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Safe Minimum Cooking Temperatures for Meats

The chart below and your food thermometer will help you to ensure that you cook meat, poultry and seafood to a safe minimum internal temperature. Many cooking shows like to popularize the idea that you can tell whether a meat is safely cooked by looking at it. But many cooked, uncured red meats, like pork, can be pink, even when the meat has reached a safe internal temperature. So, you can undercook or overcook a meat by not using a meat thermometer.

And the new wireless electronic meat thermometers make it easy, by even having an alarm set for various types of meats and degrees of wellness. You can receive an alert remotely when the meat on your grill outside reaches the set temperature!

Safe Minimum Cooking Temperatures

Note that the FDA

Category Food Temperature (°F)  Rest Time 
Ground Meat & Meat Mixtures Beef, Pork, Veal, Lamb 160 None
Turkey, Chicken 165 None
Fresh Beef, Veal, Lamb Steaks, roasts, chops 145 3 minutes
Poultry Chicken & Turkey, whole 165 None
Poultry breasts, roasts 165 None
Poultry thighs, legs, wings 165 None
Duck & Goose 165 None
Stuffing (cooked alone or in bird) 165 None
Pork and Ham Fresh pork 145 3 minutes
Fresh ham (raw) 145 3 minutes
Precooked ham (to reheat) 140 None
Eggs & Egg Dishes Eggs Cook until yolk and white are firm None
Egg dishes 160 None
Leftovers & Casseroles Leftovers 165 None
Casseroles 165 None
Seafood Fin Fish 145 or cook until flesh is opaque and separates easily with a fork. None
Shrimp, lobster, and crabs Cook until flesh is pearly and opaque. None
Clams, oysters, and mussels Cook until shells open during cooking. None
Scallops Cook until flesh is milky white or opaque and firm. None

 

About Rest Time - it's important

After you remove meat from a grill, oven, or other heat source, allow it to rest for the specified amount of time. During the rest time, its temperature remains constant or continues to rise, which continues to destroy harmful germs.; so if a rest time is specified in the table above (notably, pork),do follow it!

References

  1. Foodsafety.gov