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Knowing Your Cooking Temperatures
What are the different cooking temperatures? - everything you need to know.
by Katie Morgan 01.03.25
Sugar Temperatures
Cooking temperatures play a huge part in being a chef. Everyone is familiar with people having different preferences on how they want their steak cooked - rare, medium-rare through to well done. But what do these cooking temperatures mean, and how much do they differ between proteins?
Beef & Lamb Cooking Temperatures
When we talk about cooking temperatures, one of the first things that comes to mind is the cooking temperature of a steak. Everyone knows how they like theirs - I go for rare to medium-rare depending on the cut, but my mother has hers well done no matter what, whilst I sit at the table trying not to squirm and ban her from ordering steak. (I honestly consider it to be an insult to the cow that died for her just to cook it within an inch of its life) What many people don’t know is what the exact range of cooking temperatures belongs to each cuisson.
Rare - 48-52°c (125.6 Farenheit)
Medium Rare - 55-59°c (135 Farenheit)
Medium - 60-62°c (141 Farenheit)
Medium-Well 62-66°c (147 Farenheit)
Well done - 67-71°c (157.1 Farenheit)
Beef/Lamb Cooking Temperatures:
Chicken Cooking Temperatures
Chicken is a bit more set in stone. No one wants to eat ‘rare’ chicken for obvious reasons such as Salmonella, so it is better to be on the safe side. The risks nowadays are hugely diminished, and someone getting sick from eating raw chicken is very unlikely. In fact, I have a good example of this…
I knew someone who was extremely funny about food going out of date. His mother was going to cook chicken breasts for dinner, which were one day past the sell-by date, and he was refusing to eat them. The boy’s brother decided to prove it was fine to eat, and proceeded to eat one of the breasts raw. He didn’t get sick at all so his point was certainly proven, however, the boy still didn’t eat the chicken.
Cooking temperature for chicken:
74°c (165.2 Farenheit)
Be aware: high quality chicken is sometimes more pink than poor quality, so even if the cooking temperature is reading 74°c, it may be ever so slightly pink, especially when fresh.
Pork Cooking Temperatures
You might notice that your parents or anyone older than that is unsure about pink pork. This is because of a long-held belief that undercooked pork is unsafe to eat due to parasites. The risk of this is now extremely low. Personally, pork should be cooked a little bit pink or it quickly becomes very dry.
There is a restaurant in Sao Paulo, Brasil, Casa Do Porco, who even serve a pork tartar.
Cooking Temperature for Pork:
62.8°c
