The only way to eat a steak is medium rare to rare. Cook it any more than that and you are ruining it.
I went out to eat with a relative once and they ordered a ribeye, well done and wanted it parmesan crusted. I was so outraged and embarrassed that I offered to cover the bill if they would just order it medium well with no crust.
WTH...save the parmessan crusted for baked chicken and throw some spinach in there. Well done ribeye and crusted? May as well just get a sirloin and put ketchup on it.
Depends on the steak in both quality and cut. The rarest steak for me would be a dry aged tenderloin: Rare+ A cheap rib eye would be the most well done steak: Medium Well. My preferred steak is a dry aged rib eye - Medium rare+
Argentina is vastly superior. The breed of cattle prevalent in Brazil (Cebu, and it's crosses) is a terrible meat cow. They're bred to live in high humidity and be bug resistant, not bred for meat. I cannot say enough about the quality of the beef in Argentina. Wow. They don't know what feedlots are, they don't know what corn-fed beef is, the cows eat lush grass and then they get butchered.
I ate a pretty good medium rare filet mignon tonight (ordered rare, but the top and bottom was seared too thick). Man, it was so tasty that I felt a bit uncomfortable because it was so smooth and velvety that I felt how raw it tasted while it being so easy to eat. My co-worker likes to order his stake blue, which is pretty much a slab of bleeding meat. I dunno man...maybe I'm a medium rare poser who likes a juicy cooked steak that's still pink on the inside but not cooked to the point where it's tough/
Medium rare And steak sauces are great....any of the people who say they aren't are haters who don't know how to make sauces. And I don't mean grocery store sauce by steak sauces btw. And salt and pepper is a fine way to season a steak, but there are so many other ways. People are just being ridiculous when they say there is only one way to season a steak and that doing anything else ruins the steak or "masks the true flavor". Try out different stuff...sometimes things work out great and sometimes they don't.
I sometimes like a red wine and balsamic vinegar reduction on the side with cheaper steaks and its pretty awesome. A good really steak shouldn't NEED a sauce and I would never eat one with a sauce/reduction. My favorite steaks have always been just coarse sea salt, fresh ground pepper and a dash of garlic powder with no sauce.
Oh man...Got my fix at the Roadhouse last night. I know its a chain restaurant, but they make my ribeye just the way I like it. medium rare and seared to perfection. Now I want another one.