How do you prefer your steak?

I like well done, but I cannot explain why...

Medium rare for good quality steak. Why ruin it?

Medium rare. Actually, I would like rare, but I think that it is prudent to pass the steak over the fire to kill the germs!

I like it done enough to know there's nothing alive that can make me sick, not rare but closer to medium juicy. Thinking I'll have to bbq now!

vegetarian.

Grey all the way through.

dawg gone it! I knew L'k was a veggie

roger - grey?

I'm not really a vegie, just don't eat beef, chicken, pork.... let's put it this way, I eat turkey (not that often) and fish.

I want to go to Capital Grille now...
Just don't want to pay for it.

Medium well. I guess I just like it better that way and I grew up being taught that meat needs to be cooked on the well side to kill anything lurking.

LOL Roger!

I'm pleased to see so many on the well side. I thought I was strange. I am aware that gourmands seem to prefer medium rare, but I am squeamish at the sight of red squishy stuff. I gotta have it well done. I'll accept medium well in a pinch; but I get nauseasted watching people eat steaks rare. Makes me think I'm watching a nature film on lions feeding during the wildebeest migration.

It's a choice- do you want to die from carcinogens in burnt meat? Or would you rather die from deadly bacteria in under-cooked meat? (Or vegetarians die from protein deficiency?)

Well, you asked about steak, not ground beef. I only eat burgers are at least medium well, you have to cook them to an internal temp of 160 to kill any bacteria that may have contaminated the meat during the grinding process.

Steak on the other hand, it's extroadinarily unlikely that the inside of the steak is contaminated. When you cook it, you kill any bacteria that may exist on the surface. Do you know that the aged beef they serve at steakhouses is a couple days away from rotting? Oddly, that's what makes it taste so much better than the beef you buy at the supermarket.

So, eat your rare/medium rare steaks and enjoy. Burp!

cjhsa - the contamination can happen during the butchering too.... right?

Protien deficiency? Nope, maybe an iron deficiency or from lack of hemoglobins or whatever they're called.

Actually, little k, I heard that the ecoli problems were largely with ground beef. Well, that's a fictional reference - Robin Cook's 'Contagion'. Better than no reference at all, huh?

And, I was thinking, the contamination would be on the outside - the part that DOES get cooked.

Correct, that is why you almost never hear of anyone getting sick from eating steak, unless, of course, it is rotten.

For those that must have undercooked hamburgers, and some really like them that way, they can lower their risk by grinding their own beef from steaks that have been washed. Better yet, irradiated, but that's another issue.

Well, I've pretty much stopped eating beef, but back when I did, I loved steaks MEDIUM RARE. Bring on the red, squishy steak. As long as it was warm through, I didn't care about it being cooked. Just tasted so much better than when it was "gray."

bring me a blue steak. as a friend of mine used to say - introduce it to the flame, but don't let it shake hands. as a teenager i loved steak tartare. now, if it's ground meat, i'll have it medium-medium.