Science Behind Resting Your Meat

Close your eyes with me. Imagine opening up the oven and seeing a beautifully roasted chicken with brown, crispy skin. You can hardly wait to cut yourself a piece. But do wait.

Resting meat after cooking is essential.

Why? No, it’s not because the meat needs a power nap. 🛌 Resting gives the meat time to reabsorb some of its natural juices.

To go deeper on why resting works, we need to meat at the molecular level…Get it?!? Like meet but “meat”…Okay moving on.

Let's Talk the Science

Meat is made up of muscle fibers. And the muscle fibers hold a group of rod-like structures, called myofibrils. Then the myofibrils hold water molecules (aka natural juices). 💧

When the meat is raw, the water molecules are trapped in the myofibrils. It’s why raw meat doesn’t really leak juices when cut. 🥩

But when heat is applied to meat, the muscle fiber shrinks and gets firmer. The myofibrils contract too, squeezing out the water molecules trapped inside. Some of that water even leaves the muscle fiber entirely which is why meat has “pan juices” after cooking.

Magic happens when you give the meat time to rest. Meat reabsorbs some of those natural juices that it lost as it contracted. How? The myofibrils relax and stretch, taking back in some of those water molecules.

So we established the meat doesn’t actually need a nap. But with all the relaxation and stretching, I guess it’s more like a yoga session. 🧘‍♀️ 😉

How long should the meat rest?

The short answer: some resting is better than no resting—even if it is just a few minutes.

The longer the meat sits, the more natural juices are reabsorbed. But while the total amount of juices lost goes down the longer the meat rests, it does so at a decreasing rate. Cooks Illustrated did an experiment where they roasted pork loins and then let them rest for varying lengths of time. After cutting the meat, they measured how much juice was lost. Here’s what they found:

• The pork loin sliced immediately after cooking lost on average 10 tablespoons of juices
• After 10 minutes of resting, the pork loin lost on average 4 tablespoons total (Woah that’s a 60% improvement!)
• After 20 minutes, it lost 2.5 tablespoons
• After 30 minutes, 1 tablespoon
• After 40 minutes, 0.66 tablespoons

But you also don’t want your food to go cold either. So you have to find the optimal resting time. It’s simple though. The larger the piece of meat, the longer you should let it rest. (Larger pieces of meat will also retain heat longer.) While the exact timing varies based on size, type of meat, etc., here’s the “cheat sheet” I created based on some research:

• Small or thin pieces of meat—like a chicken breast or steak—should rest 5 to 10 minutes
• Whole chickens or large roasts should rest 15 to 30 minutes

I will give one word of warning. ⚠️ Meat continues to cook as it rests. Steaks can increase 5 to 10℉ (~3 to 6℃) after just 15 minutes. Keep this carryover cooking in mind so you don’t overcook your meat. Instead, slightly undercook it knowing it will hit the right temperature after resting.

Where I learned this: The Science of Good Cooking by Cooks Illustrated, On Food and Cooking by Harold McGhee, and this opposing viewpoint over at Epicurious