Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

seriouseats.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 301 posts

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#261

Post by cheese_goddess »

LesZedCB wrote: post #203
cheese_goddess wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Roughly 12% of GHGs are attributed to meat agriculture. The cause of anthropogenic climate change is the burning of fossil fuels, not the raising of animals for food. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon at a rate and in amounts that are too high for the natural mechanisms in the environment, that normally bind carbon, to cope with. The carbon gasses released by cows and other ruminants are part of the planetary ca…

holy fucking shit, no. https://drawdown.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Drawdown_Graph... i know there has been a lot of pushback because of the individualist nature of exxon et al's carbon footprint red herring. but reduction of emissions is a project every single individual, corporation, and government must be part of. we are are deeply intertwined, all terrestrials, all earth bound. and the anti-individualist shove-o…

I don't understand. "we are are deeply intertwined, all terrestrials, all earth bound"? What does that have to do with my comment?

What do you disagree with in what I wrote above? That anthropogenic climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels? That it's the fossil fuel industry that is responsible for that? What?

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#262

Post by cheese_goddess »

YokoZar wrote: post #168
cheese_goddess wrote: post #152

I think scientific cooking completely misses the point about cooking and about eating food. You should cook your food the way your senses tell you is right. You should cook your food so that your senses tell you it's right. You're going to taste the food with your mouth and smell it with your nose. You're not going to taste it with a thermometer or whatever else silly probe of irrelevance anyone might think of sticki…

I'm not sure you even clicked the link your point is so orthogonal. > Cook some identical roasts or steaks. Cook one bone-in, cook one with the bone removed but tied back on, and cook a third with the bone removed and tied back on with a layer of impermeable aluminum foil in between. Then cut them all up and taste them (preferably with a large group of people in a blind setting). You'll find that they all taste prett…

> I'm not sure you even clicked the link your point is so orthogonal.

If you're starting off with that attitude, why should I try to engage with your comment?

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#263

Post by cheese_goddess »

cthalupa wrote: post #160
cheese_goddess wrote: post #152

I think scientific cooking completely misses the point about cooking and about eating food. You should cook your food the way your senses tell you is right. You should cook your food so that your senses tell you it's right. You're going to taste the food with your mouth and smell it with your nose. You're not going to taste it with a thermometer or whatever else silly probe of irrelevance anyone might think of sticki…

Well, sure, if you like your food some certain way, then cook it for yourself that way. But a lot of the "scientific cooking" is about repeatability. I know I like my steaks rare, edge to edge, with a hard sear. I know that the easiest way for me to accomplish that is using an immersion circulator, combi oven, or reverse sear, drying it (and if I have time, cooling it down briefly), and then either searing/basting it…

Aren't you just saying that you cook your steaks the way you like them?

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#264

Post by cheese_goddess »

valgor wrote: post #201
1_player wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And considerably smaller carbon footprint than industrial emission and cars. The vegetables and grains grown 5000 miles away are being brought via land and sea thanks to petrol right to the vegan store one goes to shop at with their SUV. But yes, let's demonise the food we've evolved to thrive on. It's mental that this has become a controversial idea worth censoring.

We still need cars, but we don't need meat. And there are people working on reducing transportation and energy emissions because that is a hard problem. Buying beans instead of meat at the grocery store is not a hard problem, and one any of us can immediately do. And if you are worried about plant matter and all the land used for it and transportation emissions around it, what do you think the major of animals eat? T…

> We still need cars, but we don't need meat.

You're saying, we should change the way we eat so we can keep our cars?

> Buying beans instead of meat at the grocery store is not a hard problem, and one any of us can immediately do.

Buying beans and then buying supplements also because you can't live only on beans, or plants. You need to supplement minerals and nutrients that you can't get from plants.

Or you can eat a balanced diet that includes meat, eggs or dairy along with mostly plants and not expose yourself to the danger of malnutrition.

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#265

Post by 1_player »

jmknoll wrote: post #210
1_player wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And considerably smaller carbon footprint than industrial emission and cars. The vegetables and grains grown 5000 miles away are being brought via land and sea thanks to petrol right to the vegan store one goes to shop at with their SUV. But yes, let's demonise the food we've evolved to thrive on. It's mental that this has become a controversial idea worth censoring.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but transportation cost is not really a relevant point here. Food of any variety can be locally produced, or it can be sourced through industrial supply chains. Animal and plant products can both have an embedded cost in terms of carbon emissions, water, and usage of arable land. That is to say, a cow, a chicken, and a bunch of potatoes can all be locally sourced, and the…

> Moreover, the food we "evolved to thrive on," was likely primarily nuts, seeds, fruits, insects, rodents, and occasionally larger animals like antelope (which would have been eaten nose-to-tail), not fatty steaks from domesticated animals.

Citation needed. My sources mention the fact that we've evolved bigger brains when we've moved from low-density foods such as vegetables to high-density fatty foods, which is what distinguishes our diet from what primates eat. Meat is fatty, vegetables are not. In fact, vegetables are "fatty" for ruminants, as they have specialised bacteria that convert plant matter to fatty acids. We do not.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/evidence-f...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fat-not-meat-may-...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53561/

Just a couple articles from a 30 second Google search. The fat == bad, or worse, meat == bad is a modern argument that has nothing to do with our evolution or our physiology.

Here's the thing no one wants to admit: modern meat is bad for the planet, and we humans thrive on meat. We don't know how to reconcile the two, so we keep promoting and pushing towards worse and worse diets. Sorry, a vegan diet for everybody isn't the answer. There is no simple answer.

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#266

Post by burntsushi »

tptacek wrote: post #221
burntsushi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand how you can "fail" to see the convenience. The convenience comes from the ease of getting it right. I consistently over-cooked steaks with the reverse sear method. Maybe half the time. With sous vide, I never---literally never---overcook a steak. That's the convenience. I don't have to worry about the temperature. I drop it in the bath and I take it out at my convenience.

I'm interested in what tended to go wrong for you with the reverse sear. One tricky thing is that the temperature increases nonlinearly, so if you take a couple readings and get a mental trajectory of when it's going to hit 115, you're likely to be wrong. The flip side though is that cooking at 250 (or, sheesh, 200, as they're doing across the thread) gives you a _real big bulls-eye_ to hit. Nobody's gonna say that a…

It's been years since I tried it. So I don't remember precisely. I'm not a good cook. :-) It was just very easy for me to overshoot it.

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#267

Post by cthalupa »

calf wrote: post #246
cthalupa wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Filets absolutely can be and are dry aged. They're again just even more expensive than a dry aged strip steak. Even as someone that has a dedicated dry aging unit, I don't know that I would recommend dry aging filet. I don't count the pellicle as waste, since I make use of all of it, but you do have to cut off a decent chunk - it's too tough to eat on the steak itself. The end result is that you just don't have a wh…

I didn't know people could reuse the pellicle. I thought it has bacteria and sometimes molds on it? Because of the fermentation.

If the pellicle has the type of bacteria or mold on it that would prevent you from eating it, you should also generally not eat the rest of the meat. Not all mold can be told apart by appearance, so please do not take this comment as gospel on what is a "safe" mold, but the general consensus is that white mold is usually OK. In this case, I would not reuse the parts that were moldy, however.

I have a dedicated dry aging setup that I truss my subprimals up in, and then it recirculates air, including through a UVC light. I've never had any mold form, even on 120+ day dry ages. I haven't gone much higher than 120 days, though - I enjoy 240 day dry ages, but not in large quantities, and I also lack the patience, so you might see more going to that length. But in the 60 to 120 day range, however, I have never had mold form in any quantities large enough for me to notice.

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#268

Post by cthalupa »

ahepp wrote: post #236
tptacek wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a toaster oven, I strongly recommend the toaster oven . They come up to temp fast, and they have a much tighter band of temperatures than an oven, which is always +15/-15 from your set temperature. Holding a tight, low temperature is all you're asking from the oven, and toaster ovens are built to do that (ironically, they fucking blow at making toast).

What are the reasons traditional ovens have such a wide band here? It seems like with modern technology one ought to be able to cut that down a bit. Is it just physically infeasible based on the size of the space to be heated? Or is it tremendous cost pressure for consumer goods? Or something else?

A variety of things. More space is definitely harder to heat evenly, especially without airflow coming from something like a convection oven, or keeping relative humidity very high, such as in a combi/steam oven, but a lot of it is cost pressure. If you go far enough up market to Miele, Wolf, etc., you can find ovens that will keep a much more consistent temperature.

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#269

Post by cthalupa »

tptacek wrote: post #231
steak2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's beautiful about a steak is that it transcends the collective human culinary craft. It's like this pure thing that prove god exists. All of those sauces, those creations of men, are more for making poorer quality steaks more palatable than elevating the best steaks. There is a reason restaurants that specialize in serving high quality steaks generally forgo the sauce.

Go pull up a list of the top steak houses in NYC, or in Chicago, or in Los Angeles, and find me the steak house that doesn't have a steak au poivre, or a bunch of other sauce options. What you're saying about steak restaurants is just not true at all. Also, the best steaks that you're getting in steak houses are honestly pretty boring (at least, until you dry age them halfway to the point of rot) and if you think tha…

Minor nit about an offhand comment, but, to be fair, a proper dry aging setup really has minimal to no risk of actual rot. Sanitary conditions and good air circulation will let you go pretty much indefinitely without worry, though from what I've seen of 400-700 day dry ages, you're really not getting much left that's usable as steak.

Re: Myths about cooking steak that need to go away (2013)

#270

Post by weeksie »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #180
weeksie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A strip is not a "cheaper" steak than a filet. Filet mignon is a fine cut, it's low in flavor but very tender which means that it tastes better when it's extra rare. Well marbled cuts of steak are usually better at mid-rare b/c the fat melts a little. I do like sous vide for very thick steaks with some marbling—so a strip is a pretty decent one for the dip. However, I've found ribeyes come out spongey when you sous v…

Filets absolutely can be and are dry aged. They're again just even more expensive than a dry aged strip steak. A filet is almost always more expensive than a strip, in the supermarket, at the butcher, or in the steakhouse.

Got a link to a place that does 45+ day dry aging with filets?
Post reply on HN