There Is No Such Thing As A Bloody Steak

I have a fairly paranoid mother. As a child, whenever we would go to a restaurant she would always ensure that any meat served was well done. Even a hint of red was enough to create panic. She believed that all meat needed to be thoroughly cooked, or else we were likely to get food terrible food poisoning. As a result, it wasn't until I was about 18 that I had my first real taste of steak. My aunt took me out and I order the forbidden medium rare steak for the first time in my life. I was amazed! There was so much more flavour in that one piece of meat than all the other steaks I had ever had put together. From that day on I never again ordered one well done.

So why does steak have more flavour the less you cook it? Who knows! I certainly don't. I just know it does and it's delicious. Probably much of the flavour is lost through evaporation of the meat juices. Anywho, the thing that freaked my mother out most of all was when you would cut a piece of meat and red 'blood' would ooze out. "How can you possible want to eat meat that bleeds when you cut it!?" she would exclaim in disgust. Well here is the thing: it's not blood.. Its Myoglobin. Myoglobin is an oxygen carrying protein found only in the muscles. Its similar to hemoglobin, found in the red blood cells, both in structure and functions. In fact, the reason that some meat is red (beef/pork) and some is white (chicken/turkey) is because of the difference in myoglobin levels.

So, when you hear someone exclaim how much they love their steak to be bloody, what they really mean is they like it to be myoglobiny. I think I have probably made a new word there! As you might expect kambing guling, informing my mother that a rare steak contains no blood whatsoever did nothing to dissuade her from always ordering 'well done' at a restaurant. Blood or no blood, it doesn't matter to me; the important thing is the taste.

My BBQ grill has not once been used to desecrate a steak by overcooking it. I tend to go for somewhere between rare and medium rare. I get a little put off with fully rare steak as the middle is usually a little cold and I like my meat to be hot throughout. It's especially important to clean your BBQ well before cooking a steak. You certainly don't want it sticking to dirty bars and ruining your expensive chunk of beef. So remember to clean the grate and oil the bars well before you start. If you have a porcelain enamel coated grate then you should have to worry about oil as the bars will be non stick. However, make sure you use a grill brush safe for porcelain, as some will scrape the coating off, damaging your grill and exposing the underlying metal to rust.