Internal Temperature for Pork: 145°F Since 2011, and Pink Is Fine

145°F with a three-minute rest, for whole cuts. That has been the USDA figure since 2011, when it dropped from 160°F.

Why the number changed

The 160°F figure existed because of trichinella, a parasite once common in pork. Modern commercial pork production has effectively eliminated it in the United States — cases now are almost entirely from wild game rather than farmed pork.

Trichinella is killed at 137°F in any case. The 160 figure carried a large safety margin against a risk that no longer describes the supply.

In 2011 the USDA brought pork into line with beef, lamb and veal at 145°F plus a rest. The rest period matters: three minutes at that temperature achieves the same pathogen reduction as an instant at a higher one.

Pink pork is cooked pork

At 145°F, pork tenderloin and loin are faintly pink at the centre and completely safe. This is the intended result.

A generation of cooks learned that pink pork was dangerous, and that belief is the single reason so much home-roasted pork is dry. If a recipe tells you to cook pork until the juices run clear, it predates the change and it will overcook the meat.

Ground pork is the exception and stays at 160°F, for the same reason ground beef does — grinding moves surface bacteria to the centre where no sear reaches.

The cuts that want 200°F

Ribs, shoulder and belly are not doneness problems. They are texture problems.

Those cuts are full of collagen, which converts to gelatin somewhere above 160°F and does so over hours rather than minutes. Pulled pork falls apart at around 203°F not because it is more cooked but because the connective tissue holding it together has dissolved.

Cooking a shoulder to 145°F produces meat that is safe, technically done, and inedibly tough. There is no contradiction — safe and good are simply different questions, and for these cuts they are far apart.

The stall, if you are smoking

Between roughly 150 and 170°F, a large cut can sit at the same temperature for hours. Evaporation from the surface cools it at exactly the rate the heat goes in, and it looks like the cooker has failed.

It has not. The stall passes on its own, or can be pushed through by wrapping the meat in foil or butcher paper, which stops the evaporative cooling.

Brining, and why pork answers to it

Pork loin and chops have very little intramuscular fat by modern breeding standards — the animal that produces today's pork is far leaner than the one the old 160°F advice was written for. That leanness is the other half of why overcooked pork is so noticeably dry.

A wet brine of a quarter cup of salt per quart of water for 30 to 60 minutes, or a dry brine of salt on the surface left uncovered in the fridge overnight, measurably increases how much moisture the meat holds at temperature. Neither is necessary at 145°F; both buy back some margin if the probe reading is late.

Enhanced or "seasoned" pork sold in a salt solution is already brined, and brining it again makes it salty. Check the label for a percentage by weight before adding more.

Carryover, by size

A chop gains 3 to 4°F after it comes off. A loin roast gains 5 to 8. A shoulder gains almost nothing at the end, because it is already near the temperature of its surroundings.

That is why the pull column above matters most on the small cuts and barely at all on the big ones — the same pattern as beef, and the reason timing charts alone put food one stage past where you wanted it.