why is it okay to eat beef/steak at a lower temperature than chicken and other meats?
In: Biology
Every species of animal has its own selection of pathogens that can live on/in it. Broadly speaking, cows don’t harbor that many bacteria, viruses, or parasites that are harmful to humans. The main threat from beef is that bacteria get on the outer surfaces during butchering and can slowly multiply even while refrigerated. This is why a rare or medium rare steak, with an internal temperature around 120F is *usually* OK to eat.
Chickens and pigs harbor considerably more harmful germs. But many types of fish essentially have no harmful germs, which is why the miracle of sushi exists.
Also, if you heat a plate full of of assorted bacteria to 165F in one minute, a lot of them are still going to be alive. A lot less after 10 minutes at that temperature, and almost none after 20 or 30. So when we say *”you should cook X meat to Y temperature”,* there are some assumptions about time built in about how long it has taken to get there. It’s not just that getting to the right temperature magically kills the germs, it’s the fact that you’ve spent a lot of time at hot-but-not-quite-hot-enough temperatures too.
Does pork really need to be 150 degrees to kill all the bad stuff? Not really. 130 or so is probably fine. But by cooking it to 150 you ensure that the meat has been *at least* 130 degrees for long enough to kill the stuff that dies at 130 degrees.
When an animal is first slaughtered the meat is sterile. That very quickly changes because there are bacteria on everything, including the tools used to butcher meat. Those bacteria get on the surface of the meat and can only penetrate a short distance into it.
The meat on a chicken is really thin and that short distance that bacteria can penetrate into it is enough to get to the center of the meat. That means that you need to get every last bit of the chicken meat hot enough to kill off bacteria, otherwise there could be bacteria in the center that are still alive.
Cuts of beef are much thicker than chicken meat. Although bacteria can penetrate into beef the same distance that they can penetrate into chicken, on an average cut of steak that’s still pretty close to the surface. Because there are no bacteria in the center of a steak there’s no need to actually cook the center at all. As long as you’ve charred the outside, the parts of the steak where the bacteria are have all gotten hot enough to kill them off.
This is also why you need to cook ground beef to the same temperature as chicken – by grinding the meat up you distribute the bacteria throughout it, so you have to heat everything up enough to kill off bacteria, regardless of how deep into the meat you get.
Beef doesn’t harbor as many dangerous pathogens as pork and chicken. Hence beef carpaccio is basically raw. Try that one with pork or chicken and you will regret it….
Japanese eat a lot of things raw, including chicken and fish. I am more curious to know how they keep their meat bacteria free and safe to consume?
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