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Comment by chlodwig | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak to the nutritional aspect of it, but having attempted various high protein or protein/fat heavy keto diets in the past with varying levels of success I do have to say it doesn't take long before you just get sick of eating meat.

What kind of meat were you eating and how was it cooked? I did a month of carnivore diet and never got sick of eating rare ribeye steak, lamb ribs, or lamb legs. I think I would get sick of chicken or pot roast or well-done ground beef. That said, I never stopped missing carby meals like mac 'n cheese or cookie dough ice cream.

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> never got sick of eating rare ribeye steak

> I think I would get sick of chicken or pot roast or well-done ground beef

Honest question, why do people seem to love rare meat so much? I agree that tough meat doesn't taste good, but I would argue a properly cooked pot roast is about the most tender cut of meat you can find.

Having had what most "foodie" people would call a "properly cooked" just barely above rare steak, I always find it to be unsatisfying.

What am I missing?

Ribeye, lamb ribs, and lamb leg are all relatively tender. Beyond a certain point, I don't need my meat to be that tender. Frankly, ribeye is probably too tender to be optimal for health and physique -- it would be better to develop that Chad-like jaw to eat something a more tough cut ...

Rare meat is not only juicier, but too me it tastes a lot better. Rare meat tastes good, the denatured proteins of pot roast do not taste good. And while there is a tremendous amount of social conditioning and idiosyncrasies that determine people's tastes, I don't think is just me -- most people eat their steaks plain, but almost everyone I know adds sauces and fixins to their pot roast and brisket and other meats that have been cooked forever. IMO, they ruin the meat with over cooking and then add in sugars and other flavorings to make it palatable.

A well cooked pot roast is not that much different from the sous vide trend that's becoming so popular.

You put the roast in a dutch oven coated in salt and pepper the same as you would with a steak and a bit of water, then you let it cook at ~200F for 4 - 8 hours.

Usually you also slow roast some onions, carrots, potatoes, etc. along with it the last little while.

Then make a gravy from the drippings.

The gravy is good on the meat, but it's more for the vegetables. The meat is delicious in its own right.

With sous vide the collagen breaks down, but the internal temperature never gets high enough for the proteins to denature. Internal temp should not be higher than 135. The meat is still pink if you are doing it right. With pot roast, internal temp is going to 190 degrees or higher and the proteins denature (in addition to the collagen breaking down). I find that sous vide chuck roast taste better on its own than chuck roast, but it is worse than chuck roast seared and served rare. But the sous vide version is more tender than rare chuck roast, while being less tender than pot roast.

> With pot roast, internal temp is going to 190 degrees or higher and the proteins denature (in addition to the collagen breaking down). [emphasis added]

For a bad pot roast, maybe. I've never cooked a pot roast so hot that it would reach that internal temperature, and I've never known anyone else to either.

EDIT: Looking up recipes now, apparently some recipes do call for taking pot roast to much higher temps than I cook it to. Maybe that's why fast food roasts are so bad, but also why I don't eat them.

What internal temp do you cook until? Do you cook the whole roast as one big 6 pound chunk, or cut it up into pieces before cooking it? When I've cooked brisket or pot roast, I cook it until it is fork tender, which I think is usually around 190 degrees.

I leave it solid. 160 or so because my wife won't eat meat if it's still pink and a roast is hard to cook two of (versus steaks). We still find it plenty tender, they maybe not fork tender tender. But I'll do a long slow cook to help it become tender versus heating it up more.

In terms of statistical preference, I'm not sure there's a actually huge difference. Some people like blue steaks, others like well done, most people are in between.

I think people who like rare steaks just talk about it more because it's the "right" way to prepare the "best" cuts. A $200 steak is just going to be most flavorful when it's on the rarer side. But its just a signaling thing if you're talking about skirt or flank.

Same question could be asked "why does everyone all the sudden love whiskey neat so much?" - they don't, its just that the whiskey folk talk about it conspicuously.

IMO, it does not have to be a $200 cut, a $9 ribeye from Walmart cooked rare is far better than a $9 pot roast sandwich from the local fast food joint.

With at $4/lb chuck roast it's more of a trade-off. A chuck roast steak cooked rare is a little too tough for my liking. But it is far more juicy and tasteful than the same cut slow cooked and served as a pot roast

Almost any steak will be better than a pot roast sandwich from probably any fast food place (there are a few exceptions I've been to). And Walmart groceries, contrary to popular belief, are actually pretty decent. Mostly on par with any other grocer in the areas I've lived.

I think you’re overcooking your pot roast.

> its just a signaling thing

That makes a lot of sense.

Also what on earth makes a steak worth $200? I bought a 1/4 beef this fall for something like $700, and that includes all the nice steaks and roasts along with like 50 lbs of ground beef.

In addition to what others have mentioned, a $200 steak is probably -- hopefully?! -- dry-aged. Something like 1/3 of the weight is evaporated away during dry-aging, so that 16oz steak was originally 24oz. There's also loss to trimming, which is required due to both a desiccated crust and fungal and mold growth on the surface. And it is typically a high-grade beef to start with. And it's time intensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_aging#Dry-aged_beef

I know they aged the carcass for two weeks on my beef before they broke it down into cuts. I think the "dry aged" stuff is generally aged even further than that, right?

I think I read somewhere that mass-market beef is generally not left to hang after slaughter, is that correct?

Well, a nonlinear demand curve for luxury goods comes into play. Also, $200 steaks are typically prepared (at which point you're paying for restaurant ambiance and the chef's time). Raw steaks don't get up that high unless aged or pre-prepared in some way.

But more generally, steaks just scale well to the high end. They keep getting better and better as cut, livestock, and preparation improves. That's not necessarily true for other foods. E.g., most pastas (while obviously delicious) will only get so good barring a virtuoso chef.

I recommend a test. Find a friend who's really good at preparing steaks. Have them cook a good cut & a regular cut from your 1/4 beef, and you cook one of each too. You'll taste the difference from cut and preparation quality.

Where would you suggest getting a "good" steak?

In my experience direct from farmer beef is so superior to store bought beef that I avoid eating beef bought from a store.

My experience with buying quarters was 'so-so' enough that I stopped. Even when the meat was good enough, I found that I felt like I was being ripped off. There is just so much opportunity between the farmer and butcher to cheat you, and you don't have any insight. Maybe it's just me.

I can really only imagining this working out consistently if you really developed those relationships, and for a purchase I'd make a few times a year at most, it didn't seem worth it.

I guess, yea, do business with people you trust.

I've found butchers and farmers to be generally upstanding people. I'm also in the heart of farm country. I would be a lot more leery of people targeting a more urban market.

A good compromise is an actual butcher, the kind who has a relationship with farmers and breaks down primal cuts.

I live alone so a quarter beef would be a real challenge to finish off. Instead, I can go to the local butcher and get the usual cuts, and the unusual cuts, soup bones, hard fat for tallow, and so on.

Where I live, at least, it's all local, beef, lamp, goat, chicken, doesn't matter.

It depends. Cow meat is better when rare, pork is better well roasted.

> Cow meat is better when rare

A few pitmasters in Texas would like to have a word with you about over-generalizing....

Seriously though - a cow is a huge animal with many cuts. Some are better rare, some are sublime when cooked to a high enough heat to break down the collagen in it.

Visit Japan sometime, health and sanitary standards are so high that you can have chicken ordered rare.

It is a bit shocking and I know a few people who just couldn't do it, we are so conditioned in the west to "rare chicken will kill you".

But, if you can manage it, very delicious. :)

There are farmers here in south Louisiana I trust that much but I agree I didn't believe it before I found it.

Slightly pink pork is generally considered safe in most countries now, and preferred for some leaner styles (like pork chops/medallions). I've tried it and it benefits just like a beef steak.

It's juicy. Some people's preference of "dry" varies.

Some people can't fathom others liking well done, some can't fathom rare. Pink in the middle is preferred but at red it's too watery for me, to each their own.

> It's juicy.

Most of the juice in my experience comes from cooking the meat long enough to render the fat. I've had medium-rare steak before where the fat was all still solid. Didn't seem all that great to me even though all the others raved about it.

Yes, I think most juiciness is actually fat/oil, not water. Pretty sure one of those more serious food blogs measured it once. This is why basting in fat is important sometimes.

I was gifted some leftover thin wagyu cuts recently. I cooked them through because they have so much fat they're still tender, and the brown adds flavour. It just had to render enough. I guess they were technically "well done" but perfect for me, as someone who prefers medium on typical steak.

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