Why steak rest

Cooking the perfect steak is an art that requires a little bit of know-how and technique. If you want to impress your friends, your partner, or even yourself with a great steak sometime soon, be sure to allow for the proper time for the meat to rest before serving. Sign In Create Account. Sign In or Create Account. Why Let Steak Rest? There is less pressure in the center of the steak, allowing the moisture to redistribute through the piece and become re-absorbed by everything, from the center to the outer edges.

How to Rest Steak To give your steak the proper rest it needs, here are the steps to follow: Take the meat off of the heat burner, out of the oven, or off the grill once done cooking.

Transfer your meat to a warm plate. You may also use a cutting board. Create a tent with aluminum foil to retain a bit of the heat. As someone who has been cooking for years, I have come to realise that not many people know the importance of resting meat.

All meat is better when rested, and not just red meat. I never used to rest pork up until a few years ago and only then did I realise what I had been missing out on for so long. When you cook meat the protein in it sets. Generally the softer it feels, the less cooked it is and vice versa.

And cooking your steak to your liking is a skill that comes with time and a few overcooked dinners too. While using a meat thermometer is accurate and takes the guesswork out of it, I feel there is something satisfying about being able to cook a steak perfectly by feel alone. If you were to cut into a steak straight from the grill, you'd see a huge pool of juices come spilling out all over your plate. But if you wait 5 minutes or so before cutting into it, you won't see that.

The juices will be in the steak, not on the plate. Here's why. Think of steak as a bunch of little cells, each one filled with juice. When you cook it, the heat causes those little cells to contract, which in turn squeezes the juices toward the center of the steak where it's cooler.

Imagine a water balloon. When you squeeze it at one end, the water shifts to the other end. So your hand squeezing the balloon is like the heat of the grill. Fortunately, the way those little cells get squeezed is only temporary, provided you've cooked the steak properly. Given a few minutes to cool down, those cells will revert to their former shape and the juices will migrate back from the center to be redistributed throughout the steak.

If you overcook a steak , those little cells won't bounce back in the same way, and thus cannot reabsorb those juices. Of course, in an overcooked steak, much of the juices will have evaporated anyway.

As is the case with so much to do with cooking steaks , there is a key temperature involved in resting a steak. You can rest a large roast this way for at least 45 minutes to really enhance how juicy the final product is. We also usually sear our roast after letting it rest in this manner to lock in juices and get a perfect, crispy bark. Resting doesn't just work for beef. You should rest all types of protein that comes off your grill. When you grill chicken breasts, you will want to let them rest for minutes before cutting and serving.

A whole chicken will need to rest for a longer period of time, often around 20 minutes according to the weight of the bird. Just like beef, the resting time is determined by the size of the cut. Just like resting beef or chicken off the grill, you'll learn that resting other meals will improve flavor and juiciness.

Fried chicken should rest for about 10 minutes to lock in juiciness. This often happens anyway because fried chicken is usually way to hot to eat right out of the fryer anyway. The same thing holds true for a roast in the oven. After hours of cooking, it's too hot to eat.

So don't slice it yet! Let it rest for 20 minutes or longer to lock in the flavor before carving it up. The most important thing to remember about resting meat is that you don't want to cut it until it has sufficiently rested. Cutting it too soon defeats the purpose of resting your meat and lets the juices escape.