From Chef Anthony
Raised racks are helpful in the kitchen for a multitude of reasons. From resting your meats to baking, it’s easy to find a use for a wire rack every day, no matter what you’re cooking.
For any food preparation here at Stevenson Ridge, we let our meats rest prior and even after cooking on a raised or wire rack. This allows the meat to “rest” and lets the drippings drain; in a traditional tray, the meat just sits or soaks in the drippings. This allows us to make sauces or gravy with the remains—the “drippings.” Another benefit to using a raised rack is easier clean up. When you cook a marinated chicken breast on a traditional tray, the marinade can burn and stick to the tray. A raised rack prevents this by keeping the marinade on the chicken and not directly on the tray.
When it comes to baking, it is best not to use a raised rack during the actual baking but after. When we bake cookies, we bake on a traditional sheet tray then let the cookies cool on a wire rack. When you leave cookies on a traditional tray to cool, this sometimes can cause the cookies to still bake even after being out of the oven, and then you end up with undesirable, over-baked or burnt cookies. A wire rack allows air to circulate and the cookie bottoms to cool the right way.