With the Independence Day holiday weekend, there may be lots of get together with friends and family and when proteins are being home cooked, knowing the correct internal temperatures is needed to avoid food borne illnesses. 

Iowa State University Extension Educator Tom Kienert recommends anyone cooking a protein to use a meat thermometer and not by the color scale of “doneness” because the US Food and Drug Administrator does not recognize that method for cooking meat to a high enough degree. He suggests using a thermometer that can be calibrated for best results.

“Just like clocks can run fast or run slow, the same thing happens with thermometers. Sometimes they slowly kind of get out of whack. Just like you would want to make sure to purchase a clock that you can adjust the time, you want to make sure that you can get a thermometer that can be calibrated so that way it’s giving you an accurate measurement.”

Kienert points out another key point to cooking meat to a safe temperature is knowing where to insert the thermometer to give you the most accurate reading. 

“So you want to make sure that you are sticking it kind of in the dead center as you can, get it from a couple of different angles, and make sure that you’re getting those proper readings before you consume.”  

Kienert advises to not touch the thermometer to a bone in the protein because that will drive the temperature even hotter than what the meat is. He adds the proper cooking temperatures includes steaks, chops and fish to 145 degrees, ground meat to 155 and poultry to 165 degrees.