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Comment by Spinnaker_ | Hacker News Reader

Food safety is about temperature and time. Not just temperature. When you see a temperature like 165 it means that the moment the meat hits that temperature it is safe. You can lower the max temperature as long as you increase the time the meat is held there. Chicken at 136 degrees for 70 minutes is just as safe as momentarily reaching 165 degrees.

A nice overview: https://blog.thermoworks.com/chicken/thermal-tips-simple-roa...

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That's not entirely generalisable though, e.g. not in the limit 'room temperature forever'; there is also a temperature you just plain have to get to (depending what you're trying to kill) no matter how long you hold it.

Yes but this is perhaps overly pedantic.

No one would legitimately try to cook a chicken by keeping it at room temperature forever, you still want cooked meat — it’s just that 165 overcooks it. For breast meat, you typically want 150, and you can hold it there for enough to kill salmonella.

Yes I'm only taking it to the limit of zero heating and infinite time to make the point obvious, but what's room temperature (I don't know Fahrenheit) 90F or something - call it that, point is that just the act of heating it at all, doesn't magically kill (e.g.) salmonella. Wikipedia lists 131F for 90min as being sufficient - that doesn't necessarily mean it's possible at all at 120F, however long you leave it.

the lower bound is around 130-136 - the temps where bacteria start to die. The absolute lower end is roughly where they don’t multiply.

I wish I could edit my comment to acknowledge this. TIL. Without that specific knowledge, it sounded like a recipe for disaster - slosh around a bunch of random meat in juices, incubate at moderate heat for hours, stir it up with grubby fingers, and then only cook some of it to safe temperature.

In my own life, my struggle is with loved ones who recklessly disregard basic safety advice, so I’m overly on guard for it. E.g. not wearing seatbelts level of recklessness (I really wish I was making that up), in addition to not bothering with the meat thermometer at all.

Correct, was just going to post this. This is why sous vide is so fantastic.

Yep, all about the heat work.

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