How Long To Rest Your Steak After Cooking It In The Pan Or On The Grill

If you're cooking up steak on a hot grill or even just searing it in a pan, there's one big mistake you can make: Not letting your steak rest for a few minutes before cutting it or serving it. It's a common tip, since the science behind the benefits of letting steak rest seems fairly settled. More on this in a moment, but the short version is that letting steak rest allows its juices to settle. But perhaps not so settled is the question of how long you need to let that hunk of meat wait before you can serve it.

There have been attempts to come up with precise calculations for resting your steak. One is that for every 100 grams (about 3.5 ounces) of meat, you should let it rest 1 minute. Another is that for each inch of thickness on the meat, let it rest 5 minutes. That said, there is no one hard-and-fast rule or ironclad reasoning behind these calculations.

Instead, a safe bet seems to be that steak should rest at least 5 minutes. Some sources suggest going up to 10 minutes, although a test done by Serious Eats suggested that this only helps the steak retain a tiny fraction more moisture than 5 minutes. This is only for steak, though — larger cuts of meat like full-sized roasts are a whole other ballgame, and may need 10 or even 20 minutes of rest. Finally, you should never cut the steak before this rest period.

Resting steak helps it to retain moisture: The heat of a grill or pan makes the meat's muscle fibers contract, which squeezes out moisture. Once it's off the heat, those fibers loosen back up, so they can retain moisture. So, letting steak rest gives those fibers time to loosen and reabsorb the juice — but if you cut the steak open, the juices will flow out before that reabsorption happens. As the muscle fibers loosen back up, the steak's juices will also redistribute throughout the cut of meat, making for an evenly juicy experience.

Some cooks may worry about food safety implications of letting cooked meat sit for a while before serving. However, this likely isn't an issue unless you're letting it sit for over an hour. It's considered safe to leave food at room temperature for up to 2 hours, so the 5 to 10 minutes of rest time for steak comes nowhere close to this danger zone. The CDC even recommends letting meat sit a few minutes after cooking before slicing or serving it.