Again, Bernice King.
I remember observing at a post-election take-stock potluck that the court politics was likely to get extremely absorbing, and I was quite right (of course I had already been absorbed by @onlxn and the like).
There's a question about what Trump as an individual wants as being different from what's to the Republican party's advantage with Trump as a figurehead. Sure, Trump individually lusts after the spotlight. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea to shine it on him -- even if it's what he wants, if he looks like a repugnant, incompetent clown to enough voters when he's getting maximal exposure, than maximal exposure is a good thing.
He just told a bunch of governors that "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated." He's beyond stupid into actually negative IQ territory.
2: Any port in a storm, but doesn't singling him out make it easier for him to be memory-holed when he's gone with little damage to Republicans, like when GWB lost popularity?
4: I don't think so. Republicans memory-hole everything, regardless. Democrats don't, hence Obama, and Clinton's popular vote.
I think they remembered Bush just fine, at least the real conservatives (by which I mean the fucknuts). That's why Trump won the primary. Bush never went the full shithead and they weren't about to let the establishment do that again.
6: They aren't the ones who can be reached though.
Regarding celebrity, I worry that we've all overestimated the fickleness of the public... people do still get tired of the celebrities du jour, right? There are still has-beens? Or has the spotlight become more permanent? (Not necessarily relevant to Trump, given the confounding factors which mitigate against "naturally" losing interest in him; just something I've been contemplating.)
The Republican party as a fandom. Hmm. I guess I'd be interested in hearing more of Le Guin's thoughts on this subject? Mildly interested?
He just told a bunch of governors that "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."
In which he asserts that all his colleagues are as stupid as he is. Are they bright enough to notice?
People pay attention to the most powerful man in the world
Bad times for the beef industry if they do. Why buy a nice steak if you're just going to burn it and put ketchup on it?
11: Some clown* claimed that steak should never be eaten at less than medium-well and accused "hipsters" of eating their meat rarer than that to be "trendy".
Has well-done steak ever been the norm among anyone who cares at all about food? I grew up on cream of mushroom soup casseroles, but I was still raised never to order steak more than medium-rare (and better rare than medium, if the kitchen did poorly).
* I don't care enough to figure out if he's a rando or someone that anyone on the right pays attention to
people do still get tired of the celebrities du jour, right? There are still has-beens?
Paris Hilton. Something or other reminded me recently of just how big she was, and how long ago that now is.
I do think there's a new dynamic around has-beens because of the insatiable demand for content and the ease with which has-been + hijinks = content. Like, I'm sure Pauly Shore--a barely-was at his peak--has been paid real money to be on camera in the last year, even though nobody could possibly care less.
Sure, there was always the game show circuit (when I was a kid I loved Hollywood Squares, but I never knew who any of those people were; I still don't know who George Gobbel (?) was), but I think there's a quantitative difference that makes a qualitative one. I think the people who used to appear on TV well past their sell-by dates had at least been somebody once; now you can be somebody who once came in 3rd on Survivor and that's good enough to have at least a shot at decades on camera, because so many cameras.
12: The only people I know of who never order steak less than medium well, as a class, are large animal veterinarians.
I still don't know who George Gobbel (?) was
Not George, Joseph. And the last name was spelled "Goebbels".
I'm reaching the stabbing point with liberals blathering on about how Trump eats his fucking steaks. I eat my steaks well-done, which I learned from my (working-class) family. The worst thing about being the middle class is you have to learn all of the middle classes rules about salad forks and which wine goes with which meal. Hipsters make it worse because they take ordinary unpretentious things, and slather a whole bunch of rules on top, like your beer needs to be an IPA, and if you drink whiskey you need to drink some small barrel shit rather than a mass produced product that tastes like a punch in the mouth.
Really, everything you mention is completely different from burning steaks.
Yes, Moby, please educate me on the correct way to cook a steak. I have eaten hundreds of steaks in my life, but clearly I need to be educated by a representative of a superior culture, like yourself.
I come from the land where cows are the dominant factor in the economy.
It's like a French person with wine or a Russian with alcoholism.
You grant large animals legal personhood and let them go to medical school, next thing you know, they're overcooking their food.
In Pittsburgh they cook steaks on a ribbon of white-hot steel, yes?
The French drink rosé, which is also the height of vulgarity. Though apparently it's okay to drink rosé now, probably because of hipsters or something.
Obviously, everybody has their own taste, but the idea that rare or medium rare steaks are somehow upper class is absurd.
Even more absurd is the idea that it's hipsters.
12: I did for a large part of my life not understand the appeal of steak being rare - it rang my "hey, this is not done cooking!" hygiene siren. On the other hand, I was never much taken with well-done steak either. If I had never figured out the appeal, and been in a position to eat steak more often, I imagine I might have got used to adding sauces, including ketchup, to improve the taste.
A1 Sauce is at least better than ketchup.
I'm with Walt. There is nothing quite so off putting as cutting into a delicious looking steak only to see bloody juices running out. How anyone could put that in their mouth is beyond me. I'd rather suck Trump's tiny cock. And places that don't know how to cook a steak well done simply reflect incompetence on the part of the chef, not some sort of gastronomical superiority. If your well done steak is dry the chef fucked it up and failed to properly sear it to keep in the moisture.
Has anyone bitching about well done steak with ketchup actually tried it? I'm betting not. This is bullshit sneering down one's nose at Trump for lacking the tastes of a class of people who really ought to be lined up and shot anyway, so why the fuck should we listen to them? Let them get salmonella from their undercooked food.
It's the fact that there's a rule that's class-linked. It was just a personal preference, like eating onions on your burger. I had no idea there was a rule until I made enough money to eat at an expensive steak restaurant.
I've had well done beef with A1 on it. It's fine. It's just that by the time you do all that, you've made $25/pound meat taste the same as $5/pound meat. Why not save the money?
If you want Salisbury Steak, why buy tenderloin?
I'm a vegetarian so I could give a shit about how anyone likes their steaks done. But IPAs suck ass.
Because Salisbury steak sucks, and a well-done New York strip does not?
I actually have to be a little careful if I go to a steak restaurant I haven't been before. Since "not well done" is now the rule, some steak places will try to pawn off a poor quality New York strip on me, and I have to send it back.
I personally like my meat barely dead -- socially acceptable ways to eat it literally raw, like carpaccio and tartare, I am also all over. And there's a point about it being not merely a matter of personal preference -- if you like meat well done, there are other ways to eat it (braising, always good), but broiling or grilling a good steak until it's cooked through, as Moby says, makes a good steak indistinguishable from a bad steak. It's a waste of good ingredients.
But yeah, making fun of Trump for being tacky is counterproductive. He is a rich man, whose parents were rich. Seizing on the fact that his personal tastes are astonishingly vulgar in every possible respect helps him present himself as some sort of representative of the common man, which is bullshit.
Since "not well done" is now the rule
Now? "Pittsburgh rare" was a thing with the steel workers before any of the hipsters were born. The old school steakhouses my grandfather went to served medium rare/rare aged steaks to ranchers who rode in on actual horses.
And that's why they call her "Lizardbreath".
35.2 is a very good point. (OTOH I like to attack the tackiness of his taste in interior decorating - it's Gulf despot to a T.)
Salisbury steak is pretty good if you get the real kind with the mushrooms and all.
For some reason I can't comprehend, this thread had made me hungry for chicken pot pie.
burned steak...
Back when they had steel mills...
personal tastes are astonishingly vulgar...
I have a vision. A tiny steel mill, producing a ribbon of white-hot steel, on which your steak is burned before your very eyes. Make America Great Again.
Supposedly, they cooked the steak on the side of the furnace, not on the actual steel. I would think that dumping what is basically a large hunk of water and carbon unto steel that isn't cooled would be contract-indicated from a metallurgical point of view.
As if unionized workers gave a shit about quality control.
Or brilliant entrepreneurs like myself give a shit about historical accuracy.
There is nothing quite so off putting as cutting into a delicious looking steak only to see bloody juices running out.
And, for me, nothing quite so offputting as not seeing the bloody juices running out.
If your well done steak is dry the chef fucked it up and failed to properly sear it to keep in the moisture.
Searing to keep moisture in is a myth. Searing is about getting Maillard reaction flavours and texture and almost nothing else.
Yes. You need to add moisture if you are going to cook a steak to well done without drying it.
41: Raw is great. When I saw it the woman in the row behind fainted!
Actually the best way to cook steak is to simmer it in Worcestershire sauce. Try it. It's fucking great. It comes out kind of chewy but chewing is good.
"Exercise your chompers. Really chew, chew, chew."
Once you're simmering steak, whether in Worcester, water or wine, a whole lot of different variable come into play. Basically you're making a stew, which is fine but needs hours.
I take it the no blood faction here wouldn't eat boeuf tartare, carpaccio or kibbeh nayyeh. That's OK, all the more for me.
If you buy kosher steak, can you get it rare without the blood?
I am delighted to see Ursula LeGuin hosting the steak-and-liquor-quarrel thread.
This fallen world isn't good enough for her.
failed to properly sear it to keep in the moisture.
This is actually an old wives tale. Searing does no such thing. Cooking muscle fibers to high temperatures causes them to shrink and exude moisture, which cooks off, full stop. A given cut may be fatty enough to disguise the dryness of the muscle, but cooking protein to high heat means drying it out. This isn't class, it's fucking science.
Dammit, Ginger-pwned. I skimmed too quickly.
Supposedly, they cooked the steak on the side of the furnace
I've seen this attested* enough that I'd remove the "supposedly".
*that is, cited first or second hand from a number of sources, indulging IIRC at least once contemporaneously. Once it became a thing again (I never heard of it until after I'd been here 10+ years), people wrote it up, and I've been convinced that it's neither legendary nor an uncommon thing exaggerated into ubiquity.
Here's the thing, we have a test case: for decades (centuries?), people only ate pork well done. This is why it's always been much more common to sauce pork chops than beef chops (especially intensely-flavored sauces like port & cherry, where steak is more likely to get something like a compound butter). But with trichinosis more or less a thing of the past, kitchens are now cooking pork chops to something just on the rare side of medium*. And holy fucking shit are they better. Not just juicier, but more tender because, again, cooking beyond medium means seizing up those proteins until they scream.
I guess togolosh enjoys jerky-like meats (hooray for chewing?), but that's not a texture we seek in many other things: when the Chinese eat tendon, it isn't in big chunks like a big bite of steak (and of course it's a different kind of chewiness anyway).
*it's called medium-rare, but the visual, and the running juices, are much more like a faintly rosy medium on a steak
61.2 Bingo! If I had to only eat meat one way for the rest of my life it would be biltong (roughly South African jerky). I like to chew. I'm probably part puppy.
Wait, you find well-done meat hard to chew? Maybe trichinosis has been replaced with rampant gum disease.
Oh, come on. You like steak well done, and that's fine, but it's objectively chewier well-done than rarer. (Unless we're comparing well-done braised or stewed meat to rare steak?)
I have to admit I'm feeling picked on by the world over this steak thing, so I'm prone to lash out.
It's harder to chew, but do you find it actually hard to chew? If you overcook it enough, it's hard to chew, but a steak that's just cooked to the point where it's brown all the way through?
Not prohibitively hard or anything. But there's definitely more of a "Now I have a mouthful of dry stuff that I have to chew. Chew, chew chew," sensation, which is not my thing.
You know what's good well-done? Roast lamb. It's also good rare, but differently excellent cooked through.
You know what's good well-done? Roast lamb.
Mmmm, yes. This thread has reminded me that I'm not a big fan of cuts of meat (I generally like meat strongly seasoned, well-done, and cut into small pieces as part of a larger dish), but lamb chops are very tasty.
Walt, I am not with you on the steak, but if that texture works for you, allow me to draw your attention to goat meat. Mmm-mmm. Jamaican, subsaharan African, and some north african cuisines feature it. Oh, and some Pakistani places-- one near my mom's house sets out a very nice curry.
There's a Kenyan place about an hour away that makes wet goat fry, my mouth is actually watering thinking about it.
If you fry a wet goat, don't you have water plus hot oil causing you a problem with splattering hot oil?
The restaurant at the top of the ski mountain in Megève makes the best steak tartare ever. "well done" steak is an abomination.
71: What a novel opinion on well-done steak. Thank god we have you to stand out from the crowd.
You know what's good well-done? Roast lamb. It's also good rare, but differently excellent cooked through.
Lamb (especially leg) definitely benefits from being cooked longer, but I'd strongly dispute that it's better well done than medium rare for the same cooking time. If you sous vide a lamb steak for 3 hours, it's going to taste better at 54C than 58C.
I think everyone should calm down until we hear what urple has to say on the subject of meat doneness.
While we're waiting on that, I'll chime in on the subject of goat curry: worth eating!
69: There is an Ethiopian dish made from dried meat that's simmered in some sort of spicy sauce. It's the best thing ever. And goat is great, though I have yet to figure out why it seems to nearly always be served bone-in, at least at the places where I eat.
If you cook your steak well done, it has to be a good piece of meat or it will be shoe leather. Almost any beef is edible when cooked medium rare.
Speaking of various dried meats, burnt ends are kind of a thing (often BBQ), and I like them, and they are basically very chewy and tasty and "well-done." Steak tips can be great with some bits ending up that way. I don't get huffy about well-done meat (eat what you enjoy), but I personally prefer it at worst pink and at best with some (or a lot of) juices running.
My grandfather loved roast beef, especially a "steamship round" as they were called, and my grandmother cooked them so that there were lots of juices which could be sopped up with buttermilk biscuits. If you didn't like the meat you could eat the biscuits, so it was a win-win.
Virginia style cured ham is another thing usually served well-done, and its pretty awesome, especially with the aforementioned biscuits.
Lightly seared tuna, on the other hand, is nearly raw and wonderful. Maybe it's the extra mercury taste?
Queſtion Korner.
"Q" Is the Steak Unſatiſfactory?
"A" Sizzle the Meat, it _muſt_ sizzle.
I'm the usual cook in our household, and overcooking meat is something I need to work on.
As for the OP, I don't disagree with Le Guin exactly, but... where do we go with it? That is probably a good strategy for our own mental health, and if more people had practiced it during the election he might not be president now, but he is. Ignoring the president doesn't make him go away, unfortunately.
82.2: yes, it strikes me as a good article for during the campaign, but paying him constant attention now that he's president isn't an appalling thing to do, it's entirely sensible.