USDA O.K.’s Eating Pink Pork
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
"Pork chops and bacon, my two favorite animals." (Image: Kheng Guan Toh/Shutterstock)
It’s party time for people tired of dried out, desiccated cuts of meat. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised its recommended cooking temperature for pork, lowering it from an oppressively overdone 160 degrees to a halfway decent 145 degrees! Rejoice!
Cooking beef and lamb below recommended cooking temperatures is nothing rare (Ed. note: Ugh.), but people tend to get paranoid about eating pork that hasn’t had been cooked to a cinder. According to this announcement, it’s now officially safe to eat pork that’s still pink on the inside.
The crux of this change revolves around properly resting meat after it cooks. By resting meat for three minutes at 145 degrees, its constant internal temperature finishes off any lingering pathogens.
For context, a cut of beef cooked to 145 degrees is about medium/medium well, so this announcement isn’t exactly anything revolutionary. What it does do, however, is encourage people to loosen up about their meat intake, and make pork chops the world around more delicious.
The new recommendation does not, however, extend to ground meats or poultry, which the USDA still insists on cooking to 160 and 165 degrees, respectively.
- Kris King
Tags: cooking temperature, health, i told you so, pork, USDA