Holidays don’t typically include steak, but when you’re friends with Poecifer, I guess you get to partake in new, snobbier traditions.
Unfortunately, unlike traditional holiday foods such as turkey, steak can be cooked to different temperatures, and people like very different things: it’s generally a little cringe to push past “medium”, but you know, I’ve lived on this Earth a long time and there are bigger problems than “somebody likes their steak cooked more than I do”.
And when you have people to your house and you’re the host, you should let people eat as they want. You don’t get to dictate how people like their food.
So let’s peruse this guy’s story from AITA over on Reddit and get ready to decide: uh, yeah. You’re a dick.
So, we did a bit of an extravagant Friendsgiving this year as I lucked into a strip loin of A5 Wagyu for a price that was unorthodox levels of cheap (My friend works for a high-end meat distributor and received it as a gift)
The dude got a deal on some fancy a** meat. Great. Okay.
It was a tight-knit event with only 10 of us there, mostly couples including my friend who only started dating a girl within the last couple months. We had an array of dishes but I was responsible for cooking the meat. Steak is about the closest thing I have to a religion and I take it very seriously.
“Steak is…a religion.” Oh boy, I want to punch this man in the teeth. It is not. It is food. You enjoy it, great.
The average steak for me takes about 4-5 hours to prepare and cook from the sous vide to the cast iron, to plate though sometimes I take as much as 3-4 months butter aging or dry aging my meats to be certain that they are perfect. These were genuine A5 so I only sous vide them after cutting them into two inch steaks.
Blah blah blah, how this man graced the steaks with his cooking…
There was pretty perfectly enough for one each but I also made jerk chicken, mandarin duck breast, and a nice cut off cherry jalapeno salmon. I had quite the spread. I sous vide them to medium-rare to be sure the fat was well-rendered but informed them that if absolutely necessary, I’d bring them up to medium on request.
Okay – so here he states he also made chicken, duck, and salmon. For ten people? Jesus, did he grow up Italian? He also says that he’d cook the steak to “medium on request”. *Eye roll*
Well, here comes the new girl to the group. She sees the first person cut into their steak and sees pink and she is just mortified. Immediately she acts him of eating raw meat and stresses that the steak should be, “Brown all the way through or else you’ll get sick.” I informed her that this wasn’t the case and that these steaks were actually cooked to the ideal temperature for the cut.
The new girl to the group isn’t aware that steak doesn’t need to be cooked to brown – it’s not like poultry. Our man tells her it’s not true, these steaks are fine.
She immediately demanded that I cook hers till it was brown all the way through and I firmly said, “Not a chance.” She proceeded to get angry and yell that it was her steak and she should have it how she liked.
And then he mansplains when she says she wants it done well. In fairness, as detailed above, there IS other food for her to pick, but Jesus, just cook her steak how she likes it, who cares?
I told her that there were plenty of other meats to choose from as well as a plethora of side-dishes that she could have but her steak was not being made well-done in my house. She said, “F-cking asshole.” Then she got up and started to stick the steak in the microwave. I shot up and grabbed it out of her hand first at which point half of the steak fell onto the ground. My dogs quickly got to it to which I said, “Well, at least it went to someone who wouldn’t shit on a good steak.” From there, there was definitely tension from that end of the table. They ate a little bit then hurriedly left.
AND THEN HE ACTUALLY PUT HIS HANDS ON HER. Nope, nope, nope.
Since then, my long-time friend and his new girlfriend have blocked me on social media and my phone number. They’ve even gone so far as to block the rest of the people at the table and cut off all ties. Yesterday I received a PayPal invoice from my old friend for $25 that just said, “Pay for dry cleaning of her dress.” I don’t think anything actually spilled on her, I think it’s just more drama but as of now I’m ignoring it and, unfortunately, probably washing my hands clean of an old friend.
OP’s insane attitude over steak cost him a friend. And he wonders if he’s an asshole? Yes, dude, you are an asshole.
AITA here?
So my mind is made up, but let’s see what Reddit has to say about it.
OrindaSarnia says, “It’s not like anyone else was getting less steak to accommodate her… everyone had plenty of food. Was he going to cut her steak up into 10 parts and hand a tiny bit more steak to everyone else?”
Sums it up nicely: “YTA. Your job is to be a gracious host, not a pretentious asshole. You don’t like well-done meat? Fine, don’t eat well-done meat. But it’s unbearably rude to deny a guest food because they won’t eat it the way you like it,” wrote Elle_Vetica.
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