Temperature in meat
Until now the pot had one temperature. With meat that assumption collapses: the surface can be at 200 °C while the middle is at 50, and both are true at once. Cooking meat is the business of managing those two numbers separately.
Change them and see
In the window
Between 0.8 and 1.8 per cent of the weight. In this band the salt migrates inward, loosens the protein structure, and less water is lost in the pan.
In order, minute by minute
Not a list of steps but a timeline: each one carries the minute it happens at and the temperature it happens at. Changing the order changes the result, and this shape is why the engine can say so.
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0 minutes
Salt the meat and leave it at least forty minutes — or do not wait at all, but do not land in between.
Salt first draws water to the surface osmotically, then that brine is reabsorbed and dissolves the proteins. Before forty minutes the surface is wet and will not crust; after it the surface has dried again. Fifteen minutes in is the worst of both.
What to look for The surface should have dried again and look matt.
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45 minutes
Pat the meat thoroughly dry.
Surface water has to boil off first, and that happens at 100 °C. Until it is gone the surface cannot pass 100, which means it never reaches the 140 Maillard needs. Wet meat steams rather than browns.
What to look for Until the towel comes away dry.
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47 minutes 200 °CCritical point
Into a very hot pan and sear every face. Do not crowd it.
This is where surface and core part company: the surface passes 140 within seconds and Maillard starts, while the middle is still at 20. Crowding the pan destroys that separation — the steam cannot escape, the temperature locks at 100, and the crust never forms.
What to look for A deep brown crust, not a black one. The sound should stay loud and steady; if the sizzle dies, the pan has cooled.
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51 minutes 140 °C
Drop the heat or move it to the oven, and follow the core with a thermometer.
Once the crust is built the job becomes moving heat to the middle, and it should move slowly: over a high flame the outer layers pass 70 °C and squeeze out their water long before the centre warms. This is also why colour is not a reliable measure — myoglobin does not track doneness at a constant rate.
What to look for The thermometer: 54–57 medium rare, 57–63 medium, past 68 well done.
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59 minutes 60 °C
Off the heat and rest it before cutting. The core will climb another 2–5 °C.
Cooking does not stop when the pan does: heat in the outer layers keeps travelling inward, which is why you take it off below your target. Resting also lets the muscle fibres relax and redistribute the water they had squeezed out.
What to look for No pool on the board; if there is one, it was cut too soon.
The numbers that decide it
The only reliable measure. Time is a guess and colour misleads; actin sets at 66 °C and that is where the meat pushes its water out.
No crust until the surface passes 140, and it cannot pass 140 until its water has gone. Both conditions are necessary.
In the window
In meat salt is as much about texture as taste: it dissolves proteins so they hold onto water.
What is happening in the pot
- ideal 0.8–1.5% Salt · 1.41% Right in the window. Flavours sharpen, bitterness retreats, water is held. Held in the system
What happened, why, and what to do
Some of these can be saved and some cannot. Writing up the second kind as though it were the first costs somebody another twenty minutes.
01 A thick grey band under the crust ⌄
Why
The sear went on too long, or the heat stayed high. The outer layers passed 70 °C long before the middle warmed.
Cannot be saved
Too late for this piece. Next time keep the sear short and finish low — or reverse the order: low oven first, a brief sear at the end.
02 No crust; the meat went grey ⌄
Why
A wet surface or a crowded pan. The surface locked at 100 °C and never saw 140.
Can be saved
Take it out, get the pan properly hot, dry the meat and return it in one layer. The crust can still be built.
03 Dry and stringy ⌄
Why
The core passed 68 °C. Actin set and the muscle fibres squeezed out the water they were holding.
Cannot be saved
It cannot be undone, though a sauce, fat or stock will mask the dryness in the mouth. The lost water does not come back.
04 Mince or chicken came out underdone ⌄
Why
On a whole cut the bacteria are only on the surface and searing deals with them. In mince the surface is everywhere, and with poultry the risk is different from the start.
Can be saved
Cook it further: mince to 71 °C, poultry to 74. This one is not a preference.
The safety check does not know the following. That is not the same as nothing being wrong — it means nobody looked, and anything meant to keep at room temperature has to be measured rather than assumed.
- Water activity
This is a model estimate rather than a measurement. How far each threshold behind it has been checked is below; fourteen of the fifteen still have no source on file, and saying so is better than not.
engine 1.0.0 · ruleset 2026.09.1 · confidence medium
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