I want to take a moment to apologize for my harsh critique of a steak you posted a few weeks back, which I compared to boot leather.

After seeing more pictures of your food, I think either the lighting in your kitchen or the white balance of your camera, distorts the colors of your food in a bit of an unflattering way.

My apologies, I do think your food in general looks good, it’s just an unfortunate lighting factor.

My issue was that after I informed you that it was rare and even pointed out that it had juice pools on top that are impossible on a well done steak you maintained that you were right and decided that acting like an ass wasn’t just the right course but that you needed to double your efforts.

I can’t afford new light bulbs. I make cheap food, not high end food photography.

The steak looks fine. These burritos though look like boot leather!

Bet they tasted wonderful too!

Actually, I said nothing in that thread while you and someone else back and forthed and you admitted you were so angry that you lurked the last 2 months of my profile. Then I hit you with a zinger. It’s all captured here:

Steak - SDF Chatter

It’s shark week here which means fighting her crippling anemia with no frills bioavailable iron. Cost per person: $10

(lemmy.sdf.org)

I maintain my apology regarding my comment about your food.

These ribeye were the craptastic ones you get for $2 each in bulk from the back of a truck in a Tractor Supply parking lot. There is no good way to cook them.

I think a mix of it is very harsh lighting combined with OP not getting a proper browning/maillard reaction. The steak “argument” comes down from having very little browning (and mostly just greying) which looks extra bad under the lighting.

I’m a firm believer that your meat/whatever should actually taste good on its own rather than just eating the browning but there is very much a difference between a grey blob cooked to 130 and a properly browned blob cooked to 130 (mostly texture and flavor variation). Its a common mistake cooks make when they realize cooking with a thermometer is easy mode but don’t realize there is still more to do on top of that.

Which shows in the burrito. The steak inside looks very “blobby”. You aren’t going to get every single bit brown without using a LOT of food coloring (or realizing it is actually okay to overcook “shaved” steak), but a bit of browning on that tortilla and those hash browns would go a LONG way towards amplifying the flavor of it.