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Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

Funny story, I used that to know the cooked temperature of burgers, it said medium-rare was 130. I proceeded to eating it and all, but then like half way through, I noticed the middle of this burger is really red looking, doesn't seem normal, and suddenly I remembered, wait, ground beef is always supposed to be 160, 130 medium-rare is for steak.

I then chatted that back to it, and it was like, oh ya, I made a mistake, you're right, sorry.

Anyways, luckily I did not get sick.

Moral of the story, don't get mentally lazy and use AI to save you the brain it takes for simple answers.

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Do you actually put a thermometer in your burgers/steaks/meat when you’re cooking? That seems really weird.

Why are people downvoting this? I’ve literally never seen anyone use a thermometer to cook a burger or steak or pork chop. A whole roasted turkey, sure.

Many people wing dishes that they've prepared 100s of times. Others rarely make the same recipe twice. Neither are correct or incorrect, but the latter is very much going to measure everything they're doing carefully (or fail often).

For something safety critical like a burger, yes.

For whole meats, it's usually safe to be rare and you can tell that by feel, though a thermometer is still useful if you aren't a skilled cook or you are cooking to a doneness you aren't familiar with.

thermometers were recommended by folks like alton brown and kenji to get really consistent results.

i havent heard it for burgers, but steaks for sure.

I think your reference pool is just small. I absolutely use it for meat and especially for ground meat, which has a much higher chance of contamination.

I suspect your reference pool is the small one. Most people buy their burgers in a packet and hence follow the timing instructions on that packet.

Perhaps this varies by region? I don't know anyone that buys burgers in a packet. They buy ground beef and either make patties or balls (for smash burgers).

I don't do much of the shopping, but we get costco frozen burger patties for most of our home burgers. I don't think it costs more than the same weight of 'whole' ground beef, and it's convenient.

Those are thin enough I wouldn't think to stick a thermometer in them... it would be too hard to get it in the center and not out the other side, and it's pretty easy to get a sense of doneness from the outside (or cut into one and see). Steaks, depending on who's eating and doneness preferences, thermometer is nice. Roasts, almost certainly.

So your reference pool is you and mine is everyone I’ve ever seen cook a burger or steak or pork chop. Which one is smaller?

If you've never seen it and I see it all the time, I don't think it's me.

People are downvoting you because you’ve come onto a website populated by engineers and called someone weird for using objective measurements.

Why wouldn't I? It takes a few seconds and my thermometer just sits on fridge.

You're getting lots of thermometer answers, so I'm going to give the opposite: I'm also on team "looks good to me" + "cooking time on packet" + "just cut it and look"

What sort of world you must live in to find using a food thermometer "really weird"

It’s definitely weird. People cook food until it looks done, they don’t neurotically measure the temperature.

> Anyways, luckily I did not get sick.

Why would you purchase meat that you suspect is diseased? Even if you cook it well-done, all the (now dead) bacteria and their byproducts are still inside. I don't understand why people do this to themselves? If I have any suspicion about some meat, I'll throw it away. I'm not going to cook it.

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