Salmonella and the Smoker: The Exact Temperature and Time That Kills It

The belief worth correcting: 165F is not the safety line

Most readers arrive believing 165F is the temperature that kills salmonella and anything below it is a gamble. That is not what the data says. 165F is where the required hold time rounds to zero seconds, which makes it a convenience number, not a threshold.

Four terms, one sentence each. Hold time is the clock that starts once the coldest part of the meat reaches target and stays at or above it. Pasteurization means the pathogen load has been driven to a defined safe level, not that the meat is sterile. A 7-log reduction is that defined level: all but one bacterium in ten million, the standard commercial processors are held to. Instant kill means the hold time rounds to zero.

The whole system around this one bug lives in our pillar guide to smoked meat food safety, the danger zone and the 140F line. Salmonella is the pathogen the tables are built around: Appendix A sets its hold times against a 7-log salmonella reduction, so a cook that satisfies the salmonella row has already dealt with E. coli, including O157:H7, and Listeria.

What a lid opening actually costs, measured

Field note from a 22 inch kettle running an offset snake, grate temp steady at 275F, ambient 61F, a bone-in chicken thigh probed in the thickest part with a two-probe leave-in thermometer. Lid up for 40 seconds to move a piece. Internal read 149F at the moment the lid came off, sagged to 143F, and took 6 minutes 20 seconds to climb back to 149F. A 6F drop and better than six minutes of recovery, on a small cooker at a hot pit temp, for less than a minute of lid time.

The lower you set your hold, the more expensive every lid opening becomes.

Plan the cook so the hold is possible

A hold you cannot schedule is a hold you will not finish. Size the cook first, then pick the row your gear can defend.

A worked hold: beef at 150F on a pit

Say you are finishing a pork loin or a beef roast and you want the 150F row, which owes about 1 minute for beef, pork and lamb. Set the pit at 250F to 275F and expect the grate to swing roughly 25F either side of setpoint on a live fire, which is why the target internal, not the pit reading, runs the clock. Leave two probes in: one in the thickest part of the meat, one at the grate. When the meat probe reads 150F, start a timer. Because a 25F pit swing only moves the deep interior slowly, one banked minute is easy to bank twice over, so run the timer to 3 minutes and pull. If the internal sags below 150F at any point, note the time, wait for it to climb back, and restart the timer from zero. Even with one 40 second lid opening, a 6F sag and a six minute recovery, you finish the obligation inside about 10 minutes of wall clock.

Now run the same protocol at 140F on beef and it stops being casual: 12 banked minutes, and a probe error of 3F erases the hold. What interruptions do to those numbers is worked out above in what a lid opening actually costs. That is the honest verdict: a 140F hold is practical in sous vide, where the temperature does not move and the come-up rate is knowable, and not on a pit. On live fire, choose 150F, or for poultry pull at 165F. If you want to check your own numbers against the source rows, see how to verify a pasteurizing hold on a real smoker.

• Probe the thickest part, not the easiest part. The ladder measures the coldest spot.
• Start the hold timer when the probe reads target, not when the pit does.
• If internal drops below target, note the time and restart the clock when you come back.
• Pick 150F over 140F on live fire for the 10F of cushion.
• For poultry on a smoker, skip the arithmetic and pull at 165F.

FAQ

What temperature kills salmonella instantly?

165F for poultry and 158F for beef, pork and lamb. Those are the instant-kill thresholds, meaning the required hold time is effectively zero seconds, and they are exactly why the familiar USDA consumer targets exist.

Does salmonella die at 150 degrees?

Yes. At a steady internal 150F, poultry is pasteurized after about 3 minutes and beef, pork or lamb after about 1 minute. Both are published Appendix A figures. Our breakdown of how long at 150F it takes to kill bacteria covers the caveats.

How long does salmonella take to die at 140F?

About 26 minutes for poultry and about 12 minutes for beef, pork and lamb, held at a true 140F internal. 140F is the low end of the safe range with no margin, so every temperature swing costs you elapsed time; see what a lid opening actually costs above for the measured numbers.

Can salmonella survive smoking?

Yes, if the meat never reaches a killing time-and-temperature combination. Smoke is flavor, not a sanitizer. Between 40F and 130F bacteria actively multiply, and below about 130F they are not reliably killed at all, so a smoke that stalls in that band is a growth chamber, not a cook.

Is 145F enough to kill salmonella in chicken?

Our source does not publish a 145F row, so the honest answer is an interpolated bracket of about 3 to 26 minutes for poultry, and that is a hold a pit cannot document. On a smoker, pull chicken at 165F. If you want chicken finished in the 140F to 150F band, do it sous vide, where the bath temperature and come-up rate are both knowable.

Does killing salmonella mean E. coli and Listeria are dead too?

Yes. Salmonella is the pathogen USDA builds its poultry tables around, and Appendix A prices its hold times against a 7-log salmonella reduction, so any time-and-temperature combination that satisfies a salmonella row has already handled E. coli, including O157:H7, and Listeria. Set your target, start the timer when the meat probe says so, and let the ladder do the rest.