Are You Rare Or Done? Poke Your Hand And Find Out

Once it is warm enough to cook outside without worrying about frostbite, I figure it is time to get serious about improving my backyard grilling skills.

Recently, I worked on polishing my steak-cooking technique - in particular, determining doneness. In the past, I have relied on the eyeball method. I stared at the grilled steak and guessed that when the meat looked medium-rare, it was time to pull it. Sometimes the eyeball method worked; many times it didn’t.

After facing a few pieces of meat with centers that were cold and blood-red, I resorted to cheating. The cheating method involves slicing into the steak, checking the center and, more often than not, tossing it back on the fire.

There are two problems with cheating. One is that it marks you as an amateur. The other problem is that when you slice the steak, its precious, flavorful juices stream out, drying out the meat.

The other night I grilled a couple of steaks for supper and tried the touch method, touted by William Rice in his “Steak Lover’s Cookbook” (Workman, 1997).

Rice, a food and wine columnist at the Chicago Tribune, says his favorite steak cuts are the T-bone and its larger cousin, the porterhouse.

Inspired, I went grocery shopping and bought a couple of T-bones. At home, I rubbed them lightly with olive oil and fired up the charcoal grill. It took about 30 minutes for the fire to get to the proper “Four Mississippi” temperature. This happened when I held my hand 6 inches over the fire and said “Mississippi” four times, without pulling my hand back from the heat.

Meanwhile, I practiced the touch method of determining doneness. Rice had spoken highly of this technique, which involves pushing the cooking meat with your fingers. The idea is that you can tell by touch whether the meat is rare, mediumrare or medium (according to Rice, the only acceptable levels of doneness in a steak).

To develop this sense of touch, I practiced poking my hand. Following the procedures outlined in Rice’s book, I let my left hand hang limp. Then, with the index finger of my right hand, I pushed the soft triangle of flesh between the thumb and index finger of the left hand. The flesh offered very little resistance. This soft, spongy sensation is, the book said, what the exterior of a rare steak feels like.

To become familiar with the feel of medium-rare steak, I spread the fingers of my left hand and pressed that same triangle of flesh with my right index finger. This time the flesh felt firm, slightly springy and resistant. The way, in other words, that the exterior of a medium-rare steak feels.

To replicate the feel of a medium steak, I made a fist with my left hand and again pressed the flesh with my right index finger. The flesh offered only a minimum of give and snapped back quickly.

When my fire was ready, I put the steaks on the grill and started poking. First I poked my hand, then I poked the meat. I asked myself: Was that a rare poke? Medium-rare? Or medium? I couldn’t tell. I poked my hand again, then the meat again. I was still uncertain.

Fortunately, I recalled a backup method for testing doneness, also in Rice’s book. This is the teardrop method. It consists of checking the color of the beads of moisture, or tears, that appear on the top of a grilled steak. Red tears mean the meat is rare, pink tears signal medium-rare.

When the tears on my T-bones turned pink, I took the meat off the fire and carried it into a kitchen full of hungry boys. I told the assembled eaters (my two sons and two of their friends) that they were going to have to work for their steak supper. I taught them the touch method. Then I made them poke their hands and then the meat, and render a verdict on whether the steak felt rare, medium-rare or medium.

Most of us thought the meat felt medium-rare, but when I cut the steak I saw that it was more rare than medium-rare. It was also delicious.

I am still working on fine-tuning my sense of touch. In idle moments at work, for instance, I find myself poking my limp left hand with my right index finger and saying, “rare” - and looking around to see who’s watching.