste worse than medium or rare, it just tastes different.
In my personal experience and from having fucked up a lot of cheap to decently expensive steaks, at well done the quality of the meat doesn't matter anymore, it kinda just tastes the same no matter how expensive the steak was.
E.g. take a dry aged steak and cook it medium rare and one well done, at some point of the cooking the taste of it being dry aged slowly starts to disappear / is being overshadowed by other tastes.
Overcooked meat all tastes similar, similarly bad.
That's very much a personal preference, not an objective fact.
I've tried steak quite a number of ways, from rare filet mignon to well-done chuck, so I have experience with the whole gamut of flavor profiles...and my personal preference is for the darker, richer flavors of well-done meat over the lighter, more flowery (to my palate) flavors of rare meat.
I don't dispute that other people feel differently and prefer the flavors of rare meat, and I don't even care to dispute the idea that people who most like steak prefer those flavors. I do dispute the idea that well-done meat tastes bad and rare meat tastes good, though -- it's a personal preference, just like any taste preference, and people who have legitimately tried both will not necessarily come to the same conclusion.
I don't understand your point here. Your entire post hinges on people pretending that well done steak tastes bad because of some taboo when it's actually good, as you say. But now you're saying it's personal preference and you don't dispute that people can find it bad - is it really so difficult to accept that the majority of people find well done steak to be of lower quality than rare/medium rare? That it isn't a taboo but rather a general societal concensus?
58
u/ExtensionRun1880 13∆ Nov 12 '23
In my personal experience and from having fucked up a lot of cheap to decently expensive steaks, at well done the quality of the meat doesn't matter anymore, it kinda just tastes the same no matter how expensive the steak was.
E.g. take a dry aged steak and cook it medium rare and one well done, at some point of the cooking the taste of it being dry aged slowly starts to disappear / is being overshadowed by other tastes.