Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Have your bloody steak and eat it

There's one local website which I visit only if I am totally bored or really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
This is the so called 'citizen journalist'  site called Stomp by The Straits Times.
I make cursory visits to this site as it's nothing more than another tabloid just like The New Paper, which I place in the same category.
Stomp seems to attract ridiculous and stupid postings more than anything else; and mostly by gripers and whiners with replies from readers tending to be downright rude or vindictive.


Anyway, recently there was a complaint by someone who apparently went to a neighborhood food court and ordered a medium-rare steak.
What he got, in his opinion, was a raw steak which the chef had refused to re-cook it for him.
Hence, complain to the world via Stomp. Details here if you want to know the whole boring story.


This was his serving as photographed by him (taken off the Stomp site)


How do you tell if your steak is cooked the way you want it?
I was taught a neat trick by a friend who worked as a cook in a restaurant some time ago.
Use this simple method which he said was used by the cooks themselves.  


1. Press the steak with your finger to gauge the firmness.
2. Compare the firmness by pressing the fleshy 

part of your palm just below the thumb.

Rare
3. Make an 'O' ring with your finger
Medium Rare

Medium

Medium-Well

Well done.



This is not a foolproof method, so take it with a pinch of salt.
The cooks' experience counts for a lot.
And please, don't go fingering your dinner in front of your guests.


BLOODY STEAKS?
Some people get queasy when they slice into their beef and see blood oozing from the meat.

Well, surprise, surprise!  
The red juice that's oozing from the meat is NOT blood.
The liquid is actually mostly water containing a purplish colored protein that's found in meat tissue called myoglobin. When exposed to air, it turns bright red. 
That's why meat has a reddish colour. 
It's not from the blood which is only in the veins or arteries and is usually darker in colour.
But as it looks like blood, most people assume it to be.

Bon Appetit