Kennyz wrote:Whatever you call the burger in Gary's picture, I want it!

I agree with that. I like rare.

My personal definitions (which I think are fairly common) for rare/medium rare are such that you can't tell by looking at a piece of meat whether it's rare or medium rare.

Rare: cold/cool red center
Medium rare: warm red center
Medium: hot pink center

So, Gary's could easily be rare or medium rare. Looks good to me.

Kennyz wrote:Whatever you call the burger in Gary's picture, I want it!

From another thread...

G Wiv wrote:Conversing with Patty between bites of med-rare patty melt with a sunny side up egg Patty said the diner will stay open until June 6th.

Enjoy,
Gary

Even more pictures there. Get it while you can!

Mmmm...

gleam wrote:My personal definitions (which I think are fairly common) for rare/medium rare are such that you can't tell by looking at a piece of meat whether it's rare or medium rare.

Rare: cold/cool red center
Medium rare: warm red center
Medium: hot pink center

Just another speculation on my part, but I wonder if there are regional differences. In Baltimore, mid-twentieth-century, rare meant red but definitely not cold or even cool, medium rare meant pink, not red, and medium meant less pink. The more relevant part of that may not be the date but the place. Perhaps East Coast definitions are different from Midwest.

Oh, yeah, I think it is definitely regional. My experience is that I should usually order rare when I want medium rare and I'm outside the Chicago area.

I see no medium in the initial flickr photo. Is my computer screen bad?

My Mom always ordered her steaks rare and in the Chicago area that meant putting it on the heat long enough for the outside to sear. The inside would be red all the way thru and cool to the touch.

dk wrote:I see no medium in the initial flickr photo. Is my computer screen bad?

Red all the way thru and no pink that I could see. I would call that rare.

I agree, the burger in the EggMan's Flickr picture is what I would call rare.

gleam wrote:Oh, yeah, I think it is definitely regional. My experience is that I should usually order rare when I want medium rare and I'm outside the Chicago area.

This discovering of the "Chicago regional difference" makes me chortle with self-deprecatory laughter, because I've lived here since 1971, and for thirty-eight years, I've been saying, "Dammit, why can't restaurants cook meat correctly to order anymore?!??!?"

Now you tell me!

I don't know about this regional difference stuff. No doubt, places all over the country get it wrong, but rare is supposed to mean "cool, red center" no matter where you are, and medium-rare is supposed to mean warm, red center. It's certainly what it means when they teach it to you in culinary schools across the country. This is not a midwest thing. I've ordered rare and been given medium-rare or medium here in Chicago, as well as in NYC and Los Angeles. I think it's a mistake, not a regional difference.

Kennyz wrote:, but rare is supposed to mean "cool, red center" no matter where you are, and medium-rare is supposed to mean warm, red center. It's certainly what it means when they teach it to you in culinary schools across the country. .

really? granted it's been many years since I've been graced w/ the presence of a CIA grad, but cool was blue, and cold was Pittsburgh. Rare steak was 120-125, when it came off the grill, but it was definitely warm. But I'd say there's been a definite trend to defining doneness coldward in the last 25 years or so, despite attempts by the USDA to the contrary, since the time of the Jack in the Box death. I remember how daring and nouveau we thought we were when we'd finish a pork roast at 135F back in '83.
edit to add: I wasn't in Chicago in 83 though.

It's a complicated issue. Customers are ordering based on what they think the restaurant is going to give them, and how they might err, and cooks are doing the same, guessing at what customers "really mean" when they specify their degree of doneness.

Working as a grill cook in a steakhouse or a burger joint is insightful. Cooks take pride in cooking meats to what they believe is "the perfect med rare" or whatever, and then the customer who ordered med rare sends it back because it's "raw". Frustrating.

To further complicate things, cooking meats to the preferred degree of doneness consistently is difficult. It's not something that even the most competent cook can do every single time, or even every single time on any given night. Even when you find places that do it well, the cook might be having a bad night, or a different guy might be working the grill.

elakin wrote:It's a complicated issue. . . Cooks take pride in cooking meats to what they believe is "the perfect med rare" or whatever, and then the customer who ordered med rare sends it back because it's "raw". Frustrating.

It's frustrating from a customer's standpoint, too. I "rarely" get a hamburger the way I like it. I like a nice red/pink medium. But 9,999 times out of 10,000 times (OK, maybe a "little" less) if I order a "medium" cooked hamburger, it comes barely pink and generally (and often all) gray. (It's the patty that's been sitting on the back burner for 20 minutes waiting for someone who says "medium.") And the so-called "medium" is generally too dried out for my taste usually, with an occasional exception. So I started a few years ago to order my hamburgers medium rare and I get 2 results usually: the first one is a hamburger that is STILL overcooked; the second is one that is rare, rare, rare. While I prefer a hamburger that is really cooked medium, I will take one that comes really medium rare and will never send it back for further cooking (i.e., because it will always come back greatly overcooked). I appreciate that cooking it right is somewhat difficult . . . but on the otherhand it is not rocket science.

I haven't found this to be much of a regional difference as its been my experience across the country. I appreciate and am sympathetic with the cook that really tries and . . . conversely . . . am not with the cook or restaurant that really doesn't try.

Oddly enough, I learned my standards as a kid from the Highland Park Fuddrucker's (this being in the days when they had a couple of butchers prominently featured through a huge window as you waited in line, breaking down huge chunks of beef carcass and freshly grinding everything on the spot in front of the kiddies -- good luck getting away with that now). Next to the register, they had a chart with diagrams showing their levels of "doneness", looking something like this (medium rare, for example):



Good luck getting that from a Fuddrucker's now (not that I'm inclined to try). But it does raise the question. Can we standardize this somehow? Is there any national organization with the clout not to enforce, of course, but to at least set a standard? Right now, it's like trying to get everybody to agree on how long something measures when we're all using different yardsticks.

(Mostly joking... as though what the national restaurant scene needs is more standardization... but there is a little part of me that thinks some generally accepted standard would be kinda nice when it comes to steaks and burgers.)

Dmnkly wrote: Next to the register, they had a chart with diagrams showing their levels of "doneness", looking something like this (medium rare, for example):

niiiiccce. you got more of those? I think it's a swell idea to post those next to the register along w/ the Chicago Health Department's warning not to eat anything cooked less than 2000F, .....I mean 165F.

For your safety, the Chicago Department of Public Health
advises that all ground beef be cooked to a minimum internal
temperature of 160°F:

Thank you for your cooperation.

Dom, even if cross-restaurant standardization of what the colors mean isn't achieved, it would still be great to spread the idea among all restaurants that they should emulate your (and Fuddrucker's) idea of posting color charts that said, basically, "We don't have any idea what anyone else means by [X doneness-level], but here's what WE mean by [X doneness-level]." It would not only be useful info for the ordering customer; it would also be a terrific way to hold the restaurant accountable when they fail. (And the restaurant, knowing how accountable it was making itself, might fail less often.) When your burger arrives not matching the color chart on the wall for the doneness level you specified, there are no more arguments about "Is this your idea of medium rare?" Just hold the burger up next to the wall chart and say, "Do these look the same to you? Which doneness level on this chart does this burger most look like?"

Khaopaat wrote:For your safety, the Chicago Department of Public Health
advises that all ground beef be cooked to a minimum internal
temperature of 160°F:

Thank you for your cooperation.

Looks like your typical "char burger" kept in a grease pan all day waiting for your enjoyment.

Khaopaat wrote:For your safety, the Chicago Department of Public Health
advises that all ground beef be cooked to a minimum internal
temperature of 160°F:
Thank you for your cooperation.

Having seen the chart, I reckon Mr. K is photoshopping us (and doing it so subtly, it's totally believable). Bravo.

here's a pretty decent-looking chart that pertains to steaks, rather than burgers:

http://www.hilltopsteaks.com/images/degrees.jpg

I've always been partial to the chart (not illustrated, sadly) at Bern's in tampa:

http://www.bernssteakhouse.com/Portals/ ... rt2007.jpg

The Hilltop Steak chart very closely corresponds to my internal definition of internal doneness. The Bern's chart didn't work (not because Ed's link is bad, but because Bern's website, when you click "How Do You Like Your Steak," returns an error page).

gus wrote:

Kennyz wrote:
I've had no such consistency problems among the dozen or so wonderful burgers I've had a Bistro Campagne.

I agree with Kennyz on the Bistro Campagne burger. They have been doing a masterful job lately with their burgers. A well-salted, densely crusted exterior whilst maintaining a perfectly rare interior. Most places couldn't get that type of a crust on a burger if cooked well-done. For my money ($13 currently), it's as good as it gets. I do recommend substituting their pommes frites for the onions, though that's just personal preference.

The problem with consistency is that it's not always consistent. Horrible burger last night at Bistro Campagne. Very dry, too-finely-ground meat. Giant unwieldy hunk of probably 3/4 of a pound of beef, overcooked. Burger was literally twice the size of previous versions, and not half as good. Either the Bistro Campagne burger formula has changed, or last night was a wretched aberration. Blech.