You said rare right?

[bean]

During holiday weekends, my store will set up a couple of grills on our outdoor patio. Along with a register that has a wireless network adapter that can (usually) communicate with the servers, it's on a specially built cart with its own power supply (basically 2 car batteries hooked up to an inverter and a bigass charger, it'll run the register for about 6 hours). I say usually because today it spent more time offline than online. Not a problem with credit or cash transactions (it auto approves credit when it's offline, then sends them through once it has a connection again), HUGE problem for debit, EBT, and employee discount transactions. Turns out someone snapped the damned antenna off of the stand. Tomorrow I'm going to try and get them to move it a little closer to the building so I don't have to deal with offline transactions.

Also, screw whoever thought they'd throw out the mobile register specific list of PLUs. We had open PLUs specifically for grilling printed and taped to the cart. Someone ripped them off, and stuffed about 4 or 5 bundles of napkins where the list used to be. So I had to ring everything under another meat dept open PLU, except the PLUs we're supposed to be using go to a sub dept of the meat dept (smokehouse).

Nothing particularly horrible today, except for one guy. He ordered 2 burgers. And asked me to make sure they were well done. No problem, he saw me write it on the order slip, I told the cook (who's the manager of our meat dept) that he wanted them well done.

Except EVERY time the guy saw me even glance his way, he said "Those are well done right?". And he KEPT COMING UP TO ME to say the same thing.

He said it no less than 15 times. And when we handed him his hockey pucks, I mean, well done burgers, he asked 2 more times "These are well done right?". I can understand an aversion to pink meat - I used to always insist any beef/buffalo I ate was well done. Then I discovered beef actually has FLAVOR when it's cooked medium.

Dude... the burgers are about half their original size, they're almost black, and pretty much might as well be charcoal. YES THEY'RE WELL DONE! THEY'RE BEYOND WELL DONE, THEY'RE BURNT TO HELL! We were even sticking thermometers in them to make damn sure they were well done.

I'm going to try and snap a pic of the mobile register tomorrow. It's actually pretty cool - it's basically an entire checkstand on wheels, complete with a scale, scanner, VGA customer display, and card reader. And a MASSIVE battery. And it... used to have an antenna on it for the wireless network.

[MsCrankypants]

Ugh. To my mind, there's nothing more disgusting than a burger so "well-done" that its next stage of doneness is "diamond."

Evil bitch that I am, I would have been tempted to bring it to him still mooing.

[Stormraven]

I'm sorry, I've tasted Medium beef. I didn't care for it. Mind, I'm not a fan of well done, either - I prefer Medium Well. Cooked through, but only just. Trouble is, almost no one out where I am even knows the term.

[Grog]

I get people like that. The worst are the ones who then send the food back to be further cooked, even if it's already a lump of carbon.

See, if the meat is still breathing when I get it, that's how I like it.

The French know how to do it right. It should squirt blood in your eye when you stab it with a fork, or it's too well done.

Plus I can't eat Well Done in a restaraunt. There was this steak joint that my friend worked at where they saved all the really poor quality cuts of meat for people who wanted them well done, seeing as the cooking process covered that fact up.

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

For me, it's either a great cut, rare, or a cheap cut, boiled and reduced to bouillon, smothered in chipotle and tomatoes.

Particular that way.

[Bliss]

Thanks for the medium well term, now I know how to call it in english, it's my favorite term too. Here we call it "3/4"

[tropicsgoddess]

Sheesh. That's like a kid in the back seat of the car constantly going "Are we there yet?". Here's your rock burger. Eat it, GTFO and have a nice day.

[LadyAndreca]

I order mine medium well, too. I used to order it medium but they kept coming out a little too pink for me. So I did the smart thing and one day when I ordered I just asked the server that the different "donenesses" were. There's a bit of a range where I like it, but a perfect 'medium well' is HEAVEN.

...now I want steak.

[Stormraven]

Yeah, but just try getting a medium well in California. Not one place - even steak houses specifically, have understood what medium well is. As far as they seem to be concerned, you've got Medium, then you've got charcoal.

[mattm04]

At a summer cookout one guest wanted the burger well done. Fine. I cook it to what most people consider well done. Guest comes up and gets it. A minute later back. Cook it more. When it is finally "well done" it is literally hard as a rock and compleatley black. Actually ate it. How I don't know.

[EricKei]

I used to get mine MW, but I have gravitated more towards Med/MR over the years...There is a certain crew of my buddies who consider it to be a cardinal sin to order steak at any level of doneness beyond MR, tho. As in, they are unlikely to invite a WD-eater along the next time they go out for steak...

[bean]

I went from somehow liking charcoal, er, well done, to medium well, to medium over the years.

I can't do medium rare though, at least not in burgers. I can do medium rare in a really good steak seasoned with only salt and pepper. I've tried "blue" (a bit below rare) and rare before and couldn't eat it.

On the other hand, I used to love sushi. Now raw fish grosses me out.

[EricKei]

Hmm...hadn't thought about the distinction...For steaks, yeah, MR is fine (tho I like those closer to Med than Rare), but for burgers I want them Med/MW...

[LadyAndreca]

Oh, for burgers it has to be cooked until there's no pink. If there's ANY texture of the raw hamburger left it triggers my gag reflex. I'm reeeeeeeally picky about the texture of my food.

[raw456]

I like mine medium rare (pink but not bloody)

Hubby likes his rare or blue. He will often order his steaks by telling the waitress "take the cow into a darkened room, explain to it the concept of fire, bring the cow to the table, back away"