The Science of a Cooking a Perfect Steak

A Case Study

Let’s apply what we have learned about food chemistry, food safety, temperature, heat, and water to the cooking of a popular ingredient: steaks.

For the novice cook, one of the most confusing and frustrating experiences is deciding when a piece of steak is done. There is the palm method, where you touch different fingers with your thumb, and the hardness of your palm in different configurations matches different doneness. Or (according to some) an easier method: the softness of different parts of your face corresponding to the different degrees of doneness. I am not going to give you the details of these methods because they don’t work: every person’s hand or face is different, every piece of steak is different, and do you really have a repeatable and accurate sense of touch?

Maybe you don’t care for steaks. But a rectangular piece of meat is a good (as in easy to model) subject to study how temperature and heat work in cooking.

We will follow our foolproof 3-step program: define the problem, think very hard, and solve it!