Safe Internal Temperatures

🌡️ What a "safe minimum internal temperature" actually is

It is a pathogen-destruction threshold, not an opinion about how you like your food. The numbers on this page come from the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart, last updated 14 April 2025, and the same values are published by HHS on FoodSafety.gov. FSIS is blunt about how you are meant to establish them: appearance and color are not reliable indicators of safety or doneness, studies have shown that a food thermometer is the only way to tell whether harmful bacteria have been destroyed, and only about 15% of people consistently use one.

Everything below is a reference. It is not a specification for your dinner, because it knows nothing about the piece of meat in your oven — its thickness, its starting temperature, how evenly your oven runs, or where the cold spot ended up. A calibrated thermometer in the thickest part, away from bone and fat, is the only thing that establishes doneness. Take more than one reading.

⏱️ Temperature is only half of it — the other half is time

Cooking is a scheduled process, and pasteurization is a curve rather than a line. The FDA Food Code 2022 makes this explicit for whole meat roasts in § 3-401.11(B), which is a table rather than a single number: 130 °F held 112 minutes, 140 °F held 12 minutes, 145 °F held 4 minutes, 155 °F held 22 seconds, 158 °F instantaneous. The Code's own commentary spells out the equivalence — the microbial lethality achieved at 112 minutes after a beef roast reaches 130 °F is the same lethality attained as if it were cooked for 4 minutes after reaching 145 °F — and states that these combinations meet a 6.5-log₁₀ reduction of Salmonella. It also names the origin of the figures: USDA FSIS Appendix A.

Consumer guidance collapses that curve into one instantaneous number, and it does so for a good reason. Holding a roast at 130 °F for 112 minutes is a validated commercial process with recorded temperatures; hitting 145 °F is something you can check with a $15 probe. If you cook sous vide and are working from a published time-at-temperature table, you are using the same science the Food Code uses — but the hold time is then part of the recipe, and a thermometer reading on its own no longer proves the food is safe.

🍗 Where USDA and a lot of chefs genuinely disagree

The disagreement is real and it is worth stating accurately. FSIS gives 165 °F for all poultry, and the Food Code records what sort of number that is: § 3-401.11(A)(3) requires 165 °F for less than one second — instantaneous. Chefs who cook chicken breast lower are relying on the fact that a lower temperature held long enough achieves the same log reduction, and FSIS's own Cooking Guideline for Meat and Poultry Products (Revised Appendix A, FSIS-GD-2021-0014, December 2021) does publish time-temperature tables for chicken and turkey that reach a 7-log reduction of Salmonella below 165 °F.

Two things stop that from becoming home-kitchen advice. First, Appendix A is written for meat and poultry establishments, and it treats relative humidity and heating come-up time as critical operating parameters alongside the endpoint temperature — a home oven controls neither, and dwell times in those tables vary with poultry species and fat content. Second, a handheld thermometer reports an instant, not a duration; there is no way to demonstrate in a domestic kitchen that a required hold actually happened. The one figure in that guideline that survives as plain readable text gives a sense of the scale involved: for cooked poultry products maintained at 160 °F, FSIS cites recommended dwell times of between 13.7 and 26.9 seconds depending on species and fat. We have not reproduced the Appendix A dwell-time grids here. They are published as images inside the PDF, we could not extract them as text, and transcribing a food-safety table by eye is not something worth risking. If you want to cook poultry below 165 °F, get the tables from FSIS directly and read them yourself.

🥩 145°F, the three-minute rest, and why ground meat is higher

For beef, pork, veal and lamb steaks, chops and roasts, FSIS specifies 145 °F as measured before removing the meat from the heat source, followed by a rest of at least three minutes. Both halves matter. The Food Code's roast table asks for four minutes at 145 °F, which is what that rest is buying, and it allows post-oven heat rise to count toward the hold. Pulling the meat at 140 °F and hoping carryover finishes the job inverts the instruction.

Ground meats go to 160 °F, and ground poultry to 165 °F, because grinding redistributes surface bacteria through the interior. The Food Code handles the same distinction differently, at § 3-401.11(A): intact meat and fish clear at 145 °F for 15 seconds, while non-intact and comminuted meats need 155 °F for 17 seconds, or 145 °F for 3 minutes, or 150 °F for 1 minute. Whole muscle is contaminated on the outside; a burger is contaminated all the way through.

♨️ Reheating, leftovers, and the two-hour rule

Leftovers and casseroles go to 165 °F. So does anything reheated. The reason is on the FSIS Danger Zone page: bacteria grow most rapidly between 40 °F and 140 °F, doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes, so cooked food that has spent time in that band needs a second lethality step rather than merely being warmed through. FSIS sets the practical limits at the same time — never leave food out of refrigeration over two hours, or one hour above 90 °F; hold hot food at or above 140 °F; and get leftovers into shallow containers and below 40 °F within two hours.

👀 What a thermometer reading will not tell you

It will not tell you the food is safe if you measured the wrong place, and it will not tell you the food is unsafe because it looks wrong. FSIS's guidance on the color of meat and poultry runs in both directions: safely cooked poultry can vary from white to pink to tan, and all of it — including any that remains pink — is safe once every part has reached 165 °F; equally, ground beef can turn brown before it reaches 160 °F, so brown is not evidence of anything. Nor does a thermometer help if it is not calibrated. Check yours in boiling water (212 °F at sea level, lower as you climb) or an ice bath, and check it more than once a year.

❓ Common questions

What is a safe internal cooking temperature?

There is no single number — it depends on the food and on how it was handled before it reached your kitchen. USDA FSIS publishes 165°F for all poultry, for leftovers and for casseroles; 160°F for ground meats and for egg dishes; 145°F for fish and shellfish; and 145°F followed by a rest of at least 3 minutes for beef, pork, veal and lamb steaks, chops and roasts and for uncooked ham. Ground meat sits higher than the whole cut it came from because grinding carries surface bacteria through the interior, so the entire mass has to be treated as contaminated rather than just the outside. FSIS is explicit that appearance and color are not reliable indicators of safety or doneness, and that a food thermometer is the only way to tell whether harmful bacteria have been destroyed. A chart tells you the target; only a calibrated thermometer in the thickest part of the food in front of you establishes that the target was met.

Is chicken safe to eat at 145?

Not on a thermometer reading alone. USDA FSIS gives one number for all poultry, 165°F (73.9°C), and the FDA Food Code 2022 records what kind of number it is: 165°F for poultry is instantaneous, specified as less than one second at temperature. Lower temperatures can pasteurize poultry, but only if the meat is held there for a measured length of time, and the tables FSIS publishes for that purpose are in a guideline written for meat and poultry plants, where relative humidity and heating come-up time are controlled and the process is validated. A home oven controls neither, and a handheld probe reads an instant rather than a dwell time, so there is no way to demonstrate at home that the required hold was achieved. Cook poultry to 165°F, measured with a calibrated thermometer in the thickest part of the breast and the innermost part of the thigh and wing, away from bone.

Is chicken done at 165 or 180?

165°F is the safety number. USDA FSIS lists 165°F (73.9°C) for all poultry — breasts, whole bird, legs, thighs, wings, ground poultry, giblets and stuffing — and notes that for reasons of personal preference consumers may choose to cook poultry to higher temperatures. So 180°F is not unsafe; it is simply well past the point at which the bird became safe, and FSIS does not publish it as a requirement. The measurement site matters more than the extra 15 degrees: FSIS directs you to check the innermost part of the thigh and wing and the thickest part of the breast, because a bird can read 180°F at the breast while the deep thigh is still short of 165°F. Use a calibrated thermometer and take more than one reading.

Why is my chicken still pink at 165?

Because color is not a temperature reading. USDA FSIS explains that oven gases in a heated gas or electric oven react chemically with hemoglobin in the meat tissues to give it a pink tinge, and that younger birds show it most because their thinner skins let those gases reach the flesh. Nitrates and nitrites occurring naturally in feed or water do the same thing, and smoked or grilled poultry often keeps a pink rim about half an inch wide. FSIS states that safely cooked poultry can vary in color from white to pink to tan, and that all the meat, including any that remains pink, is safe to eat as soon as all parts reach at least 165°F measured with a food thermometer. The dangerous half of this is the reverse case: meat that has turned brown has not necessarily reached a safe temperature, which is why FSIS treats color as unreliable in both directions and asks for a thermometer instead.

Every temperature on this page is transcribed from the USDA FSIS Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart (last updated 14 April 2025) and cross-checked against the HHS chart on FoodSafety.gov. The statements about color, thermometer use and measurement sites come from FSIS's Doneness Versus Safety and The Color of Meat and Poultry; the holding limits and the 40–140 °F range from Danger Zone (40 °F – 140 °F). The time-at-temperature tables, the instantaneous/15-second/17-second distinctions and the 6.5-log₁₀ figure are from the FDA Food Code 2022 (January 2023 version), § 3-401.11 and Annex 3. The poultry lethality guideline is FSIS Cooking Guideline for Meat and Poultry Products (Revised Appendix A), December 2021; its Tables 3 and 4 are embedded as images and their dwell-time grids are not reproduced here.