I order my steak blue. I don't always get it - a lot of restaurants won't go past rare, or don't have the industrial strength blast furnace you need to properly char the outside without cooking the inside, or just don't know what you mean. Occasionally I've had chefs come out to check I was happy. I'm not too fussy really so as long as it's got a good flavour I'm fine if it's a bit overdone. I'm not so fond of rare ground meat unless I know the place pretty well. I've had some great steak tartare though.

When I cook pork at home (usually loin chops), I don't want them dried out and tough so I tend to undercook them a bit - roughly equivalent to medium rare. If it's a bit pink against the bone I'm not too fussed. It's hard to break the habit that you shouldn't eat rare pork or chicken though.

I should add that while rare/raw beef tastes heavenly, undercooked chicken tastes like chewing on badly flavoured rubber. Getting chicken breast perfectly cooked through, still moist but tasty is a real chore.

With a hamburger, there is increased chance of contamination in the grinding and mixing process. If your restaurant doesn't grind their own beef for hamburgers, they are at risk by buying it from someone else.

The contamination happens during the slaughtering process, when fecal matter can get on the outside of the carcass. Muscle meat--a steak or roast--doesn't get contaminated, or if it does, it's on the outside where minimal cooking kills the bug. But when they make hamburger, they're using every bit of meat they can get off the bones, and it all gets mixed together, allowing any bit of contamination to be spread throughout the batch. Thus, hamburger of distant origin needs to be cooked enough to kill bugs throughout the patty.

Ltw, the trick with chicken is that dark meat needs to reach 185F and the white meat only needs 165F. When you roast a whole chicken, this works pretty well, as the breast is the thickest part and cooks more slowly. But it is tricky with breast pieces, because to get the middle to 165F means the outside gets too hot, and dries out. Frying works, because it's fast. I think this is why a lot of chefs pound chicken breasts flat before cooking. It lets you get the whole piece cooked at an even rate.

Ltw, I always cook pork or chicken in some kind of liquid, which keeps the meat moist. When I make chicken paprikash, I add a little extra chicken broth in the pan, then before I add the sour cream, I boil the crap out of it to reduce it! But I keep the chicken in the serving dish, covered in foil, which keeps the meat hot and moist. Works every time. With pork chops & ribs, I put 'em in the oven with some Jack Daniels Bar-B-Que sauce, cover with foil, and let bake at 350 for about 40 minutes to an hour. The meat stays moist and just falls off the bone. When I cook it on the grill, I just slap some JD sauce on it, wrap in foil, and leave it on the grill for maybe 1/2 an hour. Steaks and venison get cooked in a little butter with garlic POWDER, not SALT (which dries out the meat), and a little cracked black pepper. Five minutes, TOPS, on each side, just until the juices start seeping through. Done. When I cook them on the grill, I rub a little olive oil on them, but still use a little garlic powser and pepper, maybe 3 minutes on each side, depending on how hot the flame is. Just enough to warm it up and char it a little bit. YUM!

Waiter, I'll have the pork tartare, please.

I have a nice trick I just learned for pork chops. I'm pretty sure it's the boneless loins we use. I just melt some butter in a big flat frying pan, and put seasonings on the raw chops, then put them in and fully brown both sides on high temp. I watch them so I don't completely burn them, and it browns pretty quickly. It basically seals the outside so that the inside stays moist. Then I use just a splash of cooking wine, which loosens up the crisp outside a bit, and turn down the heat and cover it for about 20 mins or so, and it cooks through. Really good, and pretty easy.

@Angie:

> It basically seals the outside so that the inside stays moist.

I've read in several cooking blogs that this is a myth.

Haven't done any experiments myself, though.

After decades of consuming overcooked pork by necessity, the American public has little appetite for rare pork; it isn't considered traditional.

I'm starting to see medium-rare tenderloin as a common option in restaurants. I usually shoot for around 140° F internal temperature on Pork.

Unsolicited advice for anyone who cooks meat and doesn't already have it: get yourself an instant-read meat thermometer. They're cheap, and will really improve the outcomes of your dishes. After using one a bit, with a dish, it's pretty easy to nail the correct cook without it – but it really improves the results in the learning process.

I should add that while rare/raw beef tastes heavenly, undercooked chicken tastes like chewing on badly flavoured rubber.

A Japanese restaurant near us just starting serving some sort of raw chicken dish. Apparently, it's quick common there, but I think I'm too conditioned to the American approach.

It basically seals the outside so that the inside stays moist.

This is one of those cooking myths that just won't go away. Searing does not seal in juices. Your approach makes the pork tasty and juicy but it's more because you're cooking in a liquid (an acidic one at this, which helps to tenderize) which does help discourage the loss of moisture. I use a similar technique, although I prefer cheap table wine to cooking wine, which usually has a lot of additives one may not want. A perfect use for 2-Buck Chuck. I also recommend brining pork before cooking it if you have the time. Even an hour or so makes a real difference.

I have been experimenting with Sous Vide. I got a controller for about $140 that uses a thermocouple to control a crockpot. Turns out that the 165F recommendation for pork and poultry is double-giant overkill; 134F for couple of hours will wipe out the dangerous germs (which aren't really as much a problem as one is led to believe). 135F also gives pork a much different flavor (although I can't convince my wife that it is actually safe). Nice thing about Sous Vide is that you don't have to fiddle much with it after you set it up. Keeping a tougher cut of beef at 130F overnight (or two days) tenderizes it nicely without overcooking.

My current main use for Sous Vide is to pasteurize eggs at 134F for 2 hours, to use them in my protein shakes. Safe -- but without destroying most of the nutrition.

huh.. well, I'll be! Haha.. seemed to work for me, but perhaps I just got lucky when I did it! I've cooked them before and not done that, and they were dry and not much fun to choke down. I really thought it was the searing on the outside that did it, but maybe it was something else at work.

Gordon, I represent a burger company that treats all their beef with ozonated water...it kills all the bacteria without the icky chemical additives some companies (ahem, Cargill) add. This particular company has never had a recall in their entire corporate history, which is nearly unheard of. However, restaurants that grind their own meat in house open the door to ridiculous risk of food borne illness, primarily because it's hard to train kitchen staff to properly clean the grinders. Personally, I would go out of my way to avoid restaurants with so-called "fresh" burgers...I can tell you STORIES about what "fresh" actually entails. Ick.

Nathan Myhrvold is one of the bad guys btw.

Regards,

Hans

As someone who orders meat extremely rare, I can't always blame the kitchen when it isn't as rare as I like. They get inspected and God forbid an inspector is there when they send out the rare meat or runny egg. I'm not sure about other states but I'm pretty sure they actually made it against the law in NY and NJ for eggs to be served runny and beef to be served under a certain temperature. The numerous lawsuits were behind this so when the cook can't accomodate me, I blame the idiots who look to sue over everything.

I really thought it was the searing on the outside that did it, but maybe it was something else at work.

The searing adds nice flavor and some crispiness to the outside, which helps make them tasty. But it does not seal; some studies have found that searing actually can cause moisture to get lost.

As a result, people learned to tolerate overcooked pork, and farms raised pigs with increasing amounts of fat--far more fat than is typical in the wild ancestors of pigs such as wild boar.

My impression of the history is more than pigs are lean now because of diet faddism, and used to (as in "before the '50s or so") all be fatter, because they were being raised to make lard and bacon, not to make chops and roasts.

The pig hasn't been near a wild boar for thousands of years, since we've been breeding them to be fat as long as we've been breeding them, since pork fat is so damned useful (especially when you don't have refrigeration, since lard keeps much better than flesh)...

Hans: Can you, uh, expand on that a little?

How's he bad, in what way?

(His bio suggests nothing bad, other than that perhaps he bought into the AGW flap - but even then, it appears he was suggesting "fixing" it by geoengineering, rather than authoritarian and ineffective "carbon controls" or impoverishment.

Which at worst puts him at neutral.)

I always order my beef rare, and then follow that up with "and I mean red and bloody" to the waittress. I still get it overcooked a good 50% of the time. Ick. I like my pork a bit pink, but not what I'd call rare. And there better not be ANY pink in my chicken-I've had salmonella and I am not going there again.

My DH can make me a mean steak on teh grill, just like I like it, so we rarely eat that out anymore. He had a learning curve on doing it, but he's got it nailed now!

My dad used to tell the waitress, "can you just brown it slightly on top, flip it over and brown it slightly on the other side and we're good."

Intellectual Ventures is a non practicing entity in the field of patents. Like an investment banker that makes money off of client's investments. They don't actually do anything except herd the money to the top of the heap.

I'll pop in later to expand if you want. I've got to run to an appt.

Hans

I can nearly always get steak the way I like it by asking for VERY rare, but it's been years since I could get a rare hamburger at a restaurant. I don't know if there's actually a law against it or if they're all just afraid of getting sued, but any pink in the middle of the patty is a relic of the past.

My exact order is always "As rare as is legally permissible in this state". That usually gets it as close to the rare side of medium as it can to please me. If the waiter or counter person locks up and says "I'm sorry sir we can't serve it rare", I get up and leave. Not because they won't break the law for me, but because if they can't grasp the semantics of what I said, they will certainly get other facets of my order wrong.

Past codicils have included "A gifted veterinarian should have a fair shot at resuscitation"

Steaks and venison get cooked in a little butter with garlic POWDER, not SALT (which dries out the meat)

Flynne, as the great P.J. O'Rourke said in the Bachelor Home Companion, "Salt doesn't make steak tough. Poverty makes steak tough, and sometimes absent entirely."

I always salt steak because I love the flavour, especially if it's good quality sea salt - but I do it right before cooking, then it's in the pan for less than a minute per side, so it doesn't really have time to get dry :)

I trained an ex out of wanting well done steak by just undercooking it a bit more each time till she got used to it. I still have to cook hers a bit more than mine, but she's quite happy with a bit on the rare side of medium rare now :)

However, restaurants that grind their own meat in house open the door to ridiculous risk of food borne illness, primarily because it's hard to train kitchen staff to properly clean the grinders.

Not just that - it's hard to train kitchen staff to wash their hands after going to the bathroom.

If people saw what goes on in a lot of restaurant kitchens they would be horrified. I'm naturally resistant to bacterial infection so I don't worry about it a lot. And the reality is most people can tolerate much more than they think. People worry about bathrooms and showers - I always ask "When was the last time you cleaned the door handles?" Hotbeds of infection those things are :)