MEAT DONENESS (RARE, MEDIUM, OR WELL-DONE?)
Cooking meat to a prefered doneness is one of the basic necessities of knowledge for any chef. The meat can be cooked rare, medium, and well-done, with some in-betweens (medium rare, medium well). The way to detect how far the meat has progressed through these steps is either by measuring its inner temperature or by feeling it with a finger. Rare meat is as soft as your cheek, medium is like the skin on your chin, while well-done is really hard. It is difficult to describe the "correct feelings" for each grade of cooked meat, so you need to learn them on your own. Next time you cook the meat, put it in the heat and touch it from time to time and see how the doneness changes. As you detect a change of doneness, slice a part of the meat and put it aside while continuing to cook the rest. Continue to do so until you get well-done meat (everything is brown and quite dry). Inspect all the slices you have on the table and look at how much they are cooked - rare is pink, medium is less pink, well-done is brown (unless it is the kind of meat that doesn't get brown!). Try to recall the sense of touch you had for all these different kinds of meat. You may need to repeat this experiment from time to time to learn this tool of the trade. After a few attempts you will feel that it's actually quite easy to detect how far the meat has cooked. Also, observe that all meats are different and they may feel differently even if they are cooked to the same doneness.