Basheer Tome / CC

Food safety when cooking meat this spring and summer may not be on top of everyone’s mind but it was on Doctor Xianqin Yang’s and members of her research team.
A new study from the research scientist and her team looked at the optimal cooking temperatures for different meats including steaks, roasts and minute steaks.
The team at the AAFC Lacombe Research and Development Centre found that evenness plays a big role in killing E. coli.
In steaks, flipping the meat twice while grilling eliminated more bacteria than a single flip while cooked at an internal temperature of 63 degrees Celsius.
As for roasts, cooking them at 140 to 180 degrees Celsius with an internal temperature of 63 degrees is recommended.
Then for cooking minute steaks or cube steaks the recommended internal cooking temperature is 71 degrees, the same recommended temperature for hamburger. Every year approximately 4 million Canadians are affected by food-borne illnesses.