Safe Temperatures

Notes

• Information is from the USDA's FSIS Cooking Guideline for Meat and Poultry Products.

• Time of zero indicates that lethality is instantly achieved.

• FSIS recommends limiting the total time product temperature is between 50 and 130°F to 6 hours or less.

Carryover Cooking

Heat is not static. Heat moves. In fact, heat tries its best to reach a state of equilibrium. When you take a steak out of a hot pan, the heat at the exterior of the steak will work its way into the steak, raising the temperature of the inside of the steak. This is what's called “carryover cooking”. 

• Thinner steaks like skirt steak have less thermal mass and thermal momentum and will experience less carryover than thick steaks. 

• Thick steaks like porterhouse or tomahawk have more thermal mass and more carryover.

• The higher the heat, the more carryover there will be because the thermal gradients will be wider. Something cooked in a 225°F oven will carryover less than the same thing cooked in a 300°F oven. 

• Larger items experience more carryover than smaller items. 

• In general, you can plan on 3–5°F of carryover for a thinner steak and anywhere from 5–7°F carryover for larger ones.