Meat Doneness Temperatures: A Simple Chart

The only number that matters is the one in the center of the meat.

A steak that feels done on the outside can still be raw in the middle, and a chicken thigh that looks done at 155 F has not been held there long enough to be safe. An instant-read thermometer settles both arguments in 3 seconds.

Below are the temperatures worth memorizing, plus the habit that keeps you from sailing past them.

Pull temps and final temps

Two numbers matter for each cut. The pull temp is when you take it off, and the final temp is where it lands after resting.

Meat keeps cooking after it leaves the grill, so you always pull a few degrees early.

Meat	Pull temp	Final target	Notes
Beef steak, rare	120 F	125 F	Cool red center
Beef steak, medium-rare	130 F	135 F	The sweet spot for most cuts
Beef steak, medium	140 F	145 F	Warm pink center
Beef steak, medium-well	148 F	153 F	Faint pink
Beef steak, well-done	155 F	160 F	No pink, cook gently to keep it moist
Burgers, ground beef	160 F	160 F	A thin patty barely carries over, so hit 160 on the grill
Pork chop or roast	140 F	145 F	Rest 3 minutes, a little pink is fine and safe
Pork ribs	200 F	203 F	Done by feel, not safety (more below)
Pulled pork (shoulder)	200 F	203 to 205 F	Collagen renders, meat shreds
Chicken or turkey breast	160 F	165 F	Pull at 160, carryover finishes it
Chicken thighs and legs	175 F	180 to 185 F	Higher is better here, not a safety line
Ground chicken or turkey	165 F	165 F	Hit 165 on the grill (a thin patty has almost no carryover)
Salmon and most fish	120 F	125 F (medium)	145 F is the USDA safe minimum, and 125 F is a cook's choice below it
Shrimp	pull when opaque	about 120 F	Opaque is the usual test (145 F is the USDA shellfish minimum)

Print that. Tape it inside a cabinet, and you have solved most of what goes wrong at the grill.

Why you pull the meat early

Food does not stop cooking when it leaves the heat. The outer layers keep driving heat toward the center, and the internal temperature climbs another 3 to 10 F while it rests.

That is carryover cooking.

A thick steak carries over more (5 to 10 F). A thin chicken breast carries over less (2 to 5 F).

Wait for the thermometer to read your final target before pulling and you sail right past it. Pull about 5 F early and let the rest do the work.

Rest steaks and chops 5 minutes, and rest a roast or pork shoulder 15 to 30 minutes.

The pause also lets the juices settle back into the fibers (the alternative is watching them run out on the cutting board).

What 165 F actually means

165 F is the temperature where Salmonella dies instantly. Under a second.

That is the whole reason it became the number on every package and every government page. It needs no timer and no judgment, which makes it the right number to hand a stranger.

But the kill is a curve. Hold poultry at a lower temperature long enough and you arrive at exactly the same place.

The USDA publishes that curve in FSIS Appendix A, one table for chicken and a slower one for turkey. At 155 F the hold runs 44 seconds for lean chicken and stretches to 1.3 minutes for turkey. At 145 F it runs 8.4 to 13.8 minutes. At 165 F it hits zero for both birds at every fat level, which is the whole point of that number.

Take the long end of each range rather than the short one. The short end assumes the leanest bird in the table, and you are not going to know which one you bought. Call 155 F chicken a full minute and you have covered every fat level Appendix A lists.

Turkey is the slower bird at every step, so a number that is safe for chicken is not automatically safe for a turkey.

So a chicken breast that sat at 155 F for a full minute is as pasteurized as one that touched 165 F, and it is a great deal juicier (10 degrees is a lot of squeezed-out water in a lean cut).

The same curve governs every meat. Ground beef is 160 F instantaneous, and the FDA Food Code accepts 155 F held 17 seconds for the same result.

One catch, and it is placement rather than equipment.

The hold is measured at the coldest part of the meat, which means the probe has to be in the coldest part: the thickest point, away from bone, not in a thin edge that ran ahead of the rest. Get that wrong and the number on the display is reporting on a piece of the bird that was never the problem. That is the entire skill involved, and it is a smaller skill than it sounds.

What is not a catch is the grill wandering. The chamber swinging 20 degrees when you open the lid barely moves the inside of a roast, because meat has thermal mass and its internal temperature climbs steadily instead of tracking the air around it. A leave-in probe reports that climb second by second, which is what turns the hold into something you watch rather than something you estimate. A sous vide bath makes it effortless. A smoker with a probe left in makes it ordinary.

And the climb already counts. A breast reading 155 F on a grill spent several minutes in the 140s getting there, banking lethality the whole way, which is why pulling at 160 F and letting carryover finish has always been safe.

So the chart above runs the instantaneous numbers, because those are the version that needs no timer and no probe left in the meat. With a leave-in probe you can work the lower half of the curve instead, and the better texture is waiting down there.

The beef numbers, and where safety sits

For a whole steak or roast, medium-rare at 135 F is the target most people are chasing, and it is where a ribeye or strip tastes best. The USDA lists 145 F with a 3-minute rest as its safe minimum for whole cuts, which lands at medium.

The gap exists because bacteria on a whole muscle live on the surface, and a hot sear well past 145 F handles them.

Ground beef is different. Grinding mixes any surface bacteria throughout, so burgers need a true 160 F.

Treat 160 F as the number for a grill.

Breast and thigh want different numbers

White meat and dark meat are not the same cook.

Breast meat dries out fast, so you pull it at 160 F and let carryover carry it to the safe 165 F. That one habit is most of what keeps grilled chicken juicy.

Thighs and legs are full of connective tissue that only breaks down higher up, around 175 to 185 F.

Take a thigh to 165 F and it is safe but rubbery. Take it to 180 F and it turns tender and juicy.

Higher is genuinely better for dark meat, which surprises people.

Pork and fish, quickly

Modern pork is safe at 145 F with a 3-minute rest, a change from the old 160 F rule. That leaves a chop faintly pink and actually juicy instead of chalky.

Ground pork still needs 160 F.

Ribs and pork shoulder are the exception to the whole chart. They are "done" at 200 to 203 F, far past any safety line, because that is where the tough collagen melts into gelatin and the meat pulls apart.

Fish has a safety number too, and it gets misread as a texture preference. 145 F is the USDA minimum for fish and shellfish.

Plenty of cooks pull salmon at 125 F for a moister, just-firm center, and that is a choice made below the safe line rather than a doneness style (anyone pregnant, elderly, very young, or immunocompromised should take fish to the full 145 F).