Chicken and turkey are done at 74°C/165°F. Whole cuts of pork, beef and lamb are done at 63°C/145°F with a three-minute rest, anything minced or ground goes to 71°C/160°F, and fish is 63°C/145°F unless it’s salmon, which most people prefer somewhere in the low 50s. That’s the chart. The rest of this page is the awkward bits that never fit on the chart.
I cooked for about eleven years without a thermometer, going by the colour of the juices, and I was wrong more often than I knew. The thing that finally converted me wasn’t a food scare. It was a £12 instant-read probe and the discovery that my roast chicken breast had been hitting 82°C every single Sunday, which is exactly why it always needed gravy to be edible.
What temperature is each meat actually done at?
Two numbers per row: the safe one, and the one I’d rather eat. They’re not always the same, and that gap is the whole reason people find temperature charts confusing.
| Meat | Target | What I do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Whole chicken or turkey | 74°C / 165°F | Measure the inner thigh. It’s the last part to get there. |
| Chicken or turkey breast | 74°C / 165°F | Above about 77°C it goes chalky. Pull it on the number. |
| Chicken thighs, drumsticks, wings | 74°C / 165°F is safe | They eat far better at 79°C / 175°F. Dark meat has collagen that needs the extra heat to soften. |
| Pork chops, loin, tenderloin (whole cuts) | 63°C / 145°F + 3-minute rest | Current USDA guidance. The old 71°C advice is what gave pork its dry reputation. |
| Beef and lamb steaks, chops, roasts (whole cuts) | 63°C / 145°F + 3-minute rest for the safe figure | By doneness: 52°C rare, 55°C medium rare, 60°C medium, 66°C medium well, 71°C well done. |
| Lamb leg or shoulder, slow-roasted | 63°C / 145°F safe | Shoulder is a different animal — it’s happiest pulled apart at 88°C+, cooked long and low. |
| All minced/ground beef, pork, lamb, veal | 71°C / 160°F | No exceptions, including burgers and meatloaf. |
| Minced/ground chicken and turkey | 74°C / 165°F | Poultry keeps its higher number even when minced. |
| Sausages | 71°C / 160°F pork, 74°C / 165°F poultry | Probe in from the end, along the length, not through the side. |
| White fish (cod, haddock, sea bass) | 63°C / 145°F | Flakes cleanly at that point, still moist. |
| Salmon | 63°C / 145°F is the official figure | 52–55°C is what most cooks and restaurants take it to for medium. See my baked salmon with lemon for how that looks in practice. |
| Leftovers, reheated anything | 74°C / 165°F | Right through, not just at the edges. |
If you cook one meat more than any other, memorise that one row and stop trying to hold the whole table in your head. Mine is chicken thighs at 79°C.
Why does minced meat need a higher temperature than a steak?
Because of where the bacteria are.
On an intact steak or a pork chop, contamination sits on the outside surface. The inside of a whole muscle is essentially sterile. Searing the outside at 200°C-plus deals with the surface, which is why a steak can be pink in the middle and still be fine.
Mincing takes that surface and mixes it all the way through. What was a thin outside layer is now distributed evenly through the entire burger, including the coolest part in the centre. So the centre has to reach the killing temperature itself — 71°C/160°F. That’s the single clearest reason, and once you’ve heard it once you never forget which way round it goes.
Same logic applies to anything needled, tenderised with a blade, or injected with brine: the surface has been carried inward, so treat it like mince. I cook my meatballs to 71°C for exactly this reason, even though they’re beef and I’d happily eat beef rare in steak form.
Where exactly do I put the probe?
Thickest part of the meat, away from bone, away from any big pocket of fat, and pushed through to the middle rather than stopped at the first bit of resistance.
Bone conducts heat differently and will read high. Fat also reads high. Both will convince you dinner’s ready when it isn’t.
The one that catches most people: in a whole chicken or turkey, the coldest point is the inner thigh, right where the thigh meets the body, not the breast. Slide the probe in horizontally from the side of the bird, angled towards the joint, and stop before you hit bone. If the thigh reads 74°C the breast is done and probably slightly past. On my herb roast chicken I check both and take the bird out when the thigh hits 76°C, accepting a breast around 74°C.
For thin things — a 2cm pork chop, a fish fillet, a burger — go in from the side, along the length, so the tip sits in the middle of the thickness. Straight down through a burger and you’ll be measuring the pan.
Take two or three readings in different spots. Ovens have cold corners and chickens are lopsided.
Do I pull the meat at the target, or below it?
Below it, most of the time, because the temperature keeps climbing after the meat leaves the heat. That’s carryover cooking, and it’s not small.
- Thin cuts — chops, steaks, fillets, burgers: about 2–3°C of carryover. Pull 2°C shy.
- Large roasts — a 2kg beef joint, a whole turkey, a leg of lamb: 5–8°C. Pull 5°C shy, sometimes more on anything over 4kg.
The mass of the outside is hotter than the middle, and heat keeps moving inward until the whole thing evens out. A big roast pulled at exactly 63°C will happily sail past 68°C on the counter, which is the difference between medium rare and a grey Sunday.
This is also the reason resting isn’t just about juices. I’ve written separately about why meat needs to rest, but the short version for this page: the rest period is part of the cooking, so plan the temperature around it rather than treating it as dead time.
One exception. Meat cooked low and slow, at oven temperatures around 120°C, barely carries over at all — there’s no fierce outer layer driving heat inward. With a slow-cooked shoulder you can more or less take the number at face value.
Instant-read, leave-in probe, or the pop-up timer that came with the bird?
Instant-read for almost everything. It’s the one that earns its shelf space. A decent digital one gives a stable reading in 2–4 seconds, costs somewhere around £15–£30, and gets used for chicken, chops, bread, custard and, in my house, checking whether the oil for fried chicken is actually at 175°C rather than merely shimmering hopefully.
Leave-in probes with an external display are for big roasts and anything that takes over an hour. The cable runs out through the oven door seal, and you watch the number climb without opening anything. Worth it if you roast often. Mine lives in the turkey every December and in a beef Wellington when I make one, because there is no other sane way to find medium rare under a pastry crust.
The little white pop-up timer stuck in the supermarket turkey: it works, in the sense that it eventually pops. It’s set to trigger around 82°C, well past done for breast meat, and it sits in the breast rather than the thigh. By the time it pops the breast is dry. I pull them out and bin them before the bird goes in the oven.
How do I check my thermometer is telling the truth?
Two tests, both free, both take five minutes.
Ice water. Fill a glass to the top with ice, then add cold water until it just covers. Stir, wait a minute, put the probe in the middle without touching the sides or bottom. It should read 0°C/32°F. If it’s more than 1°C off, write the difference down.
Boiling water. Rolling boil, probe in the water rather than the steam, not touching the pan base. At sea level that’s 100°C/212°F. Water boils lower as you go up: roughly 1°C less per 300 metres of altitude. In Delhi, at about 215m, you’d expect around 99.3°C. In Shimla, near 2,200m, closer to 92°C. Check your own elevation before you decide your thermometer is broken.
Some models have a calibration nut under the dial or a reset button in the menu. If yours doesn’t, just write the offset on a bit of tape and stick it to the handle. Mine reads 1.5°C low and has done for two years; I add it in my head and it’s fine.
Do this when the thermometer is new, after you drop it, and once a year otherwise.
Is colour a reliable test?
No, and it fails in both directions, which is the frustrating part.
Myoglobin is the pigment that makes meat red, and how it behaves depends on the pH of the meat, how long it’s been frozen, and how much oxygen it’s had. A burger made from meat that was frozen and thawed can turn convincingly brown at 57°C — brown all the way through, and 14°C short of safe. That’s called premature browning and it’s common enough that colour alone should be off your list.
The reverse happens too. Nitrites, whether from cure or from a marinade, or from nitrogen dioxide in a gas oven, lock the pigment pink. A fully-cooked chicken thigh at 79°C can come out with a pink ring near the bone, and pork brined at home can stay rosy at 71°C. It’s safe, and it looks alarming, and I’ve had guests push it to the side of the plate.
Clear juices are equally unreliable, for the same pigment reasons. There’s no visual test. There’s a number.
So what do I actually do on a normal Tuesday?
I’m a home cook, not a food-safety authority or anyone medically qualified — these are the numbers I use in my own kitchen, drawn from published USDA guidance, and if you’re cooking for someone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, follow the official figures rather than my preferences.
With that said. Chicken thighs go to 79°C because they’re better there. Pork chops come off at 61°C and rest to 63°C. Steak comes off at 52°C for medium rare and lands near 55°C. Salmon I take to 54°C and it flakes in big soft sheets rather than the dry white leaves you get at 63°C. Burgers get 71°C, no negotiation, because that’s the one where the science actually forces my hand.
The opinion some people will argue with: the official 63°C for whole cuts is conservative for beef, and I’d rather eat a 55°C sirloin. I would not say the same about mince.
What if I’ve already cooked it and I’m not sure?
Put it back in. Undercooked meat can be returned to the oven or pan; there’s no rule saying it gets one attempt. A chicken that reads 68°C in the thigh needs another 10–15 minutes at 190°C, and it’ll be fine.
What you can’t do is fix overcooked. So if you’re going to err, err on the low side and check again in ten minutes — that’s the direction with a way back.