> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In my experience direct from farmer beef is so superior to store bought beef that I avoid eating beef bought from a store.
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'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.
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.
I think I read somewhere that mass-market beef is generally not left to hang after slaughter, is that correct?
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
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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.