a steak as a concept is meant to be a section of meat from a non-locomotive muscle (fewer fibers = more tender) that is roughly proportional to what someone hungry would eat in a single sitting. tougher muscle groups require longer cook times at lower temperatures (like several hours, sometimes after an overnight soak in a brine to accelerate the breakdown of tougher fibers/tissues) or other processing (ground meat is basically mechanically pre-chewed so you can bite through it). that pre-chewing creates a food safety issue, because it much of the cut has been exposed to the air, so “undercooked” hamburger (red in the middle) can have pathogens introduced during the grinding process from exposure to the ambient air and unsanitized surfaces.

so a traditional steak cut is a cut that can be seared on its outer surface but safely cooked only minimally, preventing it from drying out or becoming too tough. i.e. it can be prepared to the eater’s desired texture and tastes easily and safely, which generally means it can be bitten through. there is a whole field of muscle biology dedicated to meat and objective measures of tenderness (sheer force test).

personally, i think steaks are kinda bullshit and something affluent people, especially affected-masculine types use to try and stunt on each other. “let’s go get steaks” “ill grill us some steaks” “i grill a mean steak”. as though it’s hard to put a few cuts of meat on a grill for a few minutes on either side and take it off. a no frills hamburger requires more effort and attention to do well, and people make fun of burger flippers as lacking skill.

even within the world of flesh eating, steaks represent the most disengaged eater who wants a meal made from the easiest to prepare and easiest to consume cuts of an animal, which represents a very small minority by weight of the meat of any animal. because everything is so easy, steak cuts command the highest per pound price. and frankly, a steak as a meal is just a big hunk of meat and some garnish. like a child making a sundae that is 95% hot fudge with a little smear of ice cream. there’s way too little plant fiber in that meal to be reasonable for anyone’s digestion, so it’s a decadent “celebratory” type of meal, i suppose. but it’s wasteful and pricey, imo.

to understand how to prepare less expensive/desired, common ingredients to feed, comfort and delight many people takes real skill and talent. steaks are the opposite of that.

Steaks are more a signifier of status than something actually good to eat. In my head steak, cigars and whiskey all fall into the same category of “manly” shit that is actually just miserable.

Whiskey tastes like fossilised underpants, cigars have no discernable flavour or fragrance and just burn my tongue and steaks taste like nothing regardless if its £1 or £100 and dry aged tastes like the steak was left behind a radiator and forgotten about. Anyone who has a different opinion is wrong

Good steak tastes good. How do you get yours cooked? I try not to eat meat now, but back when I did I loved rare or medium-rare. The more you cook steak, the less flavor it has.

I think it’s like a decadence and wealth thing, because it feels like the whole idea behind them is that the cooking is just there to bring out the innate quality of the singular ingredient and anything but the mildest and most rote additions are treated as somehow sullying it, with the implicit idea that the quality is directly tied to how expensive and luxurious it is. It’s such a boring, gross, and fundamentally backwards way of approaching cooking imo, where instead of working with methods and available ingredients to make something good you instead start from the idea that you must not disrupt the natural quality of your expensive and luxurious one allowed ingredient and that it should be savored as the blandly decadent thing that it is.

Good kofta is better than even the “finest” and most decadent steak and I will fight anyone who disagrees.

“medium rare”? “well done”? those are words made up by wizards or something.

That’s just how long you cook it, it’s not just a thing with steak but all red meats. Most people prefer it to be at least somewhat “rare”, meaning less cooked with still some red juicy meat in the middle. “Done” is when you cook it all the way through, this tends to dry out the meat though and make it less flavorful.

Cheap steak tastes nice enough to me, especially with some garlic - it’s nothing special I guess.

But one time my dad took me to dine at a proper steak place - we shared a ‘tomahawk’ that cost about £65. It was god damn melt in mouth delicious. Just incredible.

Steak from restuarants that aren’t higher end steak houses are always mid as hell. Buying a decent steak from a butcher and grilling at home is much better

chicken goated steak boring.

Chicken breast is the most bland tasting shit on the planet. You literally have to be a Michelin Chef or deep fry it to make it taste good.

Steak doesn’t necessarily taste like the bees knees that every claims it does but it has enough natural flat and can absorb way more flavor than dry ass chicken breast.

While steak as a whole is overrated, some really good steak really can be astounding. Personally I prefer some of the less bougie cuts like hamburger, tripe, and liver. Ooh, also tongue.

Steak is overrated and frankly the texture is all off. I prefer a tofu based dish or even chicken.

maybe it’s just an american thing. maybe my body inherently dislikes steaks because it dislikes american imperialism.

It’s been about 20 years since I had steak or chicken but I pretty strongly remember feeling that giving up chicken was trivial because all poultry just tastes like whatever it’s cooked in and has minimal flavor of its own, while beef at least had a distinctive flavor.

Coming from a long time vegetarian it might not count for much but I flatly disagree that chicken is less boring than beef.

let me quote family guy: “I disagree!”

Don’t eat corpse. Get some good food.

I think it’s overrated, like most high status foods. Lobster, truffles, caviar, and steak are all pretty mid, and terrible when considering the price.