page_title: Doneness
section_title: Color
hierarchical_section_title: Doneness / Color
caption_attribution_description: English: Prime rib of beef cooked rare at Mannys in Minneapolis MN, USA
context_page_description: Doneness is a gauge of how thoroughly cooked a cut of meat is based on its colour, juiciness, and internal temperature when cooked. The gradations of cooking are most often used in reference to beef but are also applicable to lamb, pork, poultry, veal, and seafood.
  Gradations, their descriptions, and their associated temperatures vary regionally, with different cuisines using different cooking procedures and terminology. For steaks, common gradations include rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, and well done.
context_section_description: As meat is cooked, it turns from red to pink to gray to brown to black (if burnt), and the amount of myoglobin and other juices decreases. The color change is due to changes in the oxidation of the iron atom of the heme group in the myoglobin protein.  Raw meat is red due to the myoglobin protein in the muscles, not hemoglobin from blood (which also contains a heme group, hence the color).
  Prior to cooking, the iron atom is in a +2 oxidation state and bound to a dioxygen molecule (O₂), giving raw meat its red color. As cooking proceeds, the iron atom loses an electron, moving to a +3 oxidation state and coordinating with a water molecule (H₂O), which causes the meat to turn brown.
  Searing raises the meat’s surface temperature to 150 °C (302 °F), yielding browning via the caramelization of sugars and the Maillard reaction of amino acids. If raised to a high enough temperature, meat blackens from burning.
caption: Prime Rib cooked rare
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