Actually I think the pork news is a few years old now. As I recall it's technically safe at about 137 but they tack on a few degrees to make sure you're covered. 145 sounds good to me.

140 chicken scares me. I aim for 160 for white meat, a bit higher for dark. I haven't yet tried chicken sous vide, where supposedly you can safely cook it at/to lower temperatures. Something I'm definitely interested in trying, but never seem to get around to.

(Speaking of sous vide - any update???)

I typically like my beef what I'd consider med/med-rare, which I translate to somewhere in the low 130s. My wife prefers it a bit more done so I take it to 135 when cooking for her. I'd still consider that a bit under medium.

Like FOAS, I cook chicken to 160-165, but I've never cooked pork to that temp, it dries it out too much.

Beef? I eat that raw. Well, not always, sometimes I cook it until it's just warmed through.

Annie

"----Who is/was cooking pork to 160F? What are your standard temps for other meats? I usually aim for about 140F for pork and chicken, 125F for beef. "

I have been cooking beef, pork, lamb, chicken, duck, scallops, lobsters, clams, squid, etc. at very low temperature for a long while now. I don�t think I will be cooking any meat (except most fish) the normal way at high temperature anymore. I am lucky that I have the equipment, namely sous vide, which allows me precisely and absolutely to control the temperature of the cooking process.

In addition to the enjoyment of optimal texture and taste development of the meats, the sous vide method also gives me the freedom of going from freezer to cooking immediately, no more the need for thawing a few days ahead of time in the refrigerator before cooking. I can serve the food at a nice hot temperature anytime when meal time is planned without having to time the meat for the "resting period" and end up getting cold while resting, and no more poking around to check if the desired temperature has been reached. Another great benefit is the ability to freeze leftover food, such as a large piece of prime rib and reheat again by sous vide without loosing quality.

dcarch

Pork was a carrier of trichinosis and long ago before pretty well all commercially sold pork was frozen thereby killing the truchina worm, they recommended cooking pork to 160 F.
And to make matters worse, in the interest of health, they bred the fat marbling out of the market hog and so people were taking this very lean pork loin and cooking it into an overcooked dry hockey puck.
Try a loin chop, cut 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches thick, cooked on a grill until beautifully browned on the outside but still slightly pink on the inside....or a whole Boston butt cooked over a slow grill fire while the fat sizzles out and makes the outside wonderfully crisp, but stop cooking about 140 internal temp.
Great eating!
Linda C

dcarch, not AT a low temperature, TO a low temperature. What is the temperature of the pork after it's cooked, no matter the technique used for cooking?

I don't think I've ever even used a thermometer to check the temperature of seafood, nor have I ever thought about what it should be. Until now....

Annie

" dcarch, not AT a low temperature, TO a low temperature. What is the temperature of the pork after it's cooked, no matter the technique used for cooking?----"

Annie, in the normal way of cooking meat, it is not possible to get exactly what you want.

But before I go any further, let me be very clear that I am not implying that the normal way of cooking meat will not give you delicious end results and that unless you go sous vide, you will be deprived of enjoyment of your food forever.

By the very nature of thermodynamic, when you have a piece of meat which is never uniform in thickness, never uniform in temperature distribution, and you put it in an oven which can vary as much as 50F from one area to another, and you check the interior temperature with a probe which you most like is not in the exact center, ----. You will need a lot of skills and luck to get the entire piece of meat done right. If that is possible.

In a sous vide system, if make no difference if one area of the meat is half an inch thick and another 5 inches thick, and if one area is frozen and another is room temperature, once you set the temperature, say for beef "AT"135F, the beef will be cooked "TO" 135F, exactly, everywhere, inside outside top bottom, north south----. My system can be accurate to +- 0.3 degrees F everywhere.

And let me be clear also, sous vide will not give you good tasting food automatically, you will still need a good recipe. It only gives repeatable uniform texture control.

There is a lot of difference in mouth feel between a lobster cooked to 212F and one to 160F.

I may be making roast pork soon. I will let you know how it turns out.

dcarch

My experience has been that works the same in a slow oven. If you turn your oven down to 200 degrees before the bird gets hot, not much of the moisture in the chicken gets enough kinetic energy to become steam. You can cook it to 200 degrees throughout and still end up with a bird that's much moister than a high-heat bird cooked to 160.

dcarch, that's still not what I meant. When you cook that pork, sous vide or otherwise, do you cook it until it reaches a temperature of 160, or do you cook it to 135? I don't think I've ever cooked pork to 160, no matter the technique used.

And how in the world am I going to get a thermometer into a lobster tail, if the beast is whole and the shell is still on it. "Open up and say ahhhh".....(grin)

Annie

Annie - With sous vide you cook at the destination temperature. If you want your pork cooked to 140, set your water to 140. The pork cannot get hotter than that, it's perfectly evenly cooked side to side, and timing is far less critical. Certainly extremely repeatable results. Taste, texture? My experience is very limited, so for now suffice it to say the jury's still out. I've got a big hunk of beef tenderloin in the fridge just begging for an experiment. Maybe tomorrow. ;-)

Annie, "Open up and say ahhhh", you really provided my laugh for the day. I love it - thanks. I had a very vivid image of an open mouthed lobster trying to swallow a thermometer.

Lee

I know that, FOAS, but dcarch never said what temperature he usually cooked pork to OR at, only that he cooked it "at a very low temperature". Is "very low" 140F? 110F? 90F?

the question was whether or not you were ever cooking pork to 160, and what do you cook meat to now. So, I'm still wondering how low is "very low"?

That lobster, now, it's probably really cold from swimming in the Atlantic, so it's going to have to cook a bit longer than my body temperature beef!

Sorry, Lee, that picture will be stuck in your head forever, won't it, a lobster with a thermometer and a tongue depressor, LOL.

Annie

I have some pork now in the cooker and I am going to sous vide it at 145F. I will be making roasted pork. After the pork is out of the cooker, I will refrigerate it for a while, than I will put it in the oven set at 500F for may be 3 or 4 minutes to BBQ the outside. I should have the outside nicely browned and ALL the inside tender, juicy and slightly pink.

Lobster with a thermometer, LOL!

dcarch

"Sure it's hot here, but there's no humidity." That's what we say all summer here in the high desert of Colorado. This year after an unusually dry winter, our May looks like Seattle, rain, rain and more rain.

Lee

How are you going to get that hunk of refrigerator cold pork up to a temp warm enough for eating? Certainly won't happen after 3 or 4 minutes in the oven....even at 500 degrees?
How is the outside going to "BBQ" at 3 or 4 minutes?

Posted by lindac "How are you going to get that hunk of refrigerator cold pork up to a temp warm enough for eating? Certainly won't happen after 3 or 4 minutes in the oven....even at 500 degrees?
How is the outside going to "BBQ" at 3 or 4 minutes?"

Very good questions.

First, I should have said that this is Chinese char siu style roasted pork shoulder. It is typically eaten cold. You buy it from a store, and you cut it up and serve it cold. But actually hot is always better.

Pork shoulder is a cheap tough cut of meat, the sous vide method transforms it to magically flavorful tender and succulent cuisine.

Typically:

After I sous vide the pork shoulder at 145F for 36 hours,* I put it in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to cool the outside, may be only 1/2" deep to prevent overcooking in the oven.

The oven is set at 500 degrees with a cast iron griddle on the bottom. The griddle gets to be about 1,000 degrees, even the oven is set at 500. The pork is than BBQed on the red hot griddle. It takes a few seconds on each side to get a nice crispy crust on the pork. The blackened color is the color of Hoisin sauce, not burnt. The red color of the meat is not food coloring, that's the way it looks when cooked this way.

If invited guests arrive late to dinner, I can put the pork shoulder back in sous vide cooker, and the it will be served at 145 F. It will not be overcooked.

If you arrive late to my dinner, I promise you I will not give you the cold shoulder.

dcarch
*Disclaimer: You must do your own research when you cook food at low temperature. Do not trust my methods.

Yum, dcarch, that looks good. So, like a few of us, you also cook pork to about 140F or 145F.

I liked the lobster cartoon. Unlike Lee, we do have humidity. Right now it's 61F with 48% humidity, very pleasant and tolerable, but when it gets into the 80s and 90s, the humidity is usually in the 80s and 90s too. Regardless, when I went to Texas, I kept hearing "but it's a dry heat". I can tell you that 112F is HOT, way TOO hot, with or without humidity!

And do lobsters even HAVE tongues to put a thermometer under?

Annie

And do lobsters even HAVE tongues to put a thermometer under?

IMO the best part of the lobster is the tail, so I'd use a rectal thermometer to be sure I got that done just right.

"Posted by foodonastump "------IMO the best part of the lobster is the tail, so I'd use a rectal thermometer to be sure I got that done just right."

Aren't you being a little anal with de tails?

dcarch :-)

dcarch, your pork looks delicious, char siu pork is a favorite of ours. I am not questioning what you say about darkness being due to the Hoisin sauce, which is almost black in the jar that I have. The char siu recipe that I use has honey and the sugar that is in the Hoisin sauce. I finish it by putting the pork pieces on a non stick foil lined pan and then crisping under a well preheated broiler. I am wondering what you do so that you don't end up with a baked on caramel crust on your pan? And if you are only searing for a few seconds on a side, what keeps the meat from sticking to the pan? Your photos certainly look as though no meat was left behind glued to the pan.

Searing is one thing that I often have trouble with. If I leave the food in the pan until it naturally releases, I may end up with food that is more cooked than I would like and if I take if off the pan earlier, some of the meat usually sticks to the pan. My cast iron grill pan is well seasoned, my cast iron skillets less so but still seasoned.

I'd appreciate searing/anti sticking advice from any of our CF members.

Thanks,

Lee

All the above notwithstanding, collagen doesn't convert to gelatin until around 160* so the old bbq maxim of long, low and slow comes into play.

I have learned to "ride" my smoker such that I can prolong the period a pork butt stays at 160* so as to maximize that conversion and I further take the butts up to 180* in the smoker.

This takes 12-14 hours (in a smoker set at 200-210*) and the result is tender, moist and flavourful. With zero collagen, silverskin or fat. I don't know where the silverskin goes, maybe it melts and converts too?

Now a chop or an oven roast for a sit down roast pork dinner...yes, I fully agree with the lower temps because we all want full flavour, moist and tender meat.

metaxa, have yuou looked into BBQ Guru?

Lee, here is what I have been doing to get nice crust on steaks without the meat sticking:

For one steak -

1. Heat up a large heavy well-seasoned cast iron skillet to smoking hot using medium heat. Then crank the fire up full blast. Medium heat will give the skillet time to evenly heat up with no hot spots. The skillet should have a light coat of oil on it before heating.
2. Once the skillet gets red hot, use a brush to put on a generous coat of oil on the steak and fry. Make sure you are placing the steak only on one side of the skillet.
3. Soon the steak will be nicely browned. Then you coat the the steak with lot's of oil and flip to the other very hot side of the skillet.

For more than one steak:

Same as above, except I use two skillets on two burners.

To flip the steak, use a bamboo spatula to lift the steak off the skillet if it sticks. Don't use tongs.

dcarch

Thanks, I'll try starting with medium heat and then going to high. I haven't used oil on the skillet before because it smokes too quickly - I've been preheating a dry cast iron skillet and brushing a generous coating of oil on the dried steak before putting it, oil side down, on the hot pan. My oil choices at the moment for searing are grapeseed - smoke point of 485 degrees or extra light olive oil smoke point 468 degrees according to the chart I linked. Do you have other preferences?

I have also turned the meat and put it on the same spot in the pan as the first side thinking that the pan was already used to food there and that it might stick less. I'll try turning it to a new area, which will obviously be hotter. I do have bamboo spatulas.

I could also try my cast iron fajita grill in the oven which heats to 550 degrees. I've thought about getting an IR thermometer for just this reason, to see how hot the surface actually is.

Lee

Here is a link that might be useful: Smoke Points of Oils