Za Restaurant- Pennington

Why we "rest" steaks at Za Restaurant

This information is courtesy of SeriousEats.com. Several big, nation-wide, corporate steak houses are promoting sizzling steaks - sounds good but is it? This has lead to customers of Za Restaurant wondering why our steaks are not served sizzling hot. Well, we have a good reason: TASTE and SUCCULENCE (that moist tenderness so prized in our mouths). Aside from over/under-cooking/seasoning, not resting meat properly is a major, major cooking blunder chain steak houses are now selling to you. They've taken "sell the sizzle" literally! The result: you get a dry and less flavorful steak.

Here's why: This is a picture of a steak that was cooked in a skillet to medium rare (an internal temperature of 125°F or 51.7°C). The steak was then immediately placed on a cutting board and sliced in half, whereupon a deluge of juices started flooding out and onto the board. The result? Steak that is less than optimally juicy and flavorful. This tragedy can be easily avoided by allowing your steak to rest before slicing. Here's what's going on: After No Resting: The meat around the exterior of the steak (the parts that were closest to the pan) are well over 200°F (93.3°C). At this temperature range, they are pinched tightly shut, preventing them from holding on to any moisture. The center of the steak is at 125°F. While it can hold on to some of its juices at this temperature, cutting the meat fibers open is like slitting the side of a soda bottle: some juice might stay in there (mostly through surface tension), but liquid is going to spill. After 5 Minutes of Resting: The outermost layers of meat are down to around 145°F (62.8°C) and the center of the steak is still at 125°F. At this stage, the muscle fibers have relaxed a bit, stretching open a little wider. This stretching motion creates a pressure differential between the center of the muscle fiber and the ends, pulling some of the liquid out from the middle towards the edges. As a result, there is less liquid in the center of the steak. Cut it open now, and some of the liquid will still spill out, but far less than before. After 10 Minutes of Resting: The edges of the steak have cooled all the way down to around 125°F, allowing them to suck up even more liquid from the center of the steak. What's more, the center of the steak has by this time cooled down to around 120°F, causing it to widen slightly. Cut the meat open at this stage, and the liquid will be so evenly and thinly distributed throughout the steak that surface tension is enough to keep it from spilling out on the plate. The difference is dramatic. Just take a look at these two steaks: In the steak on the left, all those delicious succulent juices are all over the plate. In the steak on the right, everything stays inside, right where it belongs. But wait a minute—how do we know that those juices really are staying inside the rested steaks? Is it not possible that in the ten minutes that I've allowed it to rest that the liquid hasn't simply evaporated, leaving me with a steak that is equally un-moist? To prove this is not the case, all you need to do is weigh the steaks before and after cooking. Aside from a minimal amount of weight loss due to rendered fat, the vast majority of weight loss comes from juices that are forced out of the meat.