When you take your meat from the oven – or off a dry heat, like a grill or a griddle – it continues to cook.
It's called carryover cooking.
And it happens because the core temperature of the meat will continue to rise for up to 20 minutes if it’s a large joint and less for smaller cuts like a steak.
Which means your beef can turn from a perfect pink, when it leaves the oven, to a dull grey by the time it's served.
It's simple physics.
Heat seeks a state of equilibrium. So it naturally flows from the hotter outside to cooler inside.
Thin cuts like Minute steaks have far less carryover cooking than thick steaks or big joints.
And the higher the temperature of the oven, or pan, the more pronounced the temperature differential between the hot outside and cool inside. So the more carryover cooking you'll get.
Conversely, the closer you set your oven to the “doneness” you want to achieve, the less carry over cooking you'll get. And if you set the oven to exactly the core temperature you want to achieve (eg 55°C for Medium-rare) you won't get any carry over cooking at all.
So, when do you take your food out of the oven?
There's no definitive guide to carryover cooking, because there are so many different factors at play. Heat of the oven – or pan? Size of the joint?
But there's a rough guide. For a thick steak cooked with a grill, pan or griddle work on the basis of a 2-3°C temperature gain at the core. For a joint, cooked in a very hot oven, factor in a 5°C gain.
How to cook Beef – an introduction
How to cook neither tender nor tough cuts of Beef
How to cook naturally tender cuts of Beef
How to cook naturally tough cuts of Beef
How to roast Beef joints and steaks in an oven