Every recipe tells you to rest your meat for five to ten minutes before cutting. But very few explain why, and even fewer give you the right amount of time for different cuts and cooking methods. Resting meat is one of the most important steps in cooking it well, and most people either skip it or do not rest long enough.
When meat cooks, its muscle fibers contract and squeeze moisture toward the center of the cut. Slice it immediately off the heat, and that moisture -- concentrated in the center -- floods out onto your cutting board. The result is dry meat and a wet board. Resting allows those fibers to relax and reabsorb some of the moisture that was forced toward the center, distributing it more evenly throughout the cut. The standard advice to rest for five to ten minutes works reasonably well for thin cuts like chicken breasts and pork chops. But for larger cuts, the resting time needs to scale up. A thick ribeye steak needs at least eight to ten minutes. A whole roast chicken needs fifteen to twenty. A leg of lamb or a large beef roast should rest for thirty minutes to an hour, loosely tented with foil. The foil matters: tight wrapping traps steam and softens the crust you worked hard to develop. Loose tenting lets air circulate while keeping the meat warm enough to serve properly. A common fear is that the meat will get cold. It will not -- not within a reasonable resting window. The internal temperature of a large roast barely drops more than a few degrees over thirty minutes if it is in a warm kitchen. If you are concerned, rest it in a low oven (around 140 degrees Fahrenheit / 60 Celsius) with the door cracked.