Cooked Poultry Temperature

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Cooked Poultry Temperature

The USDA recommends that most poultry (with the exception of oddities like pheasant) be cooked to an internal temperature of 180°F at the thigh and 170°F at the breast.

Pop-up timers, a modern convenience, are usually placed in the breast; but truth is, the roasted internal temperature is more accurate at the thigh. The breast’s varying thickness makes it a fairly unreliable gauge.
We prefer a lower temperature at the thigh, around 165°F. Frankly, almost all bacterial growth stops at 140°F and most bacteria are eliminated by 160°F. Plus, we like the meat slightly pink at the bone. (By contrast, most Continental chefs take the bird out of the oven at 150°F or lower—that is, bloody at the bone.)

If you choose to cook a bird to a temperature below the USDA guideline, you should understand both the benefits (juicier, more tender meat) and the complications (some pathogens may remain). If you’re in doubt or if you prefer absolutely no pink bits in the meat, hold out for the higher temperature.
The only reliable way to determine the roasted temperature is with a meat thermometer. By and large, you have two choices: an instant read thermometer, inserted at the moment you want to know the temperature; or the traditional, leave-it-in-while-roasting probe, inserted before the bird goes into the oven. Don’t confuse the two; an instant-read thermometer’s dial will melt in the oven. Insert the thermometer’s needlelike shaft into the thigh at its thickest part, the part that juts out toward the smaller opening at the back of the bird (that is, the neck opening).

Make sure the shaft gets to the center of the thigh but doesn’t touch the bone. If it will not sta stationary, try again on the other thigh. Some recipes in older cookbooks recommend you take a bird out of the oven when it’s 10 degrees below the required temperature.
While this trick works with cuts of beef and pork, it doesn’t work as well with poultry. Yes, a turkey will continue to gain as much as 7 or 8 degrees as it sits; a whole chicken, perhaps 4 or 5 degrees. But a boneless skinless chicken breast?
No more than a degree or two. For safety’s sake, cook the meat to the required temperature, rather than relying on the slipshod method of letting the temperature rise by atmospherics.

Cooking poultry and game birds An important general rule for all cooking methods is to use the right size of container for cooking the bird. If it is a chicken to be poached, find a pot that allows the bird to be covered using the minimum of liquid, so that you end up with a smallish quantity of wellflavored stock. If roasting, use a pan large enough to collect the cooking juices ready for use in a sauce or gravy, but not so large that fat and cooking juices spit over the oven wall. When cooking, use the method that suits the bird best. Small, young birds are fine roasted, but older, larger ones may well be better braised or poached. Birds should be brought to room temperature before cooking, rather than taken straight from refrigerator to oven. Use cookbooks only as a general guide for cooking times, and always test the meat for doneness before serving.