Straight after it comes out of the pan it will usually be too hot to eat. Regardless of resting or not, you can't fully taste things which are too hot, they need to come down to a comfortable temperature before you eat them.
Some things you can do to stop the meat being too cold when you serve it:
- You can rest the meat wrapped in foil, this will stop it from getting too cool too quickly if you are not ready to serve once its had the time to rest.
- you can rest it and then warm it again before you eat it, either under a hot grill for a little, or in an oven.
- serve it with a hot sauce which will warm the meat
- serve it on a warmed plate which will stop it cooling more too quickly on the table
Although I think you are worrying too much about nothing IMHO. Even once rested the meat will still be at a good temperature, especially as you have not cut it yet and most of the heat will be retained in the middle of the meat.
The Maillard reaction begins around 150° C. You do not need that exact temperature. Usually, you don't even want that exact temperature; even baking temperatures usually hover around 175-200° C (350-400° F), and those temperatures are held for 20 minutes or more. Pan-frying is almost always a fast cooking process lasting no longer than 10 minutes.
Thus, almost every cooking oil has a smoke point at or around the ideal temperature. Butter is a bit too low around 121-149° C (250-300° F), but the vast majority of liquid oils - peanut, sunflower, corn, canola, sesame, even EVOO - all have smoke points from 150-260° C (300-500° F).
See Wikipedia's list of smoke points for a fairly complete list. Avoid butter and unrefined flaxseed/safflower/sunflower oil (commercially-bottled oil is almost always refined, except for EVOO).
Of course, this doesn't say anything about cooking time or sticking. When we talk about frying or sautéing in oil (i.e. to get the Maillard reaction going), we usually want a quick sear, and for that you really want to get the pan screaming hot so that you can get a good sear on the outside without doing much to the inside. Clarified butter, coconut oil, or any other of the highly-refined oils are the best for that purpose.
If you're really trying to prolong the cooking time, i.e. pan-frying a chicken breast all the way through, then I guess you'd stick with a lower smoke point oil, such as EVOO or unrefined peanut or sesame.
Best Answer
The meat will pass through various temperature ranges when heated. The moisture in the surface layers of the meat will gradually evaporate, and once they are dried out, the temperature will start to rise more rapidly.
I think the balance of caramelization vs. Maillard also has to do with specific proteins and sugars available, but you're right -- around and above 400F/205C, caramelization proceeds fast enough that there's generally little opportunity for Maillard (the sugars break down too fast).
In any case, the issue isn't how hot your heat source is as much as how long the surface stays within particular temperature ranges. If your meat surface actually gets significantly above 400F/205C for a significant period of time, it will start to burn. But even after a couple minutes in a pan, the meat surface may not be equal to the pan temperature. Why? Because generally moisture is constantly escaping from the layers immediately below the surface, and that moisture will keep the interior below the boiling point (212F/100C). That lower temperature steam needs to be heated as it approaches the surface, which will keep the surface temperature from rising too fast. In a very hot pan or under a very hot heat source, a significant dry crust will eventually form and ultimately start to burn if the heat goes on long enough.
To get to your exact question -- if you use a 300F/150C pan, the following things will happen:
Now, if you start out with a pan that's at 500F/260C (or even higher), the pan surface will transfer its heat (probably dropping down to 200-300F/95-150C in the process), and accomplish steps 1-5 in a matter of seconds instead of a matter of minutes. At that point, the layers of the pan underneath the surface will still have a lot of heat (since they started at 500F/260C instead of 300F/150C) and will transfer heat back to the pan surface. So after the first few seconds, the pan surface rapidly begins to rise again getting to 300F/150C fairly quickly, which will produce maximum Maillard reactions. Wait a little while, and you'll start getting significant caramelization. Wait further, and the meat will burn.
What's the ideal pan temperature to begin to get maximum Maillard in a brief time? It really depends on the material of the pan and its size and thickness, as well as the amount of meat you plan to drop into the pan (which will influence how much heat is needed to get through steps 1-5 quickly). When starting out with a superhot pan (say, 700F/370C or so), you'll get a lot more caramelization, less Maillard, and you'll have to be careful not to burn the meat if you wait too long to turn. With a pan that's only 400F/205C to start, you should get more Maillard, but it will take longer to brown, which may not be ideal if you want to keep the interior of the steak cooler (medium rare or whatever). With a heavy pan that transfers heat slowly (e.g., cast iron), I'd generally go with something around 550F/290C personally, which seems to be a reasonable balance. If the meat is going to crowd the pan, I'd go higher to burn off all that excess moisture as quickly as possible.
[Edit: As rumtscho noted in comments, the type of range -- gas, electric, or induction -- could also affect heat transfer and recovery time for a pan to come back to high temperature. Also, there are many specific properties of materials that will influence the heat transfer rate and recovery time, including the rate heat moves through the metal (thermal conductivity), the amount of heat stored in the pan (heat capacity), the rate heat conducts out of the pan surface (diffusivity), and the rate that radiative heat comes off the pan, which is mostly dependent on color (emissivity). Note that the heat capacity and thermal conductivity are often combined in one number to give a sense of "thermal inertia" or "effusivity."]
With a blowtorch, the temperature is obviously quite high, and the heat will be continuously replenished (unlike a pan, which has a temperature "recovery time"). You can go through steps 1-5 almost instantaneously. Whether you get more Maillard or more caramelization will depend on how hot the flame is and how close you hold it to the meat surface. You might experiment with backing the torch away just a bit and use it for a slightly longer time. It might change the effect and flavor profile slightly, but I've never played around with this much myself.