Cooking Steak – What You Need to Know

Author: Martin Earl

Have you ever heard this one? “You should never poke your steak with a thermometer probe, as it will just let out all the juices while you’re cooking!”

We hear this fairly regularly on social media and in forums and it always makes us cringe. The idea that a steak, or any other cut of meat, is like a water balloon waiting to be popped seems a little preposterous on the face of it. It seems clear to us that the tiny amount of moisture lost in probing a cut of meat would be more than offset by the moisture retained by not overcooking it!

That said, we procured a jewelers scale capable of reading changes in weight up to 0.01g, cut some strip steak into equal portions and headed into the demo kitchen this week to see if we could prove it.

HYPOTHESIS

The amount of liquid lost from probing a steak while cooking will be equal to or less than the liquid lost by overcooking the steak by 10 or even 5°F (3 to 6°C). Hence, it would be better to probe the steak and lose a little juice from the probe puncture than to NOT probe it and thereby overshoot the target pull temperature.

For the purposes of this experiment, we assumed a target finish temperature of 130°F (54°C) for a perfectly cooked medium rare doneness. We also cooked steaks to 135°F (57°C) and 140°F (60°C) to simulate overcooking.

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

For this experiment, we purchased one whole strip loin which we cut up into 2” cubes as measured by a ruler. We obtained 19 cubes from the loin of relatively even leanness and marbling.

The cubes were divided into four groups of four steaks each, with three steaks left over as doneness guides. Each group was assigned a designation, 1–4, with each of the four steaks in each group further designated with a letter, A–D.

Prior to cooking, each steak was weighed on a calibrated scale with an accuracy of 0.01 grams (0.00035 oz) and its mass recorded. Each set of steaks was salted with precisely 2 grams of salt per steak.

The steaks were each then seared in a cast iron skillet set over an induction cooktop (to avoid hot spots ) for 3.5 minutes on one side, flipped, and seared for an additional 3.5 minutes on the opposite side. Each steak was weighed again, and its mass recorded.

The steaks were next all placed in vacuum-pack bags, sealed, and labeled. Each group of steaks was assigned to a different preheated, temperature-controlled sous-vide baths set precisely two degrees above the target steak doneness temperature, as follows:

We designated Group 1 as our control group, meaning that these four steak cubes that would be cooked to a proper temperature for medium rare but not probed with a Thermapen® Mk4. Group 2 was cooked to the same medium rare doneness temperature and probed with a Thermapen Mk4 The other two groups were “overcooked” by 5 and 10° F (3 and 6°C) and weighed for moisture loss.

We also placed a vacuum-sealed but unseared steak cube in each sous vide bath and pierced it with a Pro-Series® Waterproof Needle Probe through waterproof Sous Vide Foam Tape. We attached these probes to two Smoke™ Alarm thermometers and set high alarms to the desired finish temps so we could monitor the internal doneness of the steaks in each bath, as well as the water temperature.

When the Smoke high alarms sounded, each batch of steak cubes was removed from the water, their bags cut open, and the entire contents of each bag emptied into a resting dish.

The steaks were allowed to rest for 3 minutes each before being blotted off with a single quartered paper towel and weighed. The mass of each steak cube was again recorded and the difference between its pre-cook and post-cook weight calculated.

For Group 2, each steak cube was pierced through with the probe of a Thermapen Mk4 after cooking and before resting. This is the group that was meant to represent checking your steak with a thermometer and pulling it at the correct temperature.

INTERPRETATION OF DATA

You can see that Groups 1 and 2 had the smallest loss of mass, Group 1 losing an average mass of 14.71±0.43 g, and Group 2 losing 13.51±1.03 g of juices. That may seem odd, as the unprobed steaks seem to lose more juice than the probed steaks, but they are within experimental error of each other.

Groups 3 and 4, which were unprobed but overcooked by 5 and 10°F (3 and 6°C) respectively lost more mass per steak, 16.03±0.57 g and 15.29±0.47 g respectively.

From this, we can conclude that you retain more juice by probing your steak and cooking it properly than by not probing it, trusting that you’re cooking it correctly, and overcooking by 5 or 10°F (3 or 6°C).

In fact, when we look at the mass lost in Groups 1 and 2, we see that the juice that is lost by probing is statistically insignificant. Probing a steak releases practically no juice.

Furthermore, we stabbed Group 2 two more times with a Thermapen Mk4 after the post-cook weigh-in, let them rest, and then weighed them again. The results show an additional moisture loss of only 0.84±0.02 g with three puncture holes in each steak cube.

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?

The idea that puncturing a steak somehow releases a flood of juices presupposes a free-flow of juices throughout the whole, with protein pressures in one location applying force to another location. But that just isn’t how muscle tissue is constructed! When we stick a steak with a thin, sharp probe, the only water that has any force acting on it to push it out is the water that is surrounded by the displaced fibers. That small channel of juice escapes, but the tightening fibers across the steak don’t force any more water out.

On the other hand, when a steak continues to cook beyond 130°F (54°C), the protein fibers in the whole steak continue to tighten, squeezing out more and more of their juices. By the time 140°F (60°C) is reached, though still rather pink in appearance, enough water has been lost to render the steak fibrous, chewy, and vaguely metallic in taste.

Note that though the steak cooked to medium is still quite pink, it is drier and chewier. That is because color is not a good indicator of doneness in meat. Only temperature is.

CONCLUSION: OVERCOOKING STEAK BY EVEN FIVE DEGREES DRIES IT OUT MORE THAN MULTIPLE PROBE PUNCTURES

After cooking 16 cubes of steak at three different temperatures with a highly accurate scale, we can definitively conclude that probing your steak to check its doneness does not dry it out by spilling its juices. Even with multiple pokes, a steak that is cooked properly is still juicier than a steak that is slightly overcooked with no holes in it. The thin-gauge probe of the Thermapen Mk4 thermometer doesn’t cause enough wide-spread damage in the meat fibers in a cut of meat to drain its water, but it does help you know when to get it off the heat so that it’s cooked perfectly.

So probe your steaks confidently and enjoy juicier meats every time!

* The error reported in the error column is the standard error of the mean, a measure of the error in the distance from the average.

Shop now for items used in this post: