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Really well done meat
pearlsandplums
Posts: 29,678 Forum Member
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I was up at my parents for dinner at the weekend, and we had a roast. Being an irish mother, my mother needs to cook the roast for about three days, and the veg for a similar length of time.
I know everyone has different tastes, but i just dont understand how anyone can enjoy meat thats been cooked for so long that its dried up and leathery.
Is anyone else a sole rare/medium eater in a family of well done-rs?
I know everyone has different tastes, but i just dont understand how anyone can enjoy meat thats been cooked for so long that its dried up and leathery.
Is anyone else a sole rare/medium eater in a family of well done-rs?
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I was quite shocked first time I saw beef that was pink inside:o
I've been converted now though - rare steak with al dente veg please:)
I agree with the usual refrain of 'it's a matter of taste' only up to a certain point. The flavour of the slightly burnt outside bits is delicious, so I do get why those who like well-done meat enjoy that, but I can't understand why anyone would enjoy the texture of a leathery bit of cremated meat. And I think that meat-eaters who are squeamish about 'bloodiness' (it's NOT blood) are hypocritical and rather silly. You're eating a dead animal - why pretend it's not? Same goes for people who freak out about bones.
I think Shrike is quite right - it's often a generational thing, harking back to the days when the rearing, slaughtering and butchering of livestock was not heavily regulated, like it is today. I've seen older people do things like rinse meat under a tap (sacrilege, and totally pointless). Another example is people who still think that pork should be utterly cremated, so you can barely swallow it down, rather than cooked so that there is the merest hint of pink, as there should be.
Meat had to be cooked safely and veggies too when they came in from the garden filthy and pitted it's only with todays clinically washed veg perfectly round with no flaws we can risk not cooking them until they are properly fully cooked through.
But there's a difference between cooked through and being cooked for about an hour longer than that isn't there?
Of course but what you seem to consider cooked through would not be cooked enough for my meat eaters they like theirs very well done, we are also fans of properly cooked veggies (soft).
My mum would still wash a turkey under the cold tap on xmas eve.
All it does is spray germs around the kitchen, as lets face it, running cold water over raw meat isnt going to do much good. Science on big brother washed mince
Well, yes, that's what I was saying. Previously, meat had to be cooked thoroughly to make sure it was safe. Today, in developed countries, standards are much, much higher, and meat can be cooked for less time. That is the reason why more people now eat rare meat - because they like it and they can do so safely - rather than it being a fad.
I don't really understand what you are saying about the veggies though. Some people like theirs soft and well-done, yes, but I've never heard anything about health risks involved with eating raw vegetables or fruit (other than things like rhubarb and potatoes, that are harmful when eaten raw). Don't we all eat some raw vegetables - carrots, salad leaves, cucumbers etc? Other than possible pesticides, what is this harmful 'filth' that comes (or used to come) on vegetables from the garden? The 'pitts' and 'flaws' in vegetables are not flaws at all - that's the natural state of naturally grown vegetables. There is nothing sinister or harmful about that.
And unless you garden in a cat or fox free area I would suggest there are many reasons to cook stuff extremely well.
I live in a very rural area, so plenty of wildlife around here! Still, I eat plenty of the vegetables that come from my garden (and the supermarket) raw - not sure why or how one would cook a cucumber, for example. After a thorough rinsing, of course, but that's about it - just a rinse. I'm very much against cleaning anything completely antiseptically, or cooking everything to within an inch of its life. There are plenty of studies that show that over-adherence to cleanliness has a negative effect on the immune system, and is therefore more harmful than ingesting the odd bit of dirt and bacteria.
I guess the bottom line is: if you like your meat and vegetables well-done, fine, but there is no real need to cook like this these days.
In my house we prefer meat just cooked so that it is still moist and the vegetables definitely al dante.
A rinse under the tap will do.
That's my mum.
I'd forgotten that:D He also insisted on cutting about a third of the chicken off and chucking it out as he didn't want to eat it's arse. I know he got his nickname as he liked science at school, but I can only assume it was physics and chemistry - not biology;-)
Once beef shows no sign of pink it is cooked through. Trust me, my mother in law must cook hers for another hour after that point.
we wash most things before use. All fruit and veg for instance. We would certainly wash chickens, although not joints of meat. And despite observations about pork, we cook ours properly.
Heston B managed to poison a lot of his diners with the contaminated shellfish, did he not. Leviticus properly has it right. I eat prawns and the like, but rarely touch other shellfish.
It is impossible to tell if Oysters are clean before you cook them, that was what caused the food poisoning. Pork should be cooked slightly pink if that's what you mean.
Why do you wash chicken, but not other joints of meat? It's the heat that kills bacteria. Running something under the tap doesn't kill any surface germs at all.
The same reason they cook pork all the way through. Habit.
My mother was never able to cook beef properly. It just ended up looking and tasting like shoe leather. Any other meat and she didn't overcook quite as much, but beef had to be totally nuked.
The first time we went to a restaurant as a family (long after all the kids had left home, in fact it was celebrating my mum's 60th birthday), my mother looked like she was going to be sick when she saw the rare steak I'd ordered