Is a rare steak cold inside?

barold

I'm having a debate with my friend about rare steak please resolve it.

He suggested that a rare steak should be served cold in the middle, I disagree. We turned to the internet for the answer and several sources suggest the correct temperature for the middle of a rare steak should be about 50 degrees celcius. I considered this to be the end of the argument because 50 degrees is not cold but this is where it gets complicated.

My friend suggests that we are arguing about the description of steak and not the actual temperature. He suggests that a bowl of soup can be described as cold when it is in fact warm. My argument is that anything that raises body temperature can be considered to be "not cold" Has anybody a definite way to resolve this argument?

ciaranmac

Steak can be eaten completely raw or done till it's brown all the way through. Your friend is right that you're arguing over descriptions - best ask a chef to settle the argument over what exactly rare means.

krd

It depends on where you get your steak done.

you have things like rare, medium-rare, bloody, cold in the middle.

I've seen steak served cold in the middle. It's down to taste. And the kind of steak. I like bloody.

Rare usually means it's still pink when you cut it.

What's really good, but against the law to serve virtually everywhere is carpaccio. Very thin slices of raw filet mignon, served with olive oil, capers, and lemon juice.

im invisible

well, to answer your question, OP, heat and cold are relative things, it depends what you are measuring it in relation to. its warm in relation to room temperature, and body temperature, but cold in relation to (what you would imagine) a hot dinner should be

RichieC

I had carpaccio in galway.. it must not be illegal in eire..

Agent_99

RichieC wrote: »

I had carpaccio in galway.. it must not be illegal in eire..

I had Carpaccio a few weeks ago on Limerick


The term rare steak is cooked for about 2 minutes either side still pink but not raw.

Your friend is probably talking about "Bleu" Steak it is only flashed in the pan for a few seconds there is no heat penetrated to the inside now depending if the steak is just out of the fridge or left to reach room temp before its cooked would dictate whether it is cold inside or not this would depend on the Chef personally I prefer it to reach room temp to relax the meat so it does not contract to much when it's flashed.

krd

I'm surprise anyone has had carpaccio in Ireland, I've never seen it anywhere in Dublin. And people who work in the trade told me they can't do it for Elf and Safety reasons.

I don't know if I'd trust it in Ireland. Irish beef isn't that good. I've had it in the US where they used filet mignon. Which is so tender if it's cooked it requires very little cooking. As carpaccio, it taste fantastic.

The tradition in Ireland is to ship the best meat out of the country - to Germany. And then we get the leavings. Our "prime steak", is not filet mignon.

Improbable

krd wrote: »

I'm surprise anyone has had carpaccio in Ireland, I've never seen it anywhere in Dublin. And people who work in the trade told me they can't do it for Elf and Safety reasons.

I don't know if I'd trust it in Ireland. Irish beef isn't that good. I've had it in the US where they used filet mignon. Which is so tender if it's cooked it requires very little cooking. As carpaccio, it taste fantastic.

The tradition in Ireland is to ship the best meat out of the country - to Germany. And then we get the leavings. Our "prime steak", is not filet mignon.

There are plenty of Italian restaurants in Temple Bar in Dublin which serve carpaccio.

krd

Improbable wrote: »

There are plenty of Italian restaurants in Temple Bar in Dublin which serve carpaccio.

I'd never seen it. Is it real carpaccio? I've heard of sliced cold meats being passed off as carpaccio. There's no Appellation d'origine contrôlée on it. I've even hear of chicken carpaccio.

It's originally the invention of an Italian chef - working in London.

It's actually one of the most memorable things I've ever eaten. That was in a bar in Washington DC.

It's something I'd wary of trying. I've bought meat in Irish supermarkets, where I've had to dump it when I got home. I'd trust American Filet Mignon. Because it's the most expensive cut, and they take care of it. I'm not going to play Russian Roulette with Irish beef.

Kim il Jong's former chef, claims that Kim wanted his sashimi so fresh, they were forced to cut it from a live fish.

FISMA

barold wrote: »

My friend suggests that we are arguing about the description of steak and not the actual temperature.

Barold: concisely, ye're arguing a relative term. Ye should finish off your statements by saying "with respect to" and I think the conversation would be settled.

Seriously though, this is the classic discussion when teaching heat. I'll do my best to condense the ideas.

Fundamentally, the problem lies in the everyday usage of the terms: heat, energy, and temperature. Furthermore, we really need to define and differentiate between heat, energy, and internal energy.

Complicating this further is that in most beginning Physics texts, thermal energy and internal energies are used synonymously. A bad practice when you come to Thermo.

Heat is energy in motion. Energy is the property of a system. Work is a process by which energy is transferred or transformed.

Temperature is a relative measure of how hot or cold a body is. Usually, it is expressed with respect to a living human body.

Temperature in Physics is related to the speed of a particle and can cause further complications. The Earth's upper atmosphere can have a temperature of 700°C! So if we had some back strips of venison there, would it be burn? No, they would be frozen.

Outer space is cold, the average temperature is close to absolute zero, 2.7K if memory serves me correctly (note the lack of the ° sign when talking Kelvins:-) Thus, for temperature, we have a lower limit (starting point) but no upper limit.

That's the reference point to which we should be speaking.

Barold - I think I am agreeing with your friend. If I were them, I would ask you to define cold and I think the argument/discussion would quickly be over.

I would probably say something like if you tell me what cold is, I'll tell you if the center of the steak is cold.

As a hunter, I always cook my wild game to a minimum internal temperature of 165F. That is high on the chart if you go by this

[FONT=Arial, verdana, sans-serif]Rare 130-135
Medium-rare 135-140
Medium 140-145
Medium-well 150-155
Well done 155-160[/FONT]

To those that are going to a fine steak house, you never order more than medium. It is insulting to the chef and establishment to order a well done or burnt.

I had a friend visit a fine steak house here in the States who, despite my advice, ordered a well done steak. It was funny when they politely advised him of the McDonald's down the road!

krd

FISMA wrote: »

Temperature in Physics is related to the speed of a particle and can cause further complications. The Earth's upper atmosphere can have a temperature of 700°C! So if we had some back strips of venison there, would it be burn? No, they would be frozen.

I'm not so sure. If you dropped the venison steaks, they'd find the hot gas very quickly.

And if you had some way of floating stationary in the thermosphere. Would the direct sunlight be enough to at least thaw the steaks? Would the near vacuum, act as an insulator - if you were sunbathing in the upper atmosphere, you'd get a nasty sunburn.

Outer space is cold, the average temperature is close to absolute zero, 2.7K if memory serves me correctly (note the lack of the ° sign when talking Kelvins:-) Thus, for temperature, we have a lower limit (starting point) but no upper limit.

That's a thing - how hot can a vacuum be? How cold can it be? (or is that like a Buddhist koan - what is the temperature of nothing) I think there's such a thing as "subjective temperature" (I just made that up). I'm not sure, but if you dropped an astronaut into a tank of some liquid close to 2.7k, they might feel colder than outer space.

I think, in fact, the upper atmosphere, as it becomes more rarefied, acts an an insulator, like a vacuum sealed thermos. As I understand it: unless an excited atom releases it's energy as light, it has to bump into another one if it's to transfer energy. If there's nothing to bump into, it retains it's energy and keeps spinning around - until it does hit another atom, or releases it's energy as light, and then falls back down to earth.

And is the 2.7k of deep space really just an incredibly rare hydrogen atom getting hit by a beam of light, particle zipping through space. Would throwing a rubber tube into outer space be like dipping it in liquid nitrogen - or would it actually some time for it too cool?

The gas particles in the thermosphere, according to Wikipedia, can get as hot as 1200C. And supposedly those particles are a potential problem for the theoretical graphene space elevator. They're so hot and fast, they could corrode the graphene strip.

I had a friend visit a fine steak house here in the States who, despite my advice, ordered a well done steak. It was funny when they politely advised him of the McDonald's down the road!

I once was in a restaurant in North Carolina. I asked "can I have a rare hamburger". The waitress rudely said "no, you can't". And I said "why?"...She said it's the law, tapping the menu with her pen, where they had the South Carolina law on serving rare meat - no bloody burgers in NC.

Jimmy Garlic

krd wrote: »

I once was in a restaurant in South Carolina. I asked "can I have a rare hamburger". The waitress rudely said "no, you can't". And I said "why?"...She said it's the law, tapping the menu with her pen, where they had the South Carolina law on serving rare meat - no bloody burgers in SC.

I am sure they can serve rare meat (as in steak) just not rare mince/hamburger. It is probably not the best idea to eat rare mince/hamburger in any case.

FISMA

krd wrote: »

I'm not so sure. If you dropped the venison steaks, they'd find the hot gas very quickly.

Not sure about this. Those particles have to be going pretty fast. That gives them a high T, by definition.

krd wrote: »

Would the direct sunlight be enough to at least thaw the steaks? Would

Agreed, actually, I bet it would do much worse than that. I was just trying to use this paradox of sorts as an example to demonstrate the difference between heat and Temp.

krd

FISMA wrote: »

Not sure about this. Those particles have to be going pretty fast. That gives them a high T, by definition.

It's what can cause things to burn up on entering the atmosphere. Like space vehicles re-entering. Although the gas particles are sparse - they'll build up underneath any object falling fast enough through them. At least that's the way I've seen it described. When the space shuttle is re-entering, in the thermosphere, there's not enough air to glide over, so it falls and picks up a lot of the host gas particles. The sand tiles absorb this heat - if a tile falls off, they're in big trouble.

I think the meteors you see streaking across the sky are hitting the thermosphere. I know they can burn up in the lower atmosphere too.

Agreed, actually, I bet it would do much worse than that. I was just trying to use this paradox of sorts as an example to demonstrate the difference between heat and Temp.

I wonder though. If you were suspended in the thermosphere, in the shade, would you feel hot or cold?

You would be in a near vacuum, and the gas particles, though there are not many of them, would be very hot.

Maximus Alexander

krd wrote: »

It's what can cause things to burn up on entering the atmosphere. Like space vehicles re-entering. Although the gas particles are sparse - they'll build up underneath any object falling fast enough through them.

Are you sure this is correct? My understanding is that the heat is due to the friction caused by hitting the atmosphere at greater than 24,000 km/h, rather than the atmosphere's intrinsic temperature.

I would agree that, due to the hypersonic speeds of objects hitting the atmosphere, gas particles can't "get out of the way" fast enough. But is it not the compression caused by this which generates heat, rather than the fact that the particles are already hot?

krd

LeighH wrote: »

Are you sure this is correct? My understanding is that the heat is due to the friction caused by hitting the atmosphere at greater than 24,000 km/h, rather than the atmosphere's intrinsic temperature.

Yeah, but for the friction to happen you need something to "rub" against (can't think of a better word).......And that something is the rarefied gas. In outer space where there's generally nothing, you can go a 24,000 and not have any friction, because there's nothing there - if you hit a flake of paint, some space debris, that can be a big problem.

I would agree that, due to the hypersonic speeds of objects hitting the atmosphere, gas particles can't "get out of the way" fast enough. But is it not the compression caused by this which generates heat, rather than the fact that the particles are already hot?

The particles are very hot. And when they're compressed, they're even hotter. You're talking about a very hot and very bright plasma, that can be seen from thousands of miles away.

I was watching a documentary on meteorites a few months back. And in the documentary they said, the compression is so hot, especially in the lower atmosphere, it's hot enough to explode the rock. They had a great clip of a low flying meteor captured by a petrol station security camera. It looked like something that would cause serious damage when it reached the ground, but by the time it did, it was just pebbles.