What Temperature Should Ground Beef Reach? And How to Tell a Burger Is Done

A steak and a burger are not the same food safety problem, and the difference explains the whole page.

Why ground beef is different from steak

On a whole cut, anything on the surface gets dealt with by the heat of the sear, and the inside was never exposed. Grinding takes that surface and distributes it all the way through. So a burger has to be cooked through in a way a steak does not.

The USDA figure for ground beef is 160 degrees Fahrenheit. For whole cuts of beef it is 145 with a three minute rest. Those are different numbers because they are different situations, not because anybody is being inconsistent.

Color tells you nothing

A burger can be brown in the middle and under temperature, or pink and fully cooked. Fat content, pH and how the beef was packed all change the color at a given temperature. This is the single most common way people get it wrong.

“So, I think that's the most common mistake is you're not sure, so you'll cook it a little longer. And you just don't need to.”

Gray Shipley

Gray's answer about steak applies even more here. The thermometer exists to replace doubt with a number.

How to check a burger

• Probe through the side, not down through the top. You want the tip in the middle, not out the other side.
• Check the thickest one in the batch and assume the rest are close.
• Check once. Repeated probing lets juice out of every hole you make.

Carryover, and why you pull slightly early

A burger keeps cooking after it leaves the heat, the same way a steak does, though less dramatically because it is thinner. Pulling at about 155 and letting it sit a couple of minutes lands you at 160 without overshooting into something dry.

Cooking to 160 without a dry burger

“You don't want a lean burger. You don't want some silly 90-10. You know, get a good 80-20, 75-25 blend.”

Gray Shipley

This is the practical argument for 80/20 again. At 160 degrees, a lean patty is dry and a fattier one is not. The ratio is how you get a burger that is both fully cooked and worth eating.

“I like a thicker burger. You know, when you get that sear and the crunch and the smash burger, that's pretty good. But I like a good, thick burger.”

Gray Shipley

Thickness helps too. A thicker patty takes longer to come up, which gives you a margin that a thin one never offers.

Thermometer technique is covered in how to use a meat thermometer, and the grill method is in how to grill burgers.