Correct Meat Temp??

[wedowee]

OK. I have just got my Bradley and have smoked several items that were great. I also bought the Bradley digital thermometer and have noticed that the recommended cooking temps vary from suggestions on this forum, ie. the bradley thermometer  says to cook Turkey or Chicken to 180 while several posts say 145-160. This is a BIG temp difference. Please explain. Thanks.

[JJC]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by wedowee</i>
<br />OK. I have just got my Bradley and have smoked several items that were great. I also bought the Bradley digital thermometer and have noticed that the recommended cooking temps vary from suggestions on this forum, ie. the bradley thermometer  says to cook Turkey or Chicken to 180 while several posts say 145-160. This is a BIG temp difference. Please explain. Thanks.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Welcome to the Forum, wedowee!

The differences in temps you see are due to 2 things:  1) changes in safety rules (or in interpreting them), and 2) personal taste.  Safety rules used to say 180F for chicken, but now 165 is considered fine "officially".  Microbiologists (Manxman--you out there?) might argue that you kill everything bad likely to be in chicken at 145-150F.  However, you may not like your chicken done "medium".  I think the most common temp you'll see around here is 165F in the thickest part of the thigh--safe, and the chicken meat is well done but still very moist.

John
Newton MA

[iceman]

Yer right on the money JJC about the temps. The ADEC DEC and Serve Safe folks all agree that 165F is the magic number for domestic poultry. Absolutley no pink in the juice and your good to go. Seems a little overkill to me but I guess they know or they wouldn't be around telling us stuff like that.

Big or small you can smoke'm all!!!