Time and Temperature Together.
A chicken breast held at 63 °C for about eight minutes is as safe as one taken to 74 °C — and much juicier.
Charts for home cooks give a single number: poultry to 74 °C (165 °F), minced meat to 71 °C (160 °F), whole cuts of beef, pork and lamb to 63 °C (145 °F) with a three-minute rest (USDA). Those numbers are the temperatures at which the required kill happens almost instantly, which makes them simple to follow with a thermometer. Behind them sit the full lethality tables, which list the time the food must be held at each lower temperature for the same kill.
That is what lets cooks make poultry that is safe and juicy (VI.5): held at 60–65 °C for the tabled time, chicken loses far less juice than chicken taken to 74 °C, and is as safe. Sous-vide cooking (XVI.7) is built on these tables. But the holding time starts only when the coldest part reaches the temperature, and it requires an accurate thermometer and a steady bath: the instant-temperature rule exists because most kitchens have neither. The workshop compares the table with the course model.
Below: the FSIS holding times for a 7-log reduction of Salmonella in chicken and a 6.5-log reduction in beef against temperature, the course model's curves through them, and the holding time at the temperature you choose.
- Read a lethality table.
- Explain the single "safe temperature".
- Trade time against temperature safely.
- Know the limits: thermometer, coldest point, steady heat.
Many roads to the same kill
For chicken the model gives about 27 minutes at 60 °C, 7.6 minutes at 63 °C and about 4 seconds at 74 °C for a 7-log kill of Salmonella, close to the FSIS table. That last figure is why the consumer rule is 74 °C: the kill is effectively instant, so no timing is needed. Taking chicken only to 63 °C and holding it there instead loses about 17 % of its weight as juice in the course's loss curve against 28 % at 74 °C.
The trade comes with conditions. The time counts only from when the centre reaches the temperature; a steady water bath makes that reliable, an oven or pan does not. The thermometer must be accurate (I.4). The tables apply to the stated foods and fat contents. And for minced or stuffed foods, where bacteria are spread through the inside, the instant temperatures — 71 °C for minced meat, 74 °C for poultry and stuffing — are the safe default. Whole cuts of beef and lamb can be eaten rarer because their bacteria are on the surface, which searing kills (XVIII.6).
Cook two chicken breasts: one to 74 °C in a pan, one in a 63 °C water bath held for the tabled time after its centre reaches 63 °C. Weigh both before and after. The difference in weight is juice.
Terms
- Lethality table
- A table of holding times at each temperature that achieve a required log reduction.
- Instant temperature
- A temperature at which the required kill takes seconds.
- Holding time
- Minutes the food's coldest point must stay at a temperature.
- Sous vide
- Cooking sealed food in a precisely controlled water bath.
Sources
- USDA FSIS, Time-Temperature Tables for Cooking Ready-to-Eat Poultry Products (7-log Salmonella reduction in chicken, 5% fat), as republished in D. E. Baldwin, A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking, and J. K. López-Alt, The Food Lab.
- USDA FSIS, Appendix A to the Compliance Guidelines for Meeting Lethality Performance Standards for Certain Meat and Poultry Products (time–temperature table for 6.5- and 7-log reductions of Salmonella in cooked beef).
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, "Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart" (foodsafety.gov), 2024.
- D. E. Baldwin, A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking (2008–2012) and "Sous vide cooking: a review", Int. J. Gastron. Food Sci. 1, 2012.