Kitchen Hint of the Day!

When cooking steak, it's good to know that the internal temperature of a rare steak is 135 degrees, medium rare is 145 degrees, medium is 160 degrees, and well done is 170 degrees. However, an experienced chef rarely whips out a meat thermometer. Meat has certain resiliency at different temperatures, and a chef can just press the steak with a finger to tell whether the meat is rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, or well done. As meat cooks it loses water, and the more it cooks, the firmer it becomes. Try pressing on your steaks to get a sense for how they feel at different stages of doneness, and you'll never need to cut them open to find out again.