Cooking steak: Done well, it's bad

A well-done steak is not a matter of choice. It's a violation. Why would anyone want to take a good piece of meat and cook it until it has the texture of shoe leather but none of the utility? Far too many people who describe themselves as carnivores prefer not to think about where their food has come from. The relationship between the one-time sentience of their meal and being sated by it disturbs them. And so they strive to disguise exactly what they are doing. We should eat it because we like the flavour and a significant amount of that lies in its juices.

There are some who would say this is just snobbery. To which, as ever, I say: Snobbery is good. Without snobbery we would still be buying olive oil from the chemists and using it to cure earache.

We would still be thinking Vesta ready meals were a neat idea, squirting cream from a can and incinerating our steaks because meat with the blush of blood is what those funny foreign people like to eat. Snobs are in the vanguard.

With beef or lamb or venison, duck or grouse, serving it rare so the juices run is not a quick route to the nearest cemetery. It is a quick route to a good meal. Perhaps you still can't stomach the idea. Maybe the sight of pink flesh makes you heave. In which case you really shouldn't be eating meat at all. You don't deserve it.