Cooking Temperatures and Safe Food Handling

Use a kitchen thermometer to make sure you grill your meat and poultry to a safe temperature

You're about to cook a culinary masterpiece, and you've arranged gleaming utensils on the counter with all the care of a surgeon. But where's the thermometer?

A kitchen thermometer is one of your most important weapons against the food-borne illness. The thermometer will help you make sure that the internal temperature of meat and poultry rises high enough to kill harmful bacteria, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says.

"Always consider raw foods of animal origin as potentially carrying harmful bacteria," says Michael P. Doyle, Ph.D., director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety and Quality Enhancement.

If you're relying on color changes to tell when food is done, beware: Research shows that color and texture indicators aren't reliable, the USDA says.

Several types of meat thermometers are available at grocery, hardware or kitchen supply stores. They include:

• Regular, ovenproof thermometers that go in food at the beginning of the cooking time and that can be read easily.

• Instant-read and digital types, not intended to go into the oven, that give a quick reading when inserted into the food after cooking.

• Pop-up thermometers, most often found in turkey. They also may be purchased for other types of meat.

• Microwave-safe thermometers designed to be used only in microwave ovens.

Whatever type you use, be sure the thermometer is clean and is specifically designed for meat and poultry cooking. Thermometers designed for candy-making will not work for meat and poultry. Also, be sure the meat thermometer has an easy-to-read dial made with stainless steel and a shatter-proof clear lens. Most meat thermometers are accurate to within plus or minus 2 degrees.

What should that thermometer say? Safe temperatures vary for different dishes.

Here are recommendations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Don't go overboard, though -- charred meat can be unhealthy, too. High-temperature barbecuing, frying and broiling can produce chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that some studies link to an increased risk of cancer.

The connection remains unproven, and experts plan more research. But the risks seem greater when meat turns black from cooking longer at high temperatures, says Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D., a nutritional epidemiologist for the National Cancer Institute.

Luckily, studies also point to a solution: Minimize the time the meat spends over the coals.

You can cut HCAs up to 90 percent by microwaving meat briefly (even for two minutes). You can also par-cook meat at lower oven temperatures immediately before tossing it on the grill to add flavor at the finish. Don't pre-cook food and let it sit -- you'll put its temperature into bacteria's growth range.

Other tips to curb HCAs

Use lean meat to reduce flare-ups caused by fat dripping onto hot coals. Flare-ups create very high temperatures.

Keep meat away from direct heat. Wrap it in foil, or leave the skin on chicken for cooking and remove it later.

Add liquid. Meats cooked in water -- by braising or stewing -- don't get as hot.

More food-handling tips

After you've cooked your chicken, don't put it back on the same plate you used to bring it to the stove or grill. Juices from raw chicken could contaminate the cooked food with campylobacter or salmonella bacteria, the main culprits behind food-borne illness. Use separate utensils, plates and dishes for raw and cooked food, and wash them between uses.

Use disposable paper towels instead of a kitchen sponge or rag, where salmonella or other bacteria can grow and spread.

If you want rare beef, eat a steak, not a hamburger. E. coli may affect the surface of a steak (where cooking will kill it), but it won't penetrate the interior. In a burger, contamination can reach the center when the meat is ground and mixed. The USDA says ground beef must be cooked to 160 degrees -- hot enough to kill E. coli.

You don't have to overcook pork to be safe. Many people cling to outdated fears about the parasite that causes trichinosis, but farming practices are safer now and don't expose livestock to the parasite. Pork is safe at an internal temperature of 160 degrees, even if it still looks pink.

If you like raw seafood, get to know your fish merchant and restaurateur. The risks from raw oysters drop if they come from unpolluted waters. Sushi or uncooked marinated seafood may be flash-frozen to kill parasites. Cooking will kill live contaminants.