Pink Chicken: When Color Doesn't Mean Undercooked

There’s a food safety myth that’s been causing people to either throw away perfectly safe chicken or eat undercooked chicken with confidence. The myth is simple: pink means undercooked, white means safe.

Neither half of that is reliably true.

The USDA explicitly addresses this. Properly cooked chicken can show pink color near the bone and in thigh meat even when fully cooked to the safe temperature of 165°F. At the same time, chicken can look brown throughout and still be below the safe internal temperature.

Color is the wrong tool for the job. Here’s why.

What Causes Color in Cooked Meat

The protein responsible for meat color is myoglobin. It’s the protein that stores oxygen in muscle tissue. Myoglobin is what makes beef red, pork pink, and chicken pale. Different species and muscle groups have different myoglobin concentrations.

When meat heats up, myoglobin undergoes chemical changes. At around 140°F, it begins to denature — it loses its protein structure and, with it, the ability to hold and reflect its characteristic red-pink color. By 160-170°F, most myoglobin in most cuts has fully denatured and the meat appears white or brown.

But this process isn’t perfectly uniform or perfectly temperature-dependent. Several factors can cause pink color to persist at safe temperatures, or brown color to appear at unsafe ones.

Why Safe Chicken Can Be Pink

Young chicken and bone marrow. Young birds (broilers raised for market are typically 6-8 weeks old) have highly porous, incompletely calcified bones. Bone marrow, which is rich in myoglobin, can leach into surrounding meat during cooking. That leached myoglobin can remain pink even when the surrounding meat has reached 165°F. This is especially noticeable in thigh meat near the bone and in the joint areas.

Gas oven chemistry. Gas burners and charcoal grills produce combustion gases including carbon monoxide (CO) and nitric oxide (NO). Both react with myoglobin to form stable, heat-resistant pink pigments. The well-known “smoke ring” on smoked barbecue is exactly this reaction — CO and NO from wood smoke penetrating the meat surface and forming pink pigments that don’t disappear with more cooking.

In a gas oven, this same reaction creates surface pinking. The chicken may be pink at the exterior layer not because of inadequate cooking but because of gas combustion chemistry. This is completely safe.

pH variation. Different muscle groups in the same bird have slightly different pH values. pH affects how myoglobin responds to heat. Thigh meat (slow-twitch muscle, higher myoglobin content, lower pH due to higher activity level) behaves differently than breast meat under the same cooking conditions.

Why Brown Chicken Can Be Unsafe

The Maillard reaction — the chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars that creates brown color — starts at the surface and requires temperatures above 280°F to proceed meaningfully. A chicken breast in a 375°F oven develops brown surface color at relatively low internal temperatures.

It’s entirely possible to have chicken that looks brown and well-cooked on the outside at an internal temperature of 140-150°F. The surface has browned from Maillard chemistry. The interior hasn’t reached the 165°F kill temperature for Salmonella and Campylobacter.

This is the scenario that should worry people. Not the pink chicken at 165°F — that’s fine. The brown-throughout chicken at 155°F is the real food safety risk. And that risk is invisible without a thermometer.

How to Use a Thermometer Correctly

Getting accurate readings from a food thermometer requires correct placement.

Insert the probe into the thickest part of the meat. For a chicken breast, that’s the center of the thickest point. For a thigh, it’s the inner thigh, away from the thighbone.

Avoid bone contact. Bone conducts heat faster than muscle tissue and will give you a falsely elevated reading. The probe should be surrounded by meat on all sides.

For a whole bird, you need at least two readings: one in the breast and one in the thigh. The thigh is usually the last part to reach temperature in a whole bird.

Check in multiple spots for large or thick pieces. A single reading from one location isn’t definitive for irregularly shaped cuts.

The USDA’s Explicit Position

The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service states clearly: “Chemical changes may occur in myoglobin during heating, which can cause it to remain pink even though the product has been cooked to a safe temperature.”

They specifically cite the gas-cooking reaction, the bone marrow explanation, and pH variation as documented causes of pink color in properly cooked poultry.

The 165°F minimum for poultry comes from the thermal kill kinetics for Salmonella and Campylobacter — the two primary bacterial pathogens in poultry. Both are killed reliably at that temperature. The biology doesn’t care about color. The safe internal temperatures guide has the complete temperature table for all proteins.

Buy a thermometer. Use it every time. Color is a useful signal for many things in cooking, but food safety isn’t one of them.