For most home‑cooked steaks, letting them rest about 5–7 minutes before slicing is ideal.

Quick Scoop: How long to rest steak?

  • Thin steaks (flank, skirt, thin sirloin): 3–5 minutes.
  • Standard steaks around 1–1.5 inches (ribeye, strip, sirloin): 5–7 minutes.
  • Very thick steaks (over 1.5 inches, tomahawk, thick ribeye): 7–10 minutes, or roughly as long as you cooked them.
  • Large roasts (prime rib, big rib roast): 20–45 minutes in a warm spot before slicing.

A few popular “rules of thumb” cooks use:

  • 5 minutes per inch of thickness.
  • 10 minutes per pound.
  • 1 minute for every 100 g.
  • Or rest for about half the cooking time for thin steaks, and about the full cooking time for thick ones.

The key idea: resting lets the hot juices redistribute so they stay in the meat instead of flooding your cutting board when you slice. If you rest too long, the steak starts to cool and can lose that just‑cooked feel, which is why most tests put the sweet spot around 5–7 minutes for a typical pan‑seared or grilled steak.

Simple resting routine

  1. Take the steak off the heat a few degrees before your target internal temp (carryover cooking will finish it).
  2. Place it on a warm plate or cutting board.
  3. Loosely tent with foil or a bowl (don’t seal tight, or it steams and softens the crust).
  1. Wait your 3–10 minutes depending on thickness, then slice against the grain and serve.

If you’re ever unsure: rest it at least 5 minutes, and you’ll be in the safe, juicy zone for almost any steak.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.