Breaking misconceptions can be tough on the psyche. No one enjoys learning they’ve been wrong the whole time. Debunking the culinary myth that says steaks should be flipped only once ranks right up there with learning that the Brontosaurus never even f*$%ing existed. We’ve lived the lie for so long that the truth is hard to stomach.
But, there it is: multiple culinary experts in the field agree that fast flipping is the superior way to cook a steak, for several reasons. It’s actually a faster method than the single flip and produces steaks that are more evenly cooked. Understanding why this is true involves some basic culinary science.
The Science Behind Fast-Flipping
While there’s plenty of information on the topic published today, we called author and food scientist Harold McGee to learn about fast-flipping’s origins. As he explained, the advantages of the method first came to his attention in the middle of researching an article published in the journal Physics Today. Working with a pair of computer scientists, the goal of the paper was to examine the physics of heat transfer in cooking through the lens of computer modeling. The eventual fast-flip discovery came partially by accident McGee explained.
“The nice thing about using a computer to model cooking,” he said, “is that you could get the computer to do experiments that you would never think of doing in real life — like flipping a piece of meat on a grill every five seconds.”
“The more you flip, the more evenly the heat is transferred into the meat.”
So after running a series of tests on common cooking scenarios, they decided to turn their attention to more extreme hypotheticals. “What we found really surprised us,” he said. “The more you flip, the more evenly the heat is transferred into the meat, and it’s transferred much faster — so the cooking time is much shorter.”
