Meat thermometer / probe temperature for medium rare beef?

competitionscafe

Instead of guessing I have decided to use my thermometer probe gadget to check that my beef is medium rare. I have been searching the internet and every site gives a different temperature for medium rare.

eg: (all in degress celsius)
Site 1: 55 to 60
Site 2: 60 to 70
Site 3: 50
Site 4: 52 rare 58 medium
etc.....


So does anyone do their roast beef or steaks using a probe or meat thermometer and what temp do you find gives a perfect medium rare? I think i will go for 55C as Iwould rather be a bit under than over but if anyone has 'probed' before I would be interested to know what temp you go for. Thanks!

competitionscafe

Ok, they were all more or less correct except the second one - depending where I probed it was between 55 and 60 when I took it out the oven (I tried to get as near to the centre as possible and not touching bone). The area which read 60 rose to 62.5 after coming out the oven. After 20 minutes resting it had only fallen to 58. It was pretty much spot on for medium rare, next time I might go a bit lower 50 to 55 to get it a bit more pink.

Not sure what went wrong with my potatoes though - cooked them in goose fat but they did not taste of anything much, crispy on the outside but a bit claggy on the inside. My roast spuds always come out well especially the goose fat ones so maybe they were just crap spuds? (loose Maris pipers from Waitrose, non-organic)

nesssie1702

How hot was your oven for your beef and your roast potatoes?

When I did my tatties, I had the oven at 220 ºC and I made sure that I heated the goosefat on the tray before I added the par-boiled tatties. I don't think that your potato variety would have had anything to do with it, as Maris Piper roast fine.

I would never probe my steaks when I'm cooking them, I just tend to do it by eye. So long as the pan or griddle is hot enough to seal the outside of the meat, then it should be okay?

competitionscafe

The oven was 180 or 190 (fan oven, so equivalent to 200/210).

I did roast potatoes with my chicken on Sunday and they came out perfectly - the only thing I did different from Xmas day was I did not salt the potatoes when I put them in the oven, only when they were finished and also the potatoes were a different batch (I still had some Maris Pipers from Waitrose but didn't trust them so used M&S Maris Pipers instead as I had picked up a bag on offer at half price).

So maybe salting them before going in the oven is not good?

Otherwise, everything else was the same as I usually do them:

Peel, spuds, cut into even sized pieces, parboil for few minutes in well salted boiling water.
Drain and steam dry for a few minutes. Fluff up the edges by bashing them around in the saucepan, add a little flour and toss to mix evenly. Put potatoes into hot goose fat (which I had put in the oven while the spuds were par boiling). Turn spuds to coat. Back into oven (190) for 15 minutes, turn spuds, another 15 minutes, turn again, another 10 to 20 minutes, remove from oven, sprinkle with salt and enjoy asap.