How to Know if Food is Undercooked

Everyone has had that experience of being served food that doesn't look like it's cooked well enough to eat. Read the following to learn how to know if food is undercooked or OK to eat. You'll be glad that you know what you're eating.

Things You'll Need

• Meat thermometer
• Good judgment

Instructions

1. Look at your pasta while it's boiling, and you can pretty much tell if it's done or not. Look for a slight increase in the size of the noodles as it has swollen with water. The color changes a little bit to a lighter shade. If you bite into an uncooked piece of pasta, it will be a little chewy, so you know that it is undercooked.

2. Touch baked goods, cakes, cookies and brownies to tell if they're baked thoroughly. Touch, very lightly, the top or center of a cake or other baked item, and it should spring back up. If not, it's not done. Another way to tell is to insert a toothpick and pull it out to see if it comes out clean or gooey. Also, look at the baking pan, as the cake or brownies start pulling away from the edges of the pan when they are ready to come out of the oven.

3. Learn to use a meat thermometer so you'll be able to know when your meats are cooked well enough to eat. It may take a little practice, but it's well worth the effort. Push the meat thermometer into the densest part of the meat. Make sure that your meats are cooked to the minimum internal temperatures: pork cooked to at least 145 to 160 degrees F; beef, lamb or veal cooked to at least 145 degrees F; ground beef, ground veal or ground lamb cooked to at least 155 to 160 degrees F; fish and seafood cooked to at least 145 degrees F.

4. Cut into chicken or any type of poultry and if you see any pink, you don't want to eat this. You must also cook pork well in order to kill any bacteria that had formed on the piece of meat.

5. Bite into vegetables that are undercooked and they will only be a bit softer than raw vegetables. There's really no harm involved in eating undercooked vegetables, it's just a matter of preference. Vegetables, for the most part, can be eaten raw without problems, so it's up to the individual as to what they consider to be undercooked in a vegetable.

6. Pull open undercooked breads, and they will be doughy. If they are crispy or burning on the outside, you need to turn down the temperature of your oven, so the inside of the bread can finish baking.

Tips & Warnings

• If you've been served something, especially meat, that appears to be undercooked, don't eat it. It's better to be safe than sorry.

• Undercooked meats can harbor bacteria that can lead to serious forms of food poisoning.

• Don't try to cook a frozen turkey, large roast and other large piece of frozen meat, as the density won't allow the inside to reach the proper temperatures cooking to make it safe to eat.