The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

only flip a steak (or a burger, for that matter) once, right? I
mean, how can you even ask that question? Well, I’ve
always been of the mind that if an answer exists, and,
clearly, there is an answer to this, the question is worth
asking. Fortunately, the question is one that’s fairly
straightforward to test.
Those on the “one flip” side claim “more even cooking”
and “better flavor development” as the selling points of the
method. Curiously, the few people on the “multiple flips”
side claim the exact same benefits from multiple flips,
adding “shortened cooking time” to the mix. So, who’s
right?
I cooked a few different steaks to the same internal
temperature of 130°F. One was flipped just once, another
was flipped every minute, a third every 30 seconds, and a
fourth every 15 seconds. Interestingly, the steak that was
flipped every 30 seconds reached the desired temperature
the fastest of all four, followed by the one flipped every 15
seconds, followed by the one flipped every minute, and
finally by the one flipped just once. The fastest-cooking
steak took about 2 minutes less than the slowest-cooking
one.
Then I served them up to a few friends I had over for
dinner, asking them to tell me which ones had the nicest
crusts, which were the most evenly cooked, and which were
the tastiest. From the outside, they had trouble telling them
apart—the amount of browning seemed pretty close to
equal. However, once we cut into them, the differences were
more apparent: the steaks flipped only once had distinct
bands of overcooked meat at the edges, while the ones