Cooking Calculator

Doneness is a temperature, not a time. A probe thermometer in the thickest part of the meat — away from bone — is the only reliable way to know a cut is both safe and cooked the way you want. This guide pairs the USDA safe minimums with the doneness bands that cooks actually pull at, so you can see at a glance where 'safe' and 'how you like it' line up, and where they don't.

Some meats give you a range to play with; others don't. Whole-muscle beef and lamb run from rare at 120–125°F up through well done at 155–160°F, because the surface searing kills the bacteria that matter and the interior is your call. Poultry is the opposite: chicken and turkey need 165°F throughout, every cut, no pink, with no safe rare option — the risk lives all the way through the meat, not just on the surface.

Ground meat follows poultry's logic, not steak's. Grinding spreads any surface bacteria through the whole batch, so ground beef, pork, and lamb all need 160°F, and ground chicken or turkey 165°F — you can't cook a burger to medium-rare as safely as the steak it came from. Whole cuts of beef, pork, and lamb get a USDA target of 145°F followed by a 3-minute rest, during which the temperature holds and finishes the job.

Two practical notes. First, pull meat a few degrees early: carryover cooking keeps raising the internal temperature 3–5°F while it rests, so a steak you want at 135°F comes off the heat around 130°F. Second, the unit switcher reads in °F or °C from the same underlying data — handy when a recipe or a European thermometer speaks Celsius and you need to cross-check.