Why does a steak cook in under 5 mins but a burger of the same thickness takes 15 minutes?
In: 6
That’s not how it works at all. But burgers can take longer because you typically cook ground beef more thoroughly than steak.
You need to heat the burger much higher. Disease issues are largely based on surface area. Unless it’s rancid, with a steak you only need to get a thin layer above temp before it’s safe disease wise. A burger is ground meat. It is nearly 100 percent surface area. Every particle of it has been exposed to the environment while being ground. The entire thing needs to be raised to temperature.
Ground surface bacteria in the center of the patty itself needing full cooking vs cut of meat with no surface bacteria mixing by grinding that most of the times is ok to eat with undercooked centers.
The bacteria on meat is on the outside. A steak can be eaten rare because in order to make it safe to eat, you’re only searing the outside. When you make hamburger you’re grinding the meat basically mixing the bacteria throughout the patty. This is why a burger needs to be cooked thoroughly. Need to kill the bugs all the way through
Meat from the cow/bull itself is safe. It only needs cooking because the meat has come into contact with pathogens from the processing environment. To make it safe to eat you need to cook the exposed parts of the meat.
Burgers are made from ground beef, which has much more surface exposed than a steak.
If you make a flat thin burger then you can cook it in under 5 minutes. McDonald’s gets the job done in under 2 minutes with frozen burgers.
I’ve seen burgers cooked while still pink in the middle at some restaurants (say, medium-medium-well). Is there something else done to such parties to make them safe to eat?
If you cook a steak till it is well done, it might take a similar amount of time.
Also consider that ground beef may contain many tiny little pockets of air mixed it, and steak will not. Air is a poor conductor of heat.
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