Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures: the Numbers Behind the Timer
Recipes give you minutes because minutes are what a cook can watch. The federal food-safety
guidance gives you degrees, because degrees are what a thermometer can check. The two are
not interchangeable: a roast that reaches its target temperature five minutes early is
done, and a roast that has sat in the oven for the recipe's full time can still be under
done if it started cold or the oven ran low. The table below is the published target list
used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, and it is
meant to be read with a probe thermometer in hand.
Safe minimum internal temperatures (USDA FSIS, last updated 14 April 2025). Measure
with a food thermometer before the food leaves the heat source.
| Product | Minimum internal temperature | Rest time |
| Beef, pork, veal and lamb steaks, chops and roasts | 145 °F (62.8 °C) | At least 3 minutes |
| Ground meats (beef, pork, veal, lamb) | 160 °F (71.1 °C) | Not specified |
| Ground poultry | 165 °F | Not specified |
| Ham, fresh or smoked (uncooked) | 145 °F (62.8 °C) | At least 3 minutes |
| Fully cooked ham, reheated | 140 °F (60 °C) if packaged in a USDA-inspected plant; 165 °F (73.9 °C) otherwise | Not specified |
| All poultry — breasts, whole bird, legs, thighs, wings, giblets, stuffing | 165 °F (73.9 °C) | Not specified |
| Eggs and egg dishes | 160 °F (71.1 °C) | Not specified |
| Fish and shellfish | 145 °F (62.8 °C) | Not specified |
| Leftovers | 165 °F (73.9 °C) | Not specified |
| Casseroles | 165 °F (73.9 °C) | Not specified |
The rest time is not a serving suggestion. FSIS writes the three-minute rest into the same
line as the 145 °F figure for steaks, chops and roasts, which means the temperature and
the waiting are one instruction. There is a mechanical reason: a roast pulled from the oven
keeps rising in temperature as heat migrates from the surface to the centre, so the reading
you take at the moment you move it to the board is not the reading five minutes later.
Carrying the meat to its rest and then slicing it early is what produces the pool of juice
on the board — the liquid leaves with the cut instead of staying in it.
Convert the targets once and keep them on the fridge. The
oven temperature
converter handles the Celsius side of the same problem, and the
unit converter
covers the weights and volumes you measure the rest of the meal in.
How long food can wait once it is cooked
Cooking time ends when the food comes off the heat. What happens next has its own published
limits, and they are the ones most often broken at a buffet, a cookout or a holiday table,
where the food is held for the length of the meal rather than eaten straight away.
Holding and resting limits (USDA FSIS).
| Situation | Published limit | Why it is the number it is |
| Food left out of refrigeration | Never more than 2 hours | Bacteria grow most rapidly between 40 °F and 140 °F and can double in number in as little as 20 minutes. |
| Food left out when the air temperature is above 90 °F | Not more than 1 hour | A hot room shortens the safe window; the same 20-minute doubling applies faster. |
| Hot holding at the table or on a buffet | 140 °F or above | Chafing dishes, preheated steam tables, warming trays and slow cookers are the listed equipment. |
| Cold holding at the table or on a buffet | 40 °F or below | Keep containers on ice; this is the bottom edge of the danger zone. |
| Reheating leftovers | 165 °F, or until hot and steaming | Higher than the original cook temperature because the food has been handled and stored since. |
One practical consequence for timing: build the rest into the plan instead of treating it as
dead time. If a roast needs three minutes on the board before carving, that is three minutes
you can spend moving the
buffet to the
table, and it is also three minutes the
bread or
dough sitting next to it does not get. The
recipe scaler
handles the quantity side of the same meal.
The oven dial is not the food temperature
This is the mismatch that makes cooking times unreliable in both directions. An oven set to
350 °F is holding the air around the food at 350 °F; it says nothing about the
temperature inside the joint of meat, and nothing about how fast the centre will get there.
A larger roast, a colder starting temperature or a crowded shelf all change the minutes and
none of them change the target. That is why the published instruction is written as
"cook to the minimum internal temperature, as measured with a food thermometer, before
removing food from the heat source" rather than as a time at all. When a recipe insists on
minutes, treat the minutes as an estimate and the temperature as the decision — and
reach for a probe, not the dial, to make it.
The same clock runs on dough and batter. Raw flour and raw dough are perishable ingredients,
and the two-hour rule applies to them while they proof on a counter, exactly as it applies to
cooked food waiting to be served. The
bread proofing
calculator and the
sourdough
hydration calculator cover the rise itself; the numbers on this page tell you how long
the finished loaf can sit out before it has to go in the refrigerator.
Sources: USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart”;
USDA FSIS, “Danger Zone (40 °F – 140 °F)”.