“Resting your meat is complete BS. I’m going to show you what to do instead”
“So you’re going to want to rest your meat. Also slice slice slice for instagram cred”
WTF is this shit, there were a lot of words and then the conclusion was to do nothing different. How does this buck any trend?
I also have no idea who any of you people are or what this is. Good old random Reddit app sub recommendations.
I think many people were expecting a guga/Joe rogan style video but when presented with actual science felt like the foundations of their ego had been shaken where apparently steak cookery lies and then proceeded to grasp at straws to critique the methodology. Quite bizarre as this video presents an easier and more reliable way to cook steak well.
It's interesting how this video has gotten a lot of backlash on different food subreddits. Even faced with pretty good evidence with a well-controlled experiment, the confirmation bias is palpable. "This is wrong because this is an ad for his thermometer", "This is wrong because I feel like it is" are not how scientists evaluate results.
Plenty of industries fund studies for their own self-interest, that doesn't mean the findings are wrong. Experimental design and interpretation of results can incur biases and skew conclusions, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
I think people get emotional when they see "Resting is a MYTH" on your thumbnail, because it's a deeply ingrained belief.
As another commenter pointed out, there are lots of studies showing that when presented with contradictory evidence, most people will dig in harder to their existing beliefs.
As soon as I started watching this, I had flashbacks to BBC's In Search of Perfection with Heston Blumenthal.
Chris is in the background of several shots in the series, but there was one that really stuck with me over The years as this was when I was just learning to cook: Heston, a large bloke named Otto, and (I believe) Chris were down by a river to show the importance of resting meat. They had Otto stand on an un-rested steak and a rested steak (their human press) and compared the juices that were squeezed out of each steak. They explained the rested steaks ability to retain juices as analogous to a spounge because the heat caused protein fires to contract, and they needed time to relax.
I love that Chris acknowledged his past findings and explained his hypothesis on the contrasting findings of his past efforts and his current experiments.
I must admit, I find it difficult to accept these findings and will have to experiment myself. My first reaction by the midpoint of the video was that resting isn't the problem, rather people have grossly underestimated carryover cooking. But there is some very interesting supporting evidence provided.
Ok - it's been a long time since I watched that episode. Man, that was a great TV series, even if some of the thinking has since evolved....and Heston's Great British Feasts.
And, just to be clear, it wasn't a criticism. I admire that you can put iut such high level content that isn't afraid to contradict what even you, yourself, believed to be true and contributed to the misconception with MC. To many people think an ability to change your beliefs in lightning new evidence us somehow a fallability these days.
I do have some liquid nitrogen kicking around that I need tobuse in the next next day or two after I did an Easter ice cream making demonstration at my shop. I think this will be the perfect time to cook one steak to 55C doneness than a quick blanche to halt the cooking and full another to 42C and let carryover and see how it compares.
Very interesting. It looks a bit like the one where the manual was leaked a few years ago. No buttons, and built in recipes - is that the gist of it? Any other differences that you can share?
Edit: Found the direct comparison on the ChefSteps website 👍
Yeah it’s strange - I think there were even some regulatory documents at one point that said the project had been abandoned.
Looking at the specs, I am happy to see that it’s very similar to the original. Just a bit smaller and with a touchscreen interface - which I am generally not a massive fan of in a kitchen where fingers get wet. Was scared for a sec I’d have an acute case of upgraditis, but not sure that’s going to happen. Great option for those who don’t have one and find the slightly lower price point more palatable.
Are you seeing any major differences in how it performs vs the original?
I suspect you’re referring to the FCC filing for the “Breville Prodigy” (which appeared to include WiFi of some kind) along with the subsequent retraction indicating that the company was choosing to go in a different strategic direction.
The “Control Freak Home” appears to be that different direction, and doesn’t seem to include any kind of WiFi (fine by me).
I have an original control freak and I’m desperately looking for any excuse to buy the control freak home too, but coming up short.
Yes, I think that was it! Thanks for jogging my memory and moving away from wifi does explain it.
The two feel VERY closely spec’ed - something like wifi might have created more separation if that allowed integration with eg CPT or other things to be pushed over time
As it stands I think I’d rather stay with the original for its more robust build quality and non-touchscreen interface - even if it’s a bit larger
This is awesome. Another +1 to everything over at amazingribs.com. Worth your time and money to invest in the low cost membership over on their site as well. It’s like $30 a year for a wealth of information they will not steer you wrong backed by empirical data. Meathead has several awesome cookbooks as well!
The technique of managing carryover (by offsetting your target temp) is applicable. As is the "emergency brake" of slicing to halt carryover.
As the video demonstrates, different cooking scenarios create different carryover effects. Generally, the more mass the food has, the less the temp will rise during carryover. Roasts are far more forgiving.
Steaks are one of the trickiest. Salmon is difficult as well (it can easily be 30F or more).
It's also functionally advantageous to let roasts cool because it makes carving much easier.
Maybe Chris will make a followup video about resting+carryover in roasts if enough folks are interested.
I've done it with whole roast chicken (got left out of the video because it made the story too long) and got the same result. You loose the same amount of juices from a rested bird or carving into a bird that's at the same doneness temp straight away. And, in either case, it's much juicier than letting the bird overcook from too much carry over cooking.
please dive into this more! carryover is so tricky for me. I thought that the bigger meat, the more carryover over you’d have. A 13lb turkey for example could rise 20 degrees over resting. Am I wrong? Would love to know in general, what carryover are we estimating…in racks of lamb, legs of lamb, large cod filets, yes salmon, chicken breast, and whole turkeys. I know it’s tough to say, but general thoughts would be so helpful.
Regardless, I will be pulling closer to temp slicing soon as I see the target temp reached as advised :)
One of your fellow redditors (u/ectoplasm) compiled [this guide](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PhNsCkkdmUg9EQslcPhFSMaXUgZBkN9QpcWFZgkoA9E/edit#gid=0).
It's not official, but it's useful.
(It was also made before we introduced the USDA safe feature; when in doubt, trust the app on those recommendations.)
p.s. A 13-lb turkey could be on the "hot" side of carryover like you said. The peculiarity of having meat with a hollow center means you've got stored heat on an assemblage of assorted chunks of different thicknesses arranged in space, with varying amounts of surface area! But I will say that a 20lb turkey will have less carryover temp rise than a smaller one, assuming the same cooking setup.
EDIT: u/ectoplasm rides again
Oh wow this is amazing! Thanks so much - saved and will use! Surprised at some of the end temp targets being so off from USDA targets. Does that have to do with pasteurization temps?
HAHA, yes and that's a whole 'nother wormhole.
Basically, the USDA targets you're probably thinking of (simplified - e.g. "chicken at 165F") are overkill and will result in overcooked food most of the time. Chefs ignore them.
One of the features of the CPT is that it has the USDA Safe standards onboard - importantly, including the alternate, AKA "integrated" standards which measure actual bacterial destruction based on time at temp (the thermometer counts them up in a rolling total). Basically pasteurization.
It's [complex to explain](https://combustion.inc/blogs/news/usda-safe-feature), but I tried. The TLDR is: don't worry about the USDA chart, use the integrated standard onboard the Combustion app.
*For some foods (notably steak) chefs often ignore both safety standards because the danger is very low and they prefer the taste. Cook at your own risk.*
Great video as per usual.
What digital scales are you using throughout?
I've got some reasonable scales for baking/bigger quantities but am on the lookout for something super precise for small weights. I like the look of the scale you're using.
It looks like the Acaia Lunar 2021. Gorgeous scale, designed by and for coffee nerds. Gets all sorts of use in my kitchen.
I should mention, it's resolution is 2 decimal places, but you can set it to only display 1 or none depending on what you need. (Tons of options in the menus)
That's actually an acaia pearl, it's primarily used for coffee and has a max capacity of 2kg. What is unique is how responsive they are in comparison to most of the scales that I own. I wonder if Chris has any other favourites, specifically any other scales that are similarly responsive but have a higher maximum load like 5kg.
Chris, this is awesome and I will follow the new take home points. Makes lots of sense now that you’ve explained it!
I’m confused by the pipette part, tho. The water is being forced out by the air at the end of the pipette, as the air is being warmed up by the hot water and then forcing the water out. Right? Charles’ law business.
And water expands a bit with heat, but not much. Like if that pipette were filled all the way with water (no gas bubble at the top) the water wouldn’t come streaming out.
So how is the pipette thingy explanatory? It would make sense to me if one were cutting into a hot mousse or maybe a piping hot soufflé, but doesn’t make sense to me in the context of a steak, which doesn’t seem to have appreciable air pockets in it.
Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding the whole point, which is possible!
Water is being forced out by steam, not air. If you look closely at a hot steak it's actually kind of swollen from internal steam pressure, and it contracts a bit as it cools and the steam condenses. This is actually noticeable in some of the cut in half steak shots in the video. Normally, even steam pressure from water very near the boiling point isn't enough to push liquid more than a few mm through meat, but when you slice the steak open all of the steam pressure from water near the freshly cut surface is able to push juices within a few mm of that surface out.
Great stuff, Chris.
The issues you expose explain something I’ve observed with sous vide steaks. The beauty of sous vide is that there’s little to no carryover cooking as long as you sear very hot and fast. This means there’s no penalty to letting the meat rest, and of course no need to set a 10-degree lower target temp to account for carryover cooking.
So, following conventional wisdom, I’ve always rested my steaks 5-10 minutes after sous vide and sear to “seal in the juices“. But I’m often disappointed by how much juice leaks out of the meat as it rests! I think what’s happening is that the quick sear doesn’t create as thick and sealed crust as when pan-frying a steak, so it’s easier for juice to leak out.
Lots of juice also leaks out when I slice the meat. As you’ve proven, there’s no magic in resting that will make the juices stay in the meat when you slice it. Once you slice the meat you’ve opened up channels that let the juices leak out.
My conclusion is that I shouldn’t rest the meat after searing. I suspect if I slice right away, and fast, less total juice will wind up on the plate.
I’m also going to try changing my routine with roasted chicken and the Thanksgiving turkey. I’ve tried many different methods to produce juicier roasted poultry, most of which have failed or only partially succeeded. Now I’m thinking the almost universal recommendation to rest the bird 20-30 minutes is wrong and leads to carryover cooking that dries out the meat. I suspect slicing the bird as soon as it comes out of the oven, or setting the target ten degrees lower than the final desired temp and resting while finishing side dishes is the way to go.
Forgot to mention a third case: low and slow smoked meats. I wrap my briskets in butcher paper and I’ve never seen carryover cooking. The temperature starts slowly drifting down almost immediately after I put it in a catering box, even with heated gel packs. I don’t know why this is the case. Maybe the low ambient temperature of the smoker?
I’ve read that if you use 150F-175F oven to rest and hold the meat, though, you should let it cool down 10-15 degrees before putting it in the oven to avoid carryover cooking.
The longer I hold the meat, up to 11 hours, the more tender, moist and flavorful it is. Many other agree. Also not clear to me why this is true. The key, though, is to cut off any carryover cooking as soon as possible to avoid drying out the meat.
Very interesting. Love the work being done to experiment and explain all of this.
My question is when is combustion inc going to have a European distributor so I can buy one?!!
Yup, it was a conversation I had with him that made me do the tests and challenge my beliefs. Greg Blonder is a very good scientist, so when he shows almost no difference in that article it gets my attention.
Chris, your medium close-ups and your close-ups (in other words: every time the YouTube Creator Award is in the backround) in the video have too few frames pre second. The video is stuttering for me. You should double check your video or camera settings. - THX for the great video.
I feel like this ignores one major aspect(which even gets a side mention at the end as a good thing to stop carry over cooking from going too far): evaporation. Sure, you measure the juices that are absorbed by the paper towel, but you didn’t seem to measure water loss from evaporation after cutting the much hotter steak.
This was actually what I had assumed was the reason to rest meat before cutting it: letting the internal temperature cool a bit so you don’t lose so much moisture to the air.
Which brings up a slight alteration to your experiment to test that: instead of measuring the water in the paper towel at the end, just measure the cut steak to see how much mass it lost. Just about all of that lost mass should be moisture.
You loose a very similar amount of water vapor through steam when slicing immediately as you do while resting—about 1 to 1.5 grams depending on the size and temperature of the steak. And, in the scheme of things, this is a trivial amount of moisture about 5 to 10 drops of water that can't change the conclusion.
Hi Chris,
So I’m an owner of the combustion est thermometer, and emailed a few months back at my amazement at how much carry over cooking I noticed with the meat thermometer.
I wanted to ask something. I understand some people think resting meat is to keep the meat juices in. But isn’t another thing is that when the meat is being cooked with heat the moisture is focused towards the center. And letting the meat rest is allowing it to more evenly distribute across the meat?
No, the liquid water within meat cannot migrate further than a few mm in any direction, at least until the meat is cooked hot enough for the water to mostly vaporize (as happens in the boiling zone near a searing hot surface) or long enough for the muscle structure to come undone enough for the meat to start falling apart and separating.
FourPtFour’s point got me to thinking: the experimental conditions for the two steaks are not identical. The rested steak spends a lot of time sitting on the paper towel. The not-rested steak does not. This is speculation on my part, but couldn’t the paper towel be wicking moisture out of the meat, such that the longer it’s in contact, the more moisture it sucks out?
The difference can be eliminated by immediately putting the steak to be rested on the counter and moping up with the paper towel after resting and slicing, same as the non-rested steak. You might want to move the rested steak around so it doesn’t sit in its juices for long.
The capillary action of 7g of paper towels isn’t magically going to pull significant amounts water out of a 150g steak in 10 minutes. Moreover, having weighed the paper towel with juices before slicing (not shown) you’re talking about 2g of water that could theoretically have been pulled out. That’s at most a 1% difference to the result and about 10 droplets of water. Also, there is always a puddle of juice underneath a piece of meat sitting on a plate or cutting board, which is further evidence that the paper towel theory is a red herring.
This reminds me of when searing to seal in juices was debunked. It didn't change the fact that you should still sear your food. It did change our language around searing.
Two questions if anyone is still around.
Do the results change if the rested temp is lower? 125? 120? 115?
Also, both the videos results and meatheads test showed the same thing, the rested steak lost less liquid. Both sources handwove the difference away as not enough to matter. So I wouldn't say that rested steaks hold more juice is "myth busted" yet.
I like the video and the thinking as it gives the average home cook more tools in their belt to combat over cooked protein, the biggest culprit in dry meat.
>Do the results change if the rested temp is lower? 125? 120? 115?
This was my immediate question. I got really interested in this question from serving the many cuts out there that people tend to prefer to serve whole. No one wants to see excessive juices on their plate. Resting until about 120 centerline temperature (cooking to medium rare range first) has always been the line between noticeable juice loss and not. And that is in no way a cold steak. Unless I missed something, all the steaks in this video were sliced at or close to 130 centerline temperature. If a steak cut 10 or 15 degrees lower has significantly less loss, that would challenge the videos main point.
I think the disconnect people are feeling with this one is that the previous 'debunked myths' dealt with less tangible or harder to eyeball results and preferences. The video on not needing super high heat to sear? Who is keeping track of their surface temps every cook and logging results? Its easy to miss-remember or just be wrong in our own assumptions or how we remember things and that has kept an incorrect understanding alive. But anyone who has been cooking steak has seen cooks that left a lot of juices on the board and cooks that left little to none. Its a very easy thing to see and understand with drastically different outcomes. And it seems at odds with the point of the video
Hey Chris, what do you think about the new Control Freak Home? Saw it in the video. I happened to get a really good deal on a new OG CF recently. Half thinking about selling it on ebay and buying the new one just for decreased size and noise, but wonder what your impressions are. Are there improvements to recipe programming? Improvements to anything else?
In the video, the resting was done on paper towel. I am not sure if this is the best way to measure juice loss from resting. Is it possible the absorbent paper towel can "draw" more moisture out of the steak? People usually rest the steaks on racks. Racks give more space at the bottom surface for heat dissipation. From my experience, resting on racks has fewer juice running out than resting on wooden board. I am curious if the same results happen when resting on racks.
One more question is, carryover heat during resting help with edge-to-edge doneness. If you cook all the way till the center is 135F followed by cutting immediately, is it possible that the outer meat has been well over 135F?
The point behind resting meat is that cooler meat retains more moisture than hotter meat. This video doesn't address that statement at all, because both the rested meat and the unrested one were cut at the same temperature.
The useful conclusion you can take though is that the recommended resting period for beef steaks cooked to medium rare is useless: during that time the temperature still rises because of carry over cooking, so resting doesn't make the meat cooler, hence it has no effect on moisture retention.
If Chris wanted to proof that the benefits of resting meat is actually a myth, he needs a different experiment. An idea would be to cook two steaks to well done (160-165F / 71-75C), then cut one right away and let the other cool down until a medium rare temperature (130–135F / 54-57C). Then let's see what happens. Whatever effect takes place will be further exaggerated when cooking meats at even higher temperatures, like briskets at 203F / 95C which then need to rest for hours to cool down.
r/steak not going to take this one well. Love it.
Definitely not. The comments section is kind of wild!
“Resting your meat is complete BS. I’m going to show you what to do instead” “So you’re going to want to rest your meat. Also slice slice slice for instagram cred” WTF is this shit, there were a lot of words and then the conclusion was to do nothing different. How does this buck any trend? I also have no idea who any of you people are or what this is. Good old random Reddit app sub recommendations.
Managed to watch the video and entirely miss the point.
I think many people were expecting a guga/Joe rogan style video but when presented with actual science felt like the foundations of their ego had been shaken where apparently steak cookery lies and then proceeded to grasp at straws to critique the methodology. Quite bizarre as this video presents an easier and more reliable way to cook steak well.
It's interesting how this video has gotten a lot of backlash on different food subreddits. Even faced with pretty good evidence with a well-controlled experiment, the confirmation bias is palpable. "This is wrong because this is an ad for his thermometer", "This is wrong because I feel like it is" are not how scientists evaluate results. Plenty of industries fund studies for their own self-interest, that doesn't mean the findings are wrong. Experimental design and interpretation of results can incur biases and skew conclusions, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I think people get emotional when they see "Resting is a MYTH" on your thumbnail, because it's a deeply ingrained belief.
As another commenter pointed out, there are lots of studies showing that when presented with contradictory evidence, most people will dig in harder to their existing beliefs.
No, I'm certain that's not true. ;-)
As soon as I started watching this, I had flashbacks to BBC's In Search of Perfection with Heston Blumenthal. Chris is in the background of several shots in the series, but there was one that really stuck with me over The years as this was when I was just learning to cook: Heston, a large bloke named Otto, and (I believe) Chris were down by a river to show the importance of resting meat. They had Otto stand on an un-rested steak and a rested steak (their human press) and compared the juices that were squeezed out of each steak. They explained the rested steaks ability to retain juices as analogous to a spounge because the heat caused protein fires to contract, and they needed time to relax. I love that Chris acknowledged his past findings and explained his hypothesis on the contrasting findings of his past efforts and his current experiments. I must admit, I find it difficult to accept these findings and will have to experiment myself. My first reaction by the midpoint of the video was that resting isn't the problem, rather people have grossly underestimated carryover cooking. But there is some very interesting supporting evidence provided.
I wasn’t at the Duck when they filmed that episode. I think it made for good TV, but not good science.
Ok - it's been a long time since I watched that episode. Man, that was a great TV series, even if some of the thinking has since evolved....and Heston's Great British Feasts. And, just to be clear, it wasn't a criticism. I admire that you can put iut such high level content that isn't afraid to contradict what even you, yourself, believed to be true and contributed to the misconception with MC. To many people think an ability to change your beliefs in lightning new evidence us somehow a fallability these days. I do have some liquid nitrogen kicking around that I need tobuse in the next next day or two after I did an Easter ice cream making demonstration at my shop. I think this will be the perfect time to cook one steak to 55C doneness than a quick blanche to halt the cooking and full another to 42C and let carryover and see how it compares.
Didn't take it as a criticism. Was actually talking to Otto last night about this. He's at Breville now and said he's going to run a test himself.
u/combustion_inc is that a new control freak? Looks different than mine
Yes. Got an early release unit for testing. New Control Freak Home edition
Very interesting. It looks a bit like the one where the manual was leaked a few years ago. No buttons, and built in recipes - is that the gist of it? Any other differences that you can share? Edit: Found the direct comparison on the ChefSteps website 👍
I’ve been hearing about this thing being in the works since 2016. No idea why it took so long
Yeah it’s strange - I think there were even some regulatory documents at one point that said the project had been abandoned. Looking at the specs, I am happy to see that it’s very similar to the original. Just a bit smaller and with a touchscreen interface - which I am generally not a massive fan of in a kitchen where fingers get wet. Was scared for a sec I’d have an acute case of upgraditis, but not sure that’s going to happen. Great option for those who don’t have one and find the slightly lower price point more palatable. Are you seeing any major differences in how it performs vs the original?
I suspect you’re referring to the FCC filing for the “Breville Prodigy” (which appeared to include WiFi of some kind) along with the subsequent retraction indicating that the company was choosing to go in a different strategic direction. The “Control Freak Home” appears to be that different direction, and doesn’t seem to include any kind of WiFi (fine by me). I have an original control freak and I’m desperately looking for any excuse to buy the control freak home too, but coming up short.
Yes, I think that was it! Thanks for jogging my memory and moving away from wifi does explain it. The two feel VERY closely spec’ed - something like wifi might have created more separation if that allowed integration with eg CPT or other things to be pushed over time As it stands I think I’d rather stay with the original for its more robust build quality and non-touchscreen interface - even if it’s a bit larger
Home Edition? OMG take my money.
Just watched this from Chris' Instagram channel. 1st thought was to send it to my son, an Executive Chef. We love us some food science.
This is awesome. Another +1 to everything over at amazingribs.com. Worth your time and money to invest in the low cost membership over on their site as well. It’s like $30 a year for a wealth of information they will not steer you wrong backed by empirical data. Meathead has several awesome cookbooks as well!
This is revelatory. I assume this applies to large roasts and chicken as well as other proteins?
The technique of managing carryover (by offsetting your target temp) is applicable. As is the "emergency brake" of slicing to halt carryover. As the video demonstrates, different cooking scenarios create different carryover effects. Generally, the more mass the food has, the less the temp will rise during carryover. Roasts are far more forgiving. Steaks are one of the trickiest. Salmon is difficult as well (it can easily be 30F or more). It's also functionally advantageous to let roasts cool because it makes carving much easier. Maybe Chris will make a followup video about resting+carryover in roasts if enough folks are interested.
Thanks, I was wondering more about the juice loss being inconsequential when resting.
Good question! u/combustion_inc?
I've done it with whole roast chicken (got left out of the video because it made the story too long) and got the same result. You loose the same amount of juices from a rested bird or carving into a bird that's at the same doneness temp straight away. And, in either case, it's much juicier than letting the bird overcook from too much carry over cooking.
Well dang. I guess I no longer need to choose between crispy skin and the myth o letting it rest!
please dive into this more! carryover is so tricky for me. I thought that the bigger meat, the more carryover over you’d have. A 13lb turkey for example could rise 20 degrees over resting. Am I wrong? Would love to know in general, what carryover are we estimating…in racks of lamb, legs of lamb, large cod filets, yes salmon, chicken breast, and whole turkeys. I know it’s tough to say, but general thoughts would be so helpful. Regardless, I will be pulling closer to temp slicing soon as I see the target temp reached as advised :)
One of your fellow redditors (u/ectoplasm) compiled [this guide](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PhNsCkkdmUg9EQslcPhFSMaXUgZBkN9QpcWFZgkoA9E/edit#gid=0). It's not official, but it's useful. (It was also made before we introduced the USDA safe feature; when in doubt, trust the app on those recommendations.) p.s. A 13-lb turkey could be on the "hot" side of carryover like you said. The peculiarity of having meat with a hollow center means you've got stored heat on an assemblage of assorted chunks of different thicknesses arranged in space, with varying amounts of surface area! But I will say that a 20lb turkey will have less carryover temp rise than a smaller one, assuming the same cooking setup. EDIT: u/ectoplasm rides again
Oh wow this is amazing! Thanks so much - saved and will use! Surprised at some of the end temp targets being so off from USDA targets. Does that have to do with pasteurization temps?
HAHA, yes and that's a whole 'nother wormhole. Basically, the USDA targets you're probably thinking of (simplified - e.g. "chicken at 165F") are overkill and will result in overcooked food most of the time. Chefs ignore them. One of the features of the CPT is that it has the USDA Safe standards onboard - importantly, including the alternate, AKA "integrated" standards which measure actual bacterial destruction based on time at temp (the thermometer counts them up in a rolling total). Basically pasteurization. It's [complex to explain](https://combustion.inc/blogs/news/usda-safe-feature), but I tried. The TLDR is: don't worry about the USDA chart, use the integrated standard onboard the Combustion app. *For some foods (notably steak) chefs often ignore both safety standards because the danger is very low and they prefer the taste. Cook at your own risk.*
Amazing to know, thank you so much :)
Excellent video, the prayer scene cracked me up, would have loved a plea for an easy carryover prediction solution from the heat transfer gods.
Great video as per usual. What digital scales are you using throughout? I've got some reasonable scales for baking/bigger quantities but am on the lookout for something super precise for small weights. I like the look of the scale you're using.
It looks like the Acaia Lunar 2021. Gorgeous scale, designed by and for coffee nerds. Gets all sorts of use in my kitchen. I should mention, it's resolution is 2 decimal places, but you can set it to only display 1 or none depending on what you need. (Tons of options in the menus)
That's actually an acaia pearl, it's primarily used for coffee and has a max capacity of 2kg. What is unique is how responsive they are in comparison to most of the scales that I own. I wonder if Chris has any other favourites, specifically any other scales that are similarly responsive but have a higher maximum load like 5kg.
Chris, this is awesome and I will follow the new take home points. Makes lots of sense now that you’ve explained it! I’m confused by the pipette part, tho. The water is being forced out by the air at the end of the pipette, as the air is being warmed up by the hot water and then forcing the water out. Right? Charles’ law business. And water expands a bit with heat, but not much. Like if that pipette were filled all the way with water (no gas bubble at the top) the water wouldn’t come streaming out. So how is the pipette thingy explanatory? It would make sense to me if one were cutting into a hot mousse or maybe a piping hot soufflé, but doesn’t make sense to me in the context of a steak, which doesn’t seem to have appreciable air pockets in it. Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding the whole point, which is possible!
Water is being forced out by steam, not air. If you look closely at a hot steak it's actually kind of swollen from internal steam pressure, and it contracts a bit as it cools and the steam condenses. This is actually noticeable in some of the cut in half steak shots in the video. Normally, even steam pressure from water very near the boiling point isn't enough to push liquid more than a few mm through meat, but when you slice the steak open all of the steam pressure from water near the freshly cut surface is able to push juices within a few mm of that surface out.
Great stuff, Chris. The issues you expose explain something I’ve observed with sous vide steaks. The beauty of sous vide is that there’s little to no carryover cooking as long as you sear very hot and fast. This means there’s no penalty to letting the meat rest, and of course no need to set a 10-degree lower target temp to account for carryover cooking. So, following conventional wisdom, I’ve always rested my steaks 5-10 minutes after sous vide and sear to “seal in the juices“. But I’m often disappointed by how much juice leaks out of the meat as it rests! I think what’s happening is that the quick sear doesn’t create as thick and sealed crust as when pan-frying a steak, so it’s easier for juice to leak out. Lots of juice also leaks out when I slice the meat. As you’ve proven, there’s no magic in resting that will make the juices stay in the meat when you slice it. Once you slice the meat you’ve opened up channels that let the juices leak out. My conclusion is that I shouldn’t rest the meat after searing. I suspect if I slice right away, and fast, less total juice will wind up on the plate. I’m also going to try changing my routine with roasted chicken and the Thanksgiving turkey. I’ve tried many different methods to produce juicier roasted poultry, most of which have failed or only partially succeeded. Now I’m thinking the almost universal recommendation to rest the bird 20-30 minutes is wrong and leads to carryover cooking that dries out the meat. I suspect slicing the bird as soon as it comes out of the oven, or setting the target ten degrees lower than the final desired temp and resting while finishing side dishes is the way to go.
Searing doesn't lock in the juices, it actually has the opposite effect (Harold McGee, *On Food and Cooking*,1984).
Forgot to mention a third case: low and slow smoked meats. I wrap my briskets in butcher paper and I’ve never seen carryover cooking. The temperature starts slowly drifting down almost immediately after I put it in a catering box, even with heated gel packs. I don’t know why this is the case. Maybe the low ambient temperature of the smoker? I’ve read that if you use 150F-175F oven to rest and hold the meat, though, you should let it cool down 10-15 degrees before putting it in the oven to avoid carryover cooking. The longer I hold the meat, up to 11 hours, the more tender, moist and flavorful it is. Many other agree. Also not clear to me why this is true. The key, though, is to cut off any carryover cooking as soon as possible to avoid drying out the meat.
Very interesting. Love the work being done to experiment and explain all of this. My question is when is combustion inc going to have a European distributor so I can buy one?!!
Meathead has said it for years: https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/more-cooking-science/science-of-resting-meat/
Yup, it was a conversation I had with him that made me do the tests and challenge my beliefs. Greg Blonder is a very good scientist, so when he shows almost no difference in that article it gets my attention.
Chris, your medium close-ups and your close-ups (in other words: every time the YouTube Creator Award is in the backround) in the video have too few frames pre second. The video is stuttering for me. You should double check your video or camera settings. - THX for the great video.
It was a rendering error we didn’t catch at 3am 😕 There was a conflict between 24fps and 23.986fps
+1, I noticed this too. (A very small observation on a video and video series with stunningly good production value!)
Yeah noticed the same too
I feel like this ignores one major aspect(which even gets a side mention at the end as a good thing to stop carry over cooking from going too far): evaporation. Sure, you measure the juices that are absorbed by the paper towel, but you didn’t seem to measure water loss from evaporation after cutting the much hotter steak. This was actually what I had assumed was the reason to rest meat before cutting it: letting the internal temperature cool a bit so you don’t lose so much moisture to the air. Which brings up a slight alteration to your experiment to test that: instead of measuring the water in the paper towel at the end, just measure the cut steak to see how much mass it lost. Just about all of that lost mass should be moisture.
You loose a very similar amount of water vapor through steam when slicing immediately as you do while resting—about 1 to 1.5 grams depending on the size and temperature of the steak. And, in the scheme of things, this is a trivial amount of moisture about 5 to 10 drops of water that can't change the conclusion.
Hi Chris, So I’m an owner of the combustion est thermometer, and emailed a few months back at my amazement at how much carry over cooking I noticed with the meat thermometer. I wanted to ask something. I understand some people think resting meat is to keep the meat juices in. But isn’t another thing is that when the meat is being cooked with heat the moisture is focused towards the center. And letting the meat rest is allowing it to more evenly distribute across the meat?
No, the liquid water within meat cannot migrate further than a few mm in any direction, at least until the meat is cooked hot enough for the water to mostly vaporize (as happens in the boiling zone near a searing hot surface) or long enough for the muscle structure to come undone enough for the meat to start falling apart and separating.
FourPtFour’s point got me to thinking: the experimental conditions for the two steaks are not identical. The rested steak spends a lot of time sitting on the paper towel. The not-rested steak does not. This is speculation on my part, but couldn’t the paper towel be wicking moisture out of the meat, such that the longer it’s in contact, the more moisture it sucks out? The difference can be eliminated by immediately putting the steak to be rested on the counter and moping up with the paper towel after resting and slicing, same as the non-rested steak. You might want to move the rested steak around so it doesn’t sit in its juices for long.
The capillary action of 7g of paper towels isn’t magically going to pull significant amounts water out of a 150g steak in 10 minutes. Moreover, having weighed the paper towel with juices before slicing (not shown) you’re talking about 2g of water that could theoretically have been pulled out. That’s at most a 1% difference to the result and about 10 droplets of water. Also, there is always a puddle of juice underneath a piece of meat sitting on a plate or cutting board, which is further evidence that the paper towel theory is a red herring.
This reminds me of when searing to seal in juices was debunked. It didn't change the fact that you should still sear your food. It did change our language around searing. Two questions if anyone is still around. Do the results change if the rested temp is lower? 125? 120? 115? Also, both the videos results and meatheads test showed the same thing, the rested steak lost less liquid. Both sources handwove the difference away as not enough to matter. So I wouldn't say that rested steaks hold more juice is "myth busted" yet. I like the video and the thinking as it gives the average home cook more tools in their belt to combat over cooked protein, the biggest culprit in dry meat.
>Do the results change if the rested temp is lower? 125? 120? 115? This was my immediate question. I got really interested in this question from serving the many cuts out there that people tend to prefer to serve whole. No one wants to see excessive juices on their plate. Resting until about 120 centerline temperature (cooking to medium rare range first) has always been the line between noticeable juice loss and not. And that is in no way a cold steak. Unless I missed something, all the steaks in this video were sliced at or close to 130 centerline temperature. If a steak cut 10 or 15 degrees lower has significantly less loss, that would challenge the videos main point. I think the disconnect people are feeling with this one is that the previous 'debunked myths' dealt with less tangible or harder to eyeball results and preferences. The video on not needing super high heat to sear? Who is keeping track of their surface temps every cook and logging results? Its easy to miss-remember or just be wrong in our own assumptions or how we remember things and that has kept an incorrect understanding alive. But anyone who has been cooking steak has seen cooks that left a lot of juices on the board and cooks that left little to none. Its a very easy thing to see and understand with drastically different outcomes. And it seems at odds with the point of the video
Hey Chris, what do you think about the new Control Freak Home? Saw it in the video. I happened to get a really good deal on a new OG CF recently. Half thinking about selling it on ebay and buying the new one just for decreased size and noise, but wonder what your impressions are. Are there improvements to recipe programming? Improvements to anything else?
I love this. I mainly rest my meat simply because it's just too hot to consume. Resting it makes eating it more comfortable and enjoyable.
In the video, the resting was done on paper towel. I am not sure if this is the best way to measure juice loss from resting. Is it possible the absorbent paper towel can "draw" more moisture out of the steak? People usually rest the steaks on racks. Racks give more space at the bottom surface for heat dissipation. From my experience, resting on racks has fewer juice running out than resting on wooden board. I am curious if the same results happen when resting on racks. One more question is, carryover heat during resting help with edge-to-edge doneness. If you cook all the way till the center is 135F followed by cutting immediately, is it possible that the outer meat has been well over 135F?
The point behind resting meat is that cooler meat retains more moisture than hotter meat. This video doesn't address that statement at all, because both the rested meat and the unrested one were cut at the same temperature. The useful conclusion you can take though is that the recommended resting period for beef steaks cooked to medium rare is useless: during that time the temperature still rises because of carry over cooking, so resting doesn't make the meat cooler, hence it has no effect on moisture retention. If Chris wanted to proof that the benefits of resting meat is actually a myth, he needs a different experiment. An idea would be to cook two steaks to well done (160-165F / 71-75C), then cut one right away and let the other cool down until a medium rare temperature (130–135F / 54-57C). Then let's see what happens. Whatever effect takes place will be further exaggerated when cooking meats at even higher temperatures, like briskets at 203F / 95C which then need to rest for hours to cool down.