When you buy a nice cut of beef, the last thing you want to do is end up with overcooked shoe leather or a bloody mess when you go to serve it.  However, you can easily learn how to cook a beef steak or roast to the perfect temperature.

How to Take the Internal Temperature of Beef

All you need to cook your meat to the right temperature are a meat thermometer and an internal temperature chart like the one below. Make sure that you use a quality meat thermometer and that you’re getting the best reading possible. For roasts, insert the temperature down the length of the roast. For a steak, put the thermometer across the widest part of the steak. Then wait until the needle on the thermometer, which can take as long as 30 seconds.

How to Tell How Done Your Steak or Roast  Is

Now, it’s important to remove the meat from the heat at the correct time for it to be rare, medium-rare, medium, medium-well or well done. The amount of time this will take can vary widely from grilling a thin steak over direct heat to barbecuing a roast low and low in a smoker. That’s why it’s important to use internal temperature to tell you how done your beef is.

Roasts will continue to cook after they’re removed from the heat, so take them off five degrees before the temperature you’re shooting for. Steaks can be removed immediately on hitting the desired temperature.

Internal temperature chart:

photo credit: FotoosVanRobin

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Did you know that root beer is as American as, say, apple pie? I never realized just how American root beer was until I was talking with a friend from the UK. It’s something that we Americans take for granted since it’s a tradition that dates back to the 1800s.

Root beer is a beverage made from a blend herbs and spices, most notably the root or bark of the Sassafras tree. We call it a beer because, at one point, most root beer contained a little bit of alcohol to help carbonate it. This was perfectly normal back then, as hard ciders and beers were commonly drank to avoid potentially contaminated water.

For a while, Sassafras was banned due to studies showing that it could be carcinogenic. However scientists have found a way to remove the offending component, Safrole.

Root beer started out as a folk tradition and natural remedy in the Eastern US. It was first sold commercially by Charles Hires, a Philadelphia-area pharmacist, in 1876.

There were similar beverages like birch beer and ginger beer, but root beer is the one that really caught on. Other countries have similar drinks made from local herbs, such as in the Australia and UK they’re most commonly called sarsaparilla. None of them are quite like an all American root beer.

Whether you like to drink them from a tall glass or in a root beer float with vanilla ice cream, there’s nothing like an American root beer.

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Westmoreland Berry Farm is a great place for a family outing in Eastern Virginia to pick strawberries, raspberries or blackberries depending on the season. They have a small petting zoo, goats that cross over the road on a special bridge and a variety of jams and jellies from local Virginia producers.

We’ve been going there for the last three years and have been thrilled with the farm itself. It’s important to see what berries are in season before you go and to act fast before all the best fruit is gone. You can also buy apples and peaches from their orchard, but they pick these themselves.

The concession stand also sells sundaes that include the finest fresh fruit and soft-serve ice cream. This visit was the first time I tried this treat and could see why they called them, “famous.”

The berry patch includes row after row of delicious fresh fruit:

The blackberries were incredibly large and ripe:

Each bucket holds 6-7 pounds of delicious blackberries:

The best part, though, might be trying the fruit on the vine- just to make sure it’s ready.

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Welcome to the Shenandoah Secrets blog! We’re constantly working to discover the traditions and secrets of good living preserved deep in the valleys of the Shenandoah Mountains and to share them with you.

This picture was taken about five years ago on the summit of Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park. I’ve known since then that I wanted to find something more than a nine to five kind of life.

Even then I was in love with the outdoors and, specifically, the Shenandoah Mountains that make up the Virginia section of the Appalachian Mountain Range. However it’s taken years to begin learning the values and traditions of the region and deciding to write about the people and products indigenous to this area.

If you want to share your business, event or product with the Shenandoah Secrets community, you can contact me any time. Otherwise I hope you find the information and resources here helpful.

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