Reprinted from Baijiahao Author: Rose Loves Food

When many people go to eat Western food, they will order a steak. At this time, the waiter will ask how rare you want your steak. Many people are not very good at choosing this, and most of them follow the crowd and order medium-rare or medium-rare. Some are very afraid of the red "blood" produced by lower-rare steaks, and even order nine-minute or very rare. It's not surprising anymore. So which degree of ripeness tastes better? Does medium-rare mean medium-rare meat? We must first understand what this maturity is.

In fact, this odd-numbered maturity classification is not adopted abroad. This is because this statement was adopted during translation. The term "rare" comes from our country. It is not difficult to find that in the face of many degrees of measurement, we prefer to use numbers to score, and generally use zero to ten to divide. Naturally, we use this method to score the doneness of the meat.

Since odd numbers were used in the initial scoring, there is no way to divide even numbers. If you say six or eight points for maturity, then it actually means the same thing as five or seven points. In fact, in foreign countries, people generally divide the degree of doneness into six categories, which describe the specific state of the piece of meat as it slowly matures. For example, medium-rare corresponds to medium-rare, which means that the meat is mainly pink, but the light brown state of cooked meat is sandwiched. The outer layer of nearly rare and well-done is basically still raw after being slightly roasted. The other is a hard piece of meat that is completely cooked, so it was removed. The other three states correspond to one, three, seven. three stages of maturity. Now that we understand that these degrees of doneness correspond to different stages of a piece of meat being roasted, we begin to wonder, why can’t we just roast it all until it is fully cooked and eat it? Why are there so many divisions?

This is a requirement for the taste of the meat. If we want to eat tender and juicy beef, we often cannot over-fry it. Some people feel that eating meat when it is halfway roasted, and the red juice squeezes out, makes them feel like a primitive person, eating raw meat with blood on it, and is very scary. In fact, the red juice in steak is gravy, which oozes out during the grilling process. The red color is due to the dissolved myoglobin in it. Think about it conversely, when we usually eat pig blood, once the blood is heated, it will solidify and turn into a darker reddish brown. Therefore, this juice is not as scary and bloody as some people imagine. And it is also to retain more gravy so that the meat will be less cooked.

The reason for retaining gravy is that it is related to the taste of the meat. The gravy tastes delicious and it makes the beef more tender. So in order to eat tender and juicy beef, we make it raw. The more raw the meat, the more juicy it retains, and the better the taste. As the meat becomes more cooked, the meat begins to age, the chewiness becomes stronger, the meat juice becomes less and less, and the taste becomes worse. Then some people will think that in this case, it is better to eat it raw. In fact, this is not absolute. Depends on the quality of the meat. If the meat is really good enough to be eaten raw, like sashimi, then that's fine. So how cooked it is depends on the quality of the meat.

In some restaurants, the steak is very fresh, so 30/50 is usually good. Some stores have poor meat quality and will let you choose something that is close to well-done. The waiter recommends that you ask for medium rare, because he is based on the maturity level that most people can accept. And some people find after eating it that it doesn't suit them at all.

So the final level of doneness depends on the quality of the meat, your teeth and intestines, and the restaurant’s cooking skills. Better restaurants have better control over the doneness of the meat. If you choose five points, you can eat meat that tastes great. If you don't grasp it well in some places, it will be overcooked. Even if you order a five-cent meal, it will still taste the same as a seven-cent meal.

You still have to experiment a lot to find the taste that really suits you. Maybe you like medium rare?