Did you eat Hot Dogs today?Follow

Even if searing doesn't seal in juices, it doesn't mean it's the wrong way to cook meat. I'm not sure why you are assuming that. And there are certainly maaaaaaany leading chefs that use this technique, because it gives a stronger flavor overall.

My foot is bleeding, I wonder how the hell that happened...?

The evaporation of moisture and the Maillard reaction are two different things, though. Evaporation happens at 212°F while the Maillard reaction generally happens around 310°F. Cook your meat at 300°F and I have serious doubts you'd see that happen. Of course, you will get the water evaporation, but who wants that?

A Pittsburgh rare steak isn't seared to "seal in juices" although Gbaji's mouthbreathing companions probably believe so. It's simply to cook the outermost layer of the steak while leaving the interior as rare as humanly possible and set up the differences in flavor, texture and temperature. Versus slowly cooking it and having a more homogeneous flavor and texture.

I've no issues with a traditionally cooked rare steak; it's how I usually order it when I'm out since I don't trust the kitchen to do a Pittsburgh rare correctly. Flea does it right and that's good enough for me.

Yeah. 300 was an approximation for the low end. Hence, why the other 40 degrees in the range I suggested are above the temperature needed. Way to focus like a laser there!

The point is that you don't have to sear the meat to get the flavor. Searing it dries out the outer layer, preventing it from absorbing any additional moisture as you continue to cook. Obviously, if you're deliberately making a Pittsburgh Rare, this doesn't matter since you're going for the "cooked on the outside; raw on the inside" result. For any other style of steak, it's a bad idea because as you continue to cook the steak, the part you seared at the beginning will just get more dry.

Alton Brown suggests that if you absolutely love the crispy outer layer that searing provides, that you cook the steak until it's nearly done how you want and *then* sear the outside as the last step. That way you reduce the amount of drying out that would otherwise occur. The point here is that those who think they should start by searing to "seal in the juices" are just plain absolutely wrong. It's never going to produce as good a result as if you didn't do so in the first place.

And that's assuming you have two heat sources at different temperatures. Most people cooking a steak at home aren't going to have this. That's why you're better off cooking steaks at home at a lower constant temperature. High enough to create the Maillard Reaction, but not so hot that you're burning/searing the outside. If it's that hot, you're going to completely burn and dry out the outside layer before you cook the inside sufficiently.


Unless, of course, you're deliberately cooking that abomination Joph calls steak! Why why why!?

Funny, because that's not what he does in the video I linked earlier.

No, that was "medium rare" which is about the same culinary adventurism as ordering chicken strips at Applebee's. So it was great when I was a child


Cute. I'm sure someone out there believes this as you spew out paragraphs of regurgitated babble about Maillard reactions, Alton Brown and optimal cooking temperatures and then fail to understand the difference between pan and grill searing.

I still don't understand why you are claiming these two things are logically connected.

Different words, same modus operandi.

At least you don't put ketchup on your steak anymore, so... progress?



Er? I laughed at a friend of mine who didn't know the difference (or that searing doesn't do what he thought anyway), and this somehow translates into me not knowing the difference? Um... Ok...

You made the claim that searing doesn't seal in juices, and then found links to support that (not that you linked them, but I believe you). Fine.

But all that says is that searing doesn't seal in juices. It doesn't say that searing isn't the proper way to cook a steak. That doesn't logically follow. All you have done is added an assumption to the information you found, without bothering to substantiate it.

So my point stands. You have failed to demonstrate why these two things are logically connected.

Which has absolutely nothing at all to do with the two paragraphs you quoted.

I was responding to Joph's claim that I didn't know anything about cooking steak and was "furiously googling" in order to learn about it. In reality, as the two paragraphs you quoted clearly state, I responded to someone else's link, by googling about what their site claimed because I was sure that the linked site was wrong. And sure enough, when I did google "does searing meat seal in juices", I found site after site labeling that as a myth and providing a ton of reasons why it's a myth.

That's what those two paragraphs were about. How the hell you waltz in and insist that they don't logically follow each other is beyond me.


Now if what you meant to say is that they don't prove that cooking slower and more evenly is the best way to cook a steak, you'd be correct. But that's not what I was claiming in those paragraphs, so I'm not sure what the heck you think you're proving.



The two paragraphs you quoted are. Those two paragraphs and one other thing I said earlier in this thread are not. You get that there can be multiple points being discussed, right? All I was doing was responding to Joph's statement. That statement had nothing at all to do with which method of cooking steak was "best".

Try reading not just my response, but what I'm responding to. It might help with the whole reading comprehension.

Edited, Jul 6th 2011 2:59pm by gbaji

I'm just assuming that as a small child, you put ketchup on your steak. Probably much to the chagrin of your parents. Now that you're older, you continue to eat steak the same way, but no longer put the ketchup on it. Grats I suppose!



I didn't say that they were the same thing. I said that what he thought he was going to accomplish was just as foolishly wrong as the idea behind your style of cooking steak. I never said that he could succeed at actually "searing" the meat. I moved right past that bit because it wasn't important. Strange that you can't see past it though.