Poking a steak with a fork leads to negligible moisture loss.The thing is, with steaks, moisture loss is due to one
thing: muscle fibers tightening, due to the application of
heat, and squeezing out their liquid. Unless you manage to
completely pierce or slash those muscle fibers, the moisture
they lose is directly proportional to the temperature to which
you cook your steak. A fork is simply not sharp enough to
harm muscle fibers in any significant way. Yes, you’ll see a
minuscule amount of juices seeping their way out of the
fork holes, but it’s a negligible amount. Indeed, that’s why
the many-bladed tenderizing tool known as a Jaccard is able
to tenderize meat without causing it to lose any excess
moisture—it separates muscle fibers, but it doesn’t actually
cut them or open them up.
What about that most-shunned of techniques, the old cut-
and-peek? Surely slashing a cooking steak open with a knife
and looking inside is going to have a detrimental effect on
it, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, a knife actually severs
muscle fibers, allowing them to leak their contents to the
outside world. But the amount of moisture loss is very