What temp do you guys cook your pork to?

[BAPyessir6]

I usually go for 150F / 65C (give or take a few degrees either way) at least when doing chops, loin, tenderloin. My friend says she cooks all her pork to 140F / 60C (chops, loin/tenderloin, shoulder, except ham which is like 160F / 71C). As I think trichinosis does at 137F / 58C, I feel I would only cook my pork that low if it were doing sous vide and I know all the pork is a getting to the same temp.

Granted the potential of trichinosis is probably very very VERY low in commercial pork products (way more common if not exclusive to game meat/deer/boar etc.) but hey! I'm still paranoid.

What do you all cook your pork to? Any pink, or straight 160? What do you think of either mine or my friend's cooking temps/styles?

 

[msmofet]

About 160F to 170F.

 

[Andy M.]

You are correct that pork is safe to eat above 137ºF. I like it at 140ºF but SO doesn't like it so pink. So I cook it to 145ºF. That's for tenderloin, chops and loin roast. When I cook a whole shoulder for pulled pork, I smoke it and cook it to a lot higher temperature.

 

[dcSaute]

I'm with Andy - oven temp to 140'F - then rest.

there hasn't been a case of human trichinosis from commercial pork in decades.
which is .... finally . . . why the government recommendations of cook to 165'F bone dry and terrible were revised....

DW also has a "OMG! it's pink!!!" affliction, otherwise I'd go a bit lower.

 

[caseydog]

I usually cook pork sous vide, so I can cook to a lower temperature for a longer time**. I want my serving temperature to be 145F, so I pull it at 140F, then quickly sear it. There is no carry-over cooking with sous vide on its own, but the searing finishes the job.

CD

** Cooking safety is a combination of temperature and time.

 

[jennyema]

I cook tenderloins and chops to 140.

 

[taxlady]

I cook tenderloins and chops to 140.

Same here. I lived in Denmark in the early 1970s. They were cooking pork to pink even back then. I asked about it, because trichina was still a thing in the US. They told me that there hadn't been a case of trichina from a Danish pig in over a hundred years, and that was in the '70s. They still had (and may still have) very strict regulations about what me meat you could bring back to Denmark from a visit to countries outside of Scandinavia. I asked about that, because I had been eating that meat in those other countries, so I would already be contaminated if it had anything. The customs agent laughed. We aren't trying to protect travellers. We don't want you bringing it into Denmark, where it could go into the bucket that someone slops their pigs with.

 

[msmofet]

I like to cook my pork and poultry well done.

 

[dragnlaw]

I usually cook pork sous vide, so I can cook to a lower temperature for a longer time**. I want my serving temperature to be 145F, so I pull it at 140F, then quickly sear it. There is no carry-over cooking with sous vide on its own, but the searing finishes the job.

CD

** Cooking safety is a combination of temperature and time.

I just don't understand that. Why does bringing something up to a certain temperature and then removing it from the heat source not have carry over with one method but does with another?

 

[Andy M.]

Meat cooked sous vide is in a water bath that's a certain temperature. At some point in time, the entire piece of meat is at that temperature and cannot go any higher. In a 137ºF water bath, once everything reaches that temperature there cannot be any carry-over.

This differs from cooking in a conventional oven were the oven temperature is much higher that the target temp for the meat. In that environment, the exterior of the meat gets very hot and the heat slowly transfers into the center of the meat. You take a piece of meat out of the oven and heat continues to transfer from the hotter exterior to the cooler interior until an equilibrium is reached.