This Major Rule About Cooking Meat Turns out to Be Wrong

Is dark matter real? How do consciousness and memory actually work? And is it really necessary to rest your meat after cooking? These are the big, unresolved questions that keep scientists up at night. I’m not qualified to weigh in on the first two, and to be honest, I’m not even sure I have a definitive answer to the third. But I do have a much clearer idea about it than I used to, and that alone feels like progress.

Resting meat is something chefs and experienced cooks have recommended for ages, and it’s something we at Serious Eats have long supported as well. But over the years, a growing number of voices have questioned the logic behind it, and the tide has slowly started to shift. As more evidence against resting meat has piled up, the once bedrock rule is looking a lot less certain.

This question has been gnawing at me for a long time, so I finally set out to dig into all the various arguments and run some tests of my own. As I wrote in the “In a Nutshell” summary above, I think there’s a case for resting meat, but not for the reasons most people assume. And if you want it to work, you have to follow a completely different set of meat-resting rules.

The Classic Case for Resting Meat

Most proponents of resting meat will tell you something like this:

After cooking a steak, chop, or roast, it’s important to let the meat rest. This gives the muscle fibers time to relax and reabsorb juices that were pushed toward the center during cooking. Without resting, those juices are more likely to spill out onto the cutting board as soon as the meat is sliced, resulting in drier, less flavorful meat.

It’s an explanation that seems credible and supported by our everyday cooking experience: Cut into a piece of meat soon after removing it from the pan or oven, and liquid pours out, but wait a while—say a good five to fifteen minutes for steaks and chops, longer for larger roasts—and far less liquid is lost upon carving or slicing.

It’s something Serious Eats culinary director emeritus and food science whiz Kenji demonstrated very clearly many years ago in an old article on meat resting. If you look at his photos from that article, including the one below, there’s a seemingly obvious relationship between how long you wait and how much juice is lost.

In the test shown in the photo above, Kenji cooked each steak sample to an internal temperature of 125°F, then sliced them in 2.5-minute intervals starting at zero minutes and continuing until the last one had rested 12.5 minutes. The steak that wasn’t rested gushed juices when sliced, but by the 10-minute mark, the meat was hardly losing any at all. That seems to prove that resting helps meat retain its liquid instead of losing it and drying out.

This kind of evidence can make it seem like an open-and-shut case, and it’s why so many experienced cooks have taught meat resting for so long. But as we’ll see, this type of testing also misses critical factors.

Kenji, I should note, wrote that piece more than 15 years ago, and, like any science-minded cook, he’s continued to evolve his thinking since then. What follows is a re-examination of the position he laid out back then—one that’s been hugely influential and long stood as Serious Eats’ take on the subject—in light of newer evidence and a deeper understanding of what’s really happening when meat rests.

The Anti-Resting Counterpoint

The pushback to resting meat is not entirely new. One of the most significant articles I know of on the subject was published by Meathead over on AmazingRibs.com back in 2013, and when Meathead talks about meat, everyone should pay attention. In the piece, Meathead surveys the work that had been done up to that point on meat resting and presents several arguments about why resting meat may not be a good idea.

His main points are as follows:

• How we perceive juiciness is incredibly complex and can not be reduced to a single factor like the percentage of liquid lost or retained. (If it were that simple, how could well-done meat like barbecued brisket seem juicy, and why does jerky, which is still about 25% water, seem bone-dry?) Confounding factors like melted collagen, fat, and the presence of salt (which triggers salivation) are just a few of the many variables that can alter our perception of juiciness.
• Even if skipping the rest leads to slightly more juice loss, Meathead argues it’s likely insignificant compared to other factors that influence perceived juiciness.
• Juices that spill out onto the plate or cutting board are not necessarily lost; they can still be eaten simply by pouring them back onto the meat and mopping them up as you go.
• On the other hand, skipping the rest ensures that skins and crusts that have developed a crisp, seared exterior don’t steam and become soggy—arguably more important than any small savings in liquid one might gain with a rest.

More recently, Chris Young, a chef and food scientist who was one of the co-authors of the original Modernist Cuisine books and now the maker of the Combustion Predictive Thermometer, waded back into the debate. Young had long been in favor of meat resting, but in a recent video, he completely changed his stance. The beauty of science, he rightly pointed out, is that evidence is all that matters, and when it contradicts our beliefs, we need to follow the evidence. It’s not only OK to admit when you’ve been wrong—it’s the responsibility of everyone seeking to become more knowledgeable, science-informed cooks.

In his video, Young demonstrates a series of tests using his Predictive Thermometer, which leads him to make claims that go beyond Meathead’s original ones. Instead of arguing that the juice loss is relatively minimal in the scheme of things and can be recovered anyway on the plate, Young’s tests suggest that when samples of seared meat are sliced at the same final internal temperature, resting has no measurable effect on juice loss at all.

How can that be—doesn’t that defy the clear evidence from tests like Kenji’s above, and the anecdotal experience of literally generations of cooks?

It doesn’t. There’s no contradiction—the key to why lies in how the tests were structured.

• In Kenji’s test and others like it, all the steaks were cooked to the same internal temperature and then left to sit for varying amounts of time. But this test overlooked critical thermodynamic processes that occur as the meat rests. Because Kenji pulled all the steak samples at 125°F and sliced into each one in successive 2.5-minute intervals, temperature changes during resting were not controlled for: Inside the meat, heat was flowing from the hotter exterior towards the center, cooking it further, a phenomenon colloquially called “carryover cooking.” At the same time, that stored heat was dissipating into the wider environment, leading to an overall cooling even as the center warmed. When Kenji sliced into each sample during the resting phase, he was slicing into steaks that had reached different final temperatures across their doneness gradients. As a result, varying amounts of juice were spilling out.
• In Young’s tests, he controls for that crucial variable: the final core temperature at the moment of slicing. Rather than pulling all his meat samples at the same temperature and then slicing them at different times, he uses his Predictive Thermometer to ensure that each piece is sliced at the same final internal temperature, whether it was rested or not. This approach isolates the effect of resting itself. The result? Juice loss is the same either way, no matter if the meat rested or not.

The significance of Young’s tests can’t be overstated: Resting makes no difference as long as you slice into the meat at the same final core temp, which we should all want to do—that’s what determines its doneness, after all.

Young offers a different and credible explanation for the juice loss observed by many. It’s not caused by whether or not meat is rested, but by the internal temperature of the meat at the moment it’s sliced. According to Young, it comes down to vapor pressure: The hotter the meat, the more energy the internal moisture has, leading to higher vapor pressure that pushes liquid outward when the meat is cut.

As the meat rests (and therefore cools) that vapor pressure decreases, and so does the juice loss. It’s not about reabsorption or thickening as the juices cool, which is another common explanation that’s been offered over the years. It’s simply about pressure. Control for final internal temperature, and—rested or not—the juice loss is the same.

My Own Experiment: Sensory Evaluations

I spent a lot of time reading, watching, and digesting all of the above. And it left me with my own question: How can I contribute further to this conversation? I didn’t want to replicate any of the prior experiments (though repeatability is a cornerstone of good science), but instead add another small piece to the puzzle. What I noticed was missing was a more practical, sensory examination of all this: Whether juice loss happens or not (Young had largely convinced me it doesn’t, if you control for internal temperature), can tasters actually tell either way?

I set up my experiment in a similar way to Young’s, because he had convinced me that the temperature at the moment of slicing was more meaningful when assessing the impact of resting on meat. I also used his Predictive Thermometer, due to its ability to more accurately track the meat’s core temperature (it has multiple thermocouples along its probe’s length, giving it multiple simultaneous readings and allowing it to better triangulate on the true core temp). Here is how I conducted my test:

• I bought a boneless pork loin and carefully sliced it into uniform 1.5-inch-thick chops, ensuring all the chops were of uniform thickness and from the same muscle to minimize variation.
• I did not salt the meat. While this made it decidedly less delicious, it removed the effect of salt on salivation, which can influence a taster’s perception of juiciness.
• I kept all the chops refrigerated until the moment of putting each one in the skillet, to ensure they were starting from the same initial temperature.
• I used a Breville Control Freak induction cooker set to 350°F pan temperature to ensure a consistent cooking temperature for all chops.
• I flipped the chops every 30 seconds (using a metronome set to 2 beats per minute) until they reached one of two target temps: 130°F for chops that would rest to 140°F, and 137°F for chops I planned to slice immediately. I had initially pulled the latter “unrested” chops at 140°F, but the carryover was so rapid that even the short time it took to move them from the skillet, remove the probe, and start slicing was enough to overcook them.
• I alternated between cooking rested and unrested chops so that neither type had been sitting around significantly longer than the other.
• I sliced the chops as evenly as possible (about 1/4 inch thick per slice), discarded the end pieces, and transferred the rest to trays.
• I then covered the slices with plastic wrap, pressing it directly against their surface to prevent evaporative drying as the samples awaited tasting.
• I allowed all the samples to cool fully to room temperature to ensure serving temperature was not a confounding factor.

Once all my samples were ready, I set up a Two-Alternative Forced Choice (2-AFC) sensory test with four tasters across 30 rounds of tasting. It worked as follows:

• The tasters rotated to minimize palate fatigue. In an ideal setting, this sensory test would have had 30 different tasters for each of the 30 rounds, but I couldn’t round up enough people for that, so rotating my tasters to give them a break between tastes was my best option for minimizing problems.
• In each round, a taster received two samples in randomized order, one rested and one not. The tasters kept their eyes closed each time before being presented with the samples to remove any visual influence.
• They were asked to taste each sample and assess one specific quality: juiciness. Their decision was “forced,” meaning they had to pick one as being “juicier,” even if they were unsure.

My Observations During Setup

Even as I set up this carefully controlled test, I struggled to keep the samples at consistent slicing temperatures, and it underscored one of Chris Young’s main points: Carryover cooking is greatly underestimated in both its speed and degree, and this has a huge impact on whether resting meat does or does not work well.

The most common advice when resting meat is to cook it roughly 5–15°F shy of the desired final core temperature. Then let it rest off-heat for 5 to 30 minutes, depending on the type and size of the cut, with larger roasts pulled earlier and left to rest longer. When cooking smaller cuts like steaks and chops, cooks are usually told to pull them 5–10°F before the target temp and rest 5 to 10 minutes.

But my 1.5-inch-thick chops completely defied this: Even when I pulled one a full 15°F before hitting its target temperature of 140°F, it had reached 140°F and threatened to surpass it in under three minutes. Follow the conventional resting advice, and in many cases, you’re going to blow right past your target temp.

This meant that in all my tests, in which I was pulling the chops 10°F shy of the target temperature, my resting periods were short, not much more than two minutes. I didn’t let them go longer because, as noted above, I had to control for the final slicing temperature above all else. Overcooking the chops in the name of an idealized five-minute resting time was guaranteed to overcook them.

Only by controlling all the cooking variables so carefully and tracking the temperature so closely was I finally able to see a long-obscured truth: Food and recipe writers like myself have been dispensing inaccurate meat-resting time and temperature guidance for ages. We must change that.

Some might argue that the short rest dictated by rapid carryover undermines the validity of my sensory test. But as the person slicing the meat, I often noticed that the unrested samples felt more overcooked in texture—even though, as I’ll explain below, tasters couldn’t reliably tell the difference. The chops I pulled just shy of the target temp and sliced immediately (i.e., the unrested ones) still seemed to creep past doneness, because the retained heat was too intense to stop with slicing alone. Cutting exposes more surface area, which helps heat dissipate more quickly and halt carryover, but only to a point.

This is a critical takeaway. Even if resting meat doesn’t affect juice retention, it still accomplishes something important: It helps you stick your landing, letting the meat slide up to its target temp and reducing the chances of accidental carryover—it’s nearly impossible to avoid this unintentional carryover cooking if you try to cook to your final temperature and slice right away.

Think of it like a singer gracefully sliding up into a note rather than trying to hit it cold. Resting gives you a better shot at reaching your target temperature without exceeding it. It’s best understood as a method of temperature control, not juice retention, and it only needs to last as long as it takes to slide up to your target temp. The key is tracking the internal temperature closely and slicing at the right moment, when the meat is exactly where you want it to be.

Here’s the hard part: Knowing how early to pull a steak or roast to give yourself a decent shot at sliding up to the perfect target temperature—without falling short, taking too long, or overshooting—is highly variable. It depends on the type of meat, the cooking method, the cooking temperature, and the size and shape of the cut. In other words, it’s damn-near impossible to offer a meaningful general rule. A good thermometer and some trial and error to build up experience are probably your best bet. Precision tools like the Predictive Thermometer also help significantly (and no, this isn’t an ad).

The Taste Test Results

That was a long but important digression. Let me now share my testing results:

Across 30 tasting rounds, my tasters identified the rested meat as juicier 16 times, an almost perfect 50/50 split. That’s no better than a coin-flip, and this is despite the fact that I, as the slicer, thought the unrested meat had clear signs of having cooked a little more due to the aggressive carryover, which should have meant it was less juicy.

This suggests that even when small differences exist, tasters struggle to detect them once confounding factors such as serving temperature, salting, and visual cues are controlled. If that’s the case, then Meathead’s original point holds up: Even if there is a difference in moisture retention, it may be too minor to matter in practice.

Conclusion: Rest, but Differently

The bottom line is this: It’s a good idea to pull meat early from the pan or oven and let it rest, but only long enough to give it the time to slide up via carryover cooking to the target internal temperature, which you need to track closely.

What resting is not: a fixed amount of time for the meat to sit, which risks it overcooking and losing its crust. Once again, it’s all about temperature, not time.

Is this the last word on meat resting? Eh, probably not. It’s a complex enough process that there’s likely more to be learned in the future. But I think we’re a lot closer than we were.