Is It Safe To Eat Beef Chorizo That's Still A Little Pink?

For as many kinds of chorizo varieties as there are in creation, there exist even more ways to make them. Whether cured and sliced to fill the perfect charcuterie board, or uncased raw, sautéed, and crumbled into tacos, chorizo has countless applications. Beef chorizo can be swapped for plenty of preparations that call for the more standard pork, and it can be just as tricky to evaluate its doneness based on looks alone due to the red hue that the standard seasonings and spices impart to chorizo meat.

Although it might be safe to consume beef chorizo with a bit of pink, the color's intensity is not an accurate assessment for certainty. Beef color, whether it's the rouge of a perfectly formed burger patty, or the medium-rare interior of an excellent butter basted steak, just isn't a reliable enough metric for something as critical as potential foodborne illness. Sure, you can spot the difference between some raw and cooked meats in less than the blink of an eye, but the stages in between can be misleading. And beef chorizo can be particularly misleading, as its appearance is fairly consistently pink throughout its cook time. You'll need a meat thermometer for the best read.

The USDA advises that beef sausage varieties be cooked to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. That's easy enough to check with a meat thermometer like ThermoWorks' ThermoPop2 in some cases. You simply pierce one end of a link and watch the numbers climb. A thermometer will be less effective if you've already sliced the meat, so make sure to go in when the link is still whole. Toss it back over the flame if it comes up under, and you've still saved time you'd have otherwise wasted on guesswork. 

To check the temperature of a sliced sausage medallion, slide the thermometer in widthwise for the best results. The metal, of course, will not touch as much interior area as it would with a whole link, but this will increase its reach versus a top-down approach. Crumbles present more of a challenge, but, as the USDA states, it's still safest to rely on a meat thermometer for ground beef. Remove a portion from its heat source and nestle the thermometer in, checking for 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Making sure you also cook the meat for an adequate amount of time is important. Eight to ten minutes over medium is the generally recommended length of time for fully cooking loose chorizo.