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Foil and Rest

SteveWPBFL
SteveWPBFL Posts: 1,327
edited January 2012 in EggHead Forum
Need some understanding of topic. Letting the meat rest after cook to allow juices is understood. How or why resting works, along with foil, in a warm cooler, escapes me. Thanks ahead of time!

Comments

  • SteveWPBFL
    SteveWPBFL Posts: 1,327
    Should be allow juices to return.
  • stike
    stike Posts: 15,597
    Putting PP in a cooler is for holding it for a period of time. It's not for retaining juice.

    Resting meat allows it to cool, and that allows it to retain juices.

    Keeping it in a cooler will not allow it to cool. It's merely for holding. People have confused that with allowing meat to rest
    ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta -Dante
  • Hillbilly-Hightech
    Hillbilly-Hightech Posts: 966
    edited January 2012
    the foil helps to keep the heat that is emanating from the meat contained right around the area that it is covering (this is the same principle applied that allows you to get warm when you put a blanket over you). Placing it in a cooler allows any heat emanating from the meat (covered in foil) to ONLY escape into the cooler until the air temp in the cooler ~= air temp coming off meat (if I remember my thermodynamics classes, I believe it's the 2nd law which states that heat will flow from a hot body to a cold body until both bodies are @ the same temp). Thus, if you have the meat enclosed in a small insulated area (like a cooler), it won't cool down nearly as quickly or as much as leaving the meat in a large, uninsulated area (like your kitchen, for example).

    HTH,
    Rob
    Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup... Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. - Bruce Lee
  • stike
    stike Posts: 15,597
    edited January 2012
    If the meat goes into a cooler, the foil only really serves to keep it from making a mess of the cooler. Foil is an excellent insulator for radiant heat as you mentioned. But only if it is not touching the heat source. Radiant and conductive heat are separate things. if it is touching the heat source, it is a conductor, and actually expedites cooling probably as much as it keeps radiant heat in

    In the end, we're splitting hairs. You would not notice a difference among pork butts kept two or three hours: one in a cooler in plastic wrap, one in foil, or one unwrapped.

    Only difference is i would have eaten mine three hours ago
    ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta -Dante