WASHINGTON — Confidence among the nation’s grill owners reached an all-time high heading into the Fourth of July weekend, according to the Center for Measured Outcomes, whose quarterly Backyard Grilling Confidence Index found that 97.4 percent of grill owners rate their own steaks as “excellent” or “better than whoever is asking,” while a parallel review of 41,206 steaks found that none had been cooked correctly.
The index rose 6.3 points from the same period last year to 188.2, the highest reading since the Center began the survey in 2009. The figure carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 points. The Center attributed the increase to longer evenings, the approach of the holiday, and what its report described as “the widespread acquisition of a second set of tongs.”
Correctness was measured by asking the person who requested each steak how they wanted it, and then comparing. The 41,206 steaks were observed in 6,114 households in 48 states over the eight weekends preceding the holiday. Alaska and Hawaii were excluded from the sample after field staff ran out of folding chairs. The final correctness rate was 0.0 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.4 steaks, which the Center noted is less than one steak and therefore does not change anything.
“Of the 41,206 steaks, we found zero that were cooked correctly, and one that was cooked correctly in 1987,” said Dr. Marjorie Teller, the Center’s director. The 1987 steak was cited independently by 3,412 respondents in 31 states, each of whom described it as “the one I made that time,” and each of whom placed it at their own house. Researchers also documented 1,108 steaks that were declared “medium-rare, perfect” by their cooks while still in the grocery bag, and 212 steaks that were cooked correctly at the moment they left the grill but became incorrect during the walk to the picnic table, including one that was carried at a full run. In a controlled trial, the Center cooked a steak of its own under laboratory conditions. It was overcooked by the time the researcher finished announcing that it was perfect.
The survey found that 61.8 percent of grill owners believe a steak should be flipped only once, 38.2 percent believe it should be flipped constantly, and 100.0 percent believe the other group is ruining it.
“A man knows when a steak is done the same way he knows when a conversation is over: when he says so,” said Dr. Chad Brickhouse, a senior fellow at the Institute for Common Sense, reached by phone in the grill aisle of a hardware store. “We ran the numbers, and the numbers agreed with me. It’s just common sense.”
Gary Tunstall, 61, of Lake Ternby, Minn., said he has cooked about 2,300 steaks since 1991 and considers every one of them perfect. His wife, Bev, said she has asked for medium in every case.
“She thinks she wants medium,” Tunstall said. “What she wants is what I make.”
Teller said further study is needed and that the Center has applied for funding to repeat the survey over Labor Day weekend. It has also begun recruiting a control group of adults who do not own grills, all 400 of whom have so far told researchers that they could do better.