The TikTok from @ojgrubz is captioned “A little steak mukbang,” and it opens with white on screen text that reads “I CUT THE STEAK.” A woman in a blue shirt sits at a table with a wooden cutting board in front of her, holding a fork and a steak knife over a seared steak. “I cut the steak, you tell me what the temp is,” she says. “It should be medium rare. You tell me what it is in the comments.” The clip runs about two minutes and fifteen seconds.
Most of the video is her eating, with very little talking. She saws off a long piece and lifts it toward the camera on the fork, and the frames show a dark crust outside and a pink center. She chews, studies the cut and goes back for more, and between bites there are long stretches with no words at all.
At about the minute mark she changes plans for part of the steak. “This is going to go on my salad, so I’m going to go ahead and cut it into strips,” she says. The frames that follow show the sliced meat fanned out across the board, and she picks up pieces by hand as she goes. The pink in the middle of the strips matches the medium rare she called out at the start.
Her verdict arrives near the end, and it is lukewarm. “New York strip is not my favorite,” she says, adding that it is hard to go back to when “you’re used to having rib.” She goes further, saying it is “not even as good as flat iron.” She is quick to add that it is “still delicious, though.” Then she names the flat iron as a winter cut and repeats the point: even that is better than a strip, “in my opinion.” The video ends not long after, with no star rating or final score.
Doneness is the question she hands to viewers, and it has an official answer that does not depend on color. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service says on its beef page that steaks and other whole cuts should reach a minimum internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit, measured with a food thermometer, and then rest for at least three minutes before carving or eating. The agency adds that cooking to a higher temperature is fine if you prefer it. A pink center like the one in this video says little about the number, which is why the thermometer is the tool the agency points to.
The video does not show a thermometer, and she does not say what the steak read, so the temperature question in her opening line stays open.
More from Cultivated Comfort
- Home Cook Shares a Steak Reveal Video, Then Her Comment Section Questions Why the Meat Was Wrapped in Paper and Whether It Had Any Seasoning at All
- Burger Restaurant Owner Surprises a Stranger With a Free Meal and Tells Them on Camera That He Owns the Place, Then Gets Asked to Do It Again
- Woman Films a Traditional Lebanese Sunday at Her Mom’s House, From Hummus and Baba Ghanoush to Beef Skewers and a Birthday Cake Lit at the Backyard Table
