Heath C. Ice

I absolutely hated eating steaks when I was a kid. My mother has told me that this was because eating them required far too much chewing. I am now 28 and a good steak is one of my favorite foods! I still hate eating food that requires excessive chewing though, so what changed?

My parents had one way, and one way only, to cook steaks, medium-well done. This is the only way I had ever eaten a steak. This was the way steak was supposed to be cooked. This cooking method produced decent, but very chewy meat. When I would see someone eat a steak that was rare or medium-rare, I found it sickening! Honestly, how could you eat meat that was still, basically, uncooked?

Fast-forward to January, 2006. I am on a trip to Las Vegas with a bunch of guys from work. We decide to eat at a nice restaurant on the strip. This is Vegas, so we had been drinking since 10am; it was now 8pm. I ordered a steak and when the waiter asked me how I wanted it cooked, I was feeling ‘a bit adventurous’ (as drinking for 10 hours is wont to make you feel) so I told the waiter “have the chef cook it however he thinks is best.” When my steak arrives, it is medium-rare. Given my state, I gave it a try and it was the best steak I had ever tasted in my life! It basically melted in my mouth and had so much more flavor than any previous steak.

Now, this was a nice restaurant, so I was not fully convinced that being cooked medium-rare was what made the steak amazing. I slowly got myself to regularly eat steaks cooked medium. After a few months of that, I was able to get myself to order medium-rare. So, to conclude, I used to eat steak every now and then. It was good, but not great. Ever since I started eating medium-rare steaks, though, I can’t get enough meat in my mouth.

If you haven’t tried a medium-rare steak, do it! If you currently like the taste of beef, I can almost guarantee you will love steaks more than you ever though possible after trying them this way.