MeatLogic

Editorial standards

MeatLogic publishes internal cooking temperatures and curing-salt doses. Numbers like those can make someone ill if they are wrong, so this page sets out where they come from and how they are checked.

Who writes this

MeatLogic is written and maintained by The MeatLogic Team, which also builds and maintains the calculators. Every article carries a byline.

Where the numbers come from

Safe minimum internal temperatures come from USDA FSIS. Sous vide pasteurization times come from Douglas Baldwin’s published tables, which state their own basis: at least a million-to-one reduction in Listeria and a ten-million-to-one reduction in Salmonella. Barbecue pull temperatures and cooking rates come from commonly published pitmaster guidance and are presented as ranges, because that is honestly what they are.

Every one of those numbers lives in a single file that both the calculators and the meat temperature chart read from. If a calculator ever disagreed with the chart, that is a bug rather than a difference of opinion. Each value carries a source note in the code, and changing one without a source is treated as a regression.

The high-altitude adjustment in the smoking calculator comes from USDA FSIS, High Altitude Cooking, which says meat cooked by moist heat may take up to a quarter longer at 5,000 feet, and in the same breath says to use sea-level times when oven-roasting, because oven temperature does not change with altitude. Barbecue is dry roasting. The exception is the stall, which is evaporative cooling, and wrapping in foil, which is a braise. So the adjustment is applied to cuts that stall and to no others: nothing below 3,000 feet, rising to the full quarter at 5,000, and held there above it. Elevation and weather come from Open-Meteo under the CC BY 4.0 license, and only when you ask for them.

How the calculators handle uncertainty

  • Answers are ranges. Two briskets of identical weight can finish two hours apart. A single number would be a false precision.
  • Rounding always goes the safe way. The sous vide calculator rounds thickness up to the next row of the published table, never down, because a shorter time than the food needs is the one error that makes people ill.
  • Outside the published data, the answer is a refusal. A thickness or bath temperature no table covers returns a warning rather than an extrapolated guess. Above 5,000 feet, where USDA publishes no figure, the altitude adjustment is pinned to the last published one and labeled as pinned. Printing the sea-level number to someone in the mountains would be a silent wrong answer rather than an honest absence of one.
  • Weather is described, never calculated. Wind, air temperature and humidity all genuinely affect a cook, but no published source gives a coefficient for how much, so this site does not invent one. Those conditions produce notes about running the fire. They change no number on any page.
  • Unsafe combinations are labeled, not hidden. A 130°F bath pasteurizes nothing. It is still offered, because omitting it would not stop anyone using it, it would only mean they never saw the warning.

Product recommendations

  • Specifications and prices are taken from research at the time of writing and are never invented. Where a figure could not be verified, it is left out.
  • Ratings are published only with a source and a date. Retailer and manufacturer ratings move constantly, so a bare star count means nothing on its own. Where one appears it names the site it came from and the day it was read, and where two sources disagree both are given rather than the flattering one. Products still carry an explicit editorial pick label; the rating is context, not the recommendation.
  • Links use product search URLs rather than guessed product IDs, so a link never points at the wrong item.
  • Recommendations are not influenced by commission. Where a cheaper product is the better answer, that is what the article says.

Affiliate disclosure

MeatLogic participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, MeatLogic earns from qualifying purchases. Articles containing product links carry this disclosure at the top. A purchase made through one of those links may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See privacy and terms for the full statement.

Corrections

Articles show a published date and a last-updated date. Gear articles cite prices that move, so they are reviewed more often than the technique guides. If you find a number here that contradicts USDA guidance, treat USDA as correct and the page as wrong, and please tell us so it can be fixed.

What this page is not

MeatLogic provides general cooking information, not food-safety certification or professional advice. Cooking times are estimates and no calculator can know your pit or your particular cut of meat. It can be told your elevation, and that does change the estimate, but only within the bounds of the one published figure it has to work from. Always verify doneness with a calibrated probe thermometer.