Minced, reformed and rolled meat — burgers, sausages, meatballs, kebabs, rolled joints — must be cooked through to the centre, not served pink.
Requirement — Food safety (microbiological)
Minced, reformed and rolled meat — burgers, sausages, meatballs, kebabs, rolled joints — must be cooked through to the centre, not served pink.
Target: 70°C in the thickest part, or an equivalent from the table below.
How to tell, without a thermometer
- No pink in the centre when one is cut open
- Juices run clear
- Steaming hot right through
If it has not got there: Return it to the basket for two or three minutes and check again. Cutting one open to look is a legitimate test and costs you one sausage.
| Temperature | Held for | Measured at |
|---|---|---|
| 70°C | 2 min | the centre of the thickest piece |
| 75°C | 30 sec | the centre of the thickest piece |
Why this is the rule
Mincing, reforming and rolling all move surface bacteria into the middle of the product. On a whole cut of beef the interior is effectively sterile and searing the outside is sufficient, which is why a steak may be served rare. On anything minced, reformed, rolled or pierced that reasoning does not hold and the centre must reach the same standard as the surface. Sausages are the case people get wrong most often in an air fryer, because the skin browns and tightens early and looks finished; burgers are the case that matters most, because the failure is invisible.
This outranks any cooking time on this site. Where a cooking recommendation cannot be reconciled with a rule like this one, AirfryerHQ does not publish the recommendation — not with a warning attached, not greyed out, not at all.
Evidence and confidence
- Applies to
- Specific to this food
- Why this rating
- Passage-verified against the FSA's own list, which is wider than our earlier rule covered. The mechanism — mincing distributes surface contamination through the product — is not in dispute anywhere.
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-13
What this does not cover
- Does not apply to whole cuts of beef or lamb, where the interior is not contaminated in the same way.
- Kebabs and offal are named by the authority and have no forms in the AirfryerHQ catalogue yet, so the rule governs them in principle and reaches no page in practice.
Sources (1)
Food Standards Agency — UK food-safety authority (United Kingdom (England, Wales and Northern Ireland))
Relied on for: That all minced meat, burgers, sausages, kebabs, rolled joints and offal need to be cooked all the way through, and the time-and-temperature pairs the target is expressed with.
States this directly
Passage read and verified
Retrieved 2026-08-13 from gov.uk
Foods this governs
- Sausages — Skins that brown early and centres that finish late — the classic false-done food.
- Beef burger — Minced, so it must be cooked through — and the published times run from seven minutes to twenty-four, depending on the machine, the amount and whether the table names a state.
- Meatballs — Seven minutes at 190°C for inch balls — fast, and minced, so cooked through.
- Turkey burgers — One manufacturer grills four 125g turkey burgers for ten to thirteen minutes and says there is no need to flip; it does not say fresh or frozen.
- Chicken sausages — One manufacturer grills twelve for nine to twelve minutes on its lowest plate setting, two minutes longer than its pork sausages; it does not say fresh or frozen.
- Hot dogs — One manufacturer grills fifteen hot dogs for three to five minutes, and does not say whether they are frozen.