Meat Safety and Grilling Temps

Over-dried meat entrees are a common risk when you’re grilling, especially because too dry is better than underdone from a food safety perspective. Precision can make a difference, and Food Network has made it easy to hit just what you’re looking for with their handy chart for meat temperatures, comparing the USDA recommended safe minimum temperatures with their recommendations for rare to well.

Saturday Steak
Saturday Steak / Mariusz_St / CC BY 2.0

Pay attention to rest time. You want to be certain to let the meat to come up to temperature before you cut into it, and correct resting times will help you get there without drying out your meat.

Ground meat is higher risk than steak. The real danger of bacteria comes in where meat has been cut into or chopped. That means that ground meat should generally be cooked all the way through, though with steaks, you primarily need to worry about the surface.