What The Safest Internal Temperature For Burgers Actually Is

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While many restaurants and steakhouses might ask you how well done or rare you want your burger cooked, home cooks might want to be more cautious with their beef patties. While a nice cut of steak might be safe to eat with a pink or red center, store-bought ground beef is at a much higher risk for bacterial contamination due to the grinding process. Bacteria doesn't try to migrate throughout the meat, so for a steak, it'll tend to stay on the surface and can thus be killed easily by searing the outside. However, grinding meat breaks it down and effectively moves bacteria more evenly throughout the mass of ground beef you'll be forming into patties.

According to the USDA, hamburgers should be cooked to a minimum internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit, which is equivalent to well done. There should be no pink or red coloration in the center of the patty, and it should be uniformly brown. Cooking burgers well-done ensures that all bacteria are killed, preventing any foodborne illnesses. Ground beef is a potential breeding ground for harmful bacteria like E. Coli, Salmonella, and Staphylococcus that can result in symptoms from horrific indigestion to death. Since various strains of bacteria easily survive despite being stored in refrigeration, cooking the patties to 160 degrees Fahrenheit is especially important. The most accurate way to test for an internal temperature is with the help of a meat thermometer, inserted to the very center of the burger patty diagonally.

If your burger recipes require other types of meat, you should still adhere to proper internal temperatures. For example, the ideal internal temperature for perfectly cooked turkey burgers is 165 degrees Fahrenheit. The best temperature for other burger proteins like lamb and pork is, like beef, 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooking times will vary depending on the thickness of your burgers, but an expert pitmaster thinks that the right grill temperature for perfect burgers is between 450 and 500 degrees Fahrenheit to caramelize the outside for a beautifully textured crust and complex flavor.

Another expert chef swears by the 5-6-7 rule for cooking burgers — 5 minutes on one side, 6 minutes on the other side, and a 7-minute rest time to achieve medium burgers with an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit. However, this internal temperature falls 15 degrees short of the safety zone. So, you'll probably need to add another minute or two of cooking time per side. While letting medium or rare burgers rest for 7 minutes will redistribute all their juices, a well-done burger has significantly less juice to redistribute. Since the USDA advises keeping your burgers hot over an indirect heat zone until you serve them, well-done burgers might run the risk of drying out. To guarantee moist and tender well-done burgers is to buy ground beef with a beef-to-fat ratio of 80/20.