Resting Your Food to Avoid Kitchen Failure
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Much of cooking is chopping, stirring, mixing, sautéing, rolling, slicing and dicing.
But the oft overlooked but important part of cooking is resting, or allowing the food to marinate, come to room temperature, or very importantly rest.
Take the Chill off the Meat Prior to Cooking
A steak on the grill may only take ten actual cooking minutes. But for a successful steak, you need up to an hour before even beginning to cook in order to bring that meat to room temperature and a few minutes after grilling to allow to “rest” before cutting.
Bringing that meat to room temperature prior to cooking will allow you to sear the meat and still cook the inside. A very cold center will end up raw and may force you to overcook the meat. And then it has to rest. This also applies to whole roasting chickens.
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Resting Meat After Cooking
As a piece of meat is seared, the moisture runs to the center, and stays there for a few minutes. If you rest the meat, the moisture has had a chance to balance out. That center can’t hold all the juice, so if cut ahead of rest time, the juices run out. Simple culinary science. This is also true for roast chicken. Allowing the chicken rest keeps the moisture inside, and steam won’t escape, (plus, it’s easier).
Eggs for Baking
Bring ingredients to room temperature. Eggs will aerate and cake will bake better.
Resting Cakes
Cakes. Allow to rest at least 3-5 minutes before removing from the cake pan. A trick to keep the moisture in is to then turn the cake pan over on the cake to let that moisture in. Allow bundt cakes a full 15 minutes before removing.
Cool the Soup
Allow soup to completely cool before refrigerating because if it goes in hot, it will reduce the overall refrigerator temperature. Sausage Lentil Kale is our current favorite soup.
Resting Bread
Sourdough bread needs to rest, to cool down before slicing. I know that’s a tough one, but trust me. If you want to slice the bread evenly. THIS SLICER is amazing. I use this on every sourdough loaf I make.
Red Wine
Red wine needs to be opened and allowed to breathe in a resting period, unless you have this cool aerator.
Caramel
When adding cream to caramel, the heavy cream must be room temperature or it will curdle.
Resting Dough
BREAD DOUGH: There are various types of resting phases when making bread. Heed them. Some sourdough recipes require a 12 to 24 hour process, so always read through your recipe.
PIE DOUGH: Rest in fridge for at least 30 minutes. This allows the gluten to relax and helps to avoid a tough dough. When ready to bake, remove from fridge and rest for 15 minutes.
PASTA: When making homemade pasta, allow pasta dough to rest before you roll it out at least 30 minutes. Once pasta has been cut into fettuccine shape, allow to rest elongated and then form into pasta nests and allow to rest for a 5-10 minutes so once placed into nests, pasta will not stick.
PIE DOUGH: Allow pie crusts and tart crusts to rest in refrigerator for 30 minutes at least. The dough will be easier to handle and pie crust will be more tender
Lasagna must rest for twenty minutes after it comes out of the oven, if you want to cut beautiful squares and not have a big mess. Spinach Lasagna Recipe Here
Cookie dough: I rest for a few hours up to overnight because the butter gets cold and the cookies don’t get that flat look.
Resting food requires patience and makes it necessary to consider non-active time in a recipe.
When NOT to Rest
It’s just as important to know when food has to get into the oven right away. Once you have your cake batter ready or your biscuits, get them in oven quickly. Why?
In cake recipes, baking soda will be mixed with an acidic ingredient, which sets off a reaction where carbon dioxide bubbles form. The heat of the oven will cause the gas to expand and rise. If you wait too long, the gas bubbles will disappear and you will end with a flat cake.
Resistant Starch and Carbs
There is one more area where the idea of giving food time will pay off, and that’s when it comes to certain carbs. If you refrigerate rice, pasta or potatoes before reheating and eating, the process creates something called resistant starch. If you freeze sourdough bread, and then reheat, it will have the same effect. This results in the carbs you love not spiking your blood sugar. This is not so much resting as delaying, but there is a payoff.
Resting Food and Having Patience Brings Success
In summary, many recipes but benefit from resting before eating, refrigerating in the process, or waiting to bring ingredients to room temperature. These are important steps in cooking and baking and can make the difference a fail or a success. Make sure you read the recipe through to see how much time it requires.
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