I thought the purpose of cooking meat was to kill bacteria and harmful things like E coli and salmonella, but don’t these things all die at the same temperature?
In: Chemistry
Cooking is not just about safety, it’s also matter of taste and texture changes – killing everything harmful can be achieved at mere 75 C, or even lower but at longer time. Only bacterial spores survive that, but they don’t matter for food eaten immediately, they won’t have time to wake up and multiply.
But at 75 degrees meat hasn’t even reached boiling point of water and various other chemical reactions occur at even higher temperatures – to sear/brown the meat or caramelize sugars you need 140.
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