How SafeCook™ keeps your food safe (and delicious!)

Just turn on SafeCook and you’ll know when your food is safe to eat - and you’ll never need to overcook it "just to be sure."

It automatically tracks time and temps as you cook and lets you know exactly when your food is safe to eat – according to official USDA-FSIS and FDA standards!

SafeCook Included

Use the Combustion App with any Predictive Thermometer – your food can be both safe and delicious.

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SafeCook

Repeat after me: it’s never just temperature.

Government agencies have always presented the idea of food safety in a simplified way. You’ve probably seen the chart: 165ºF for chicken, 145ºF for steaks, and so on.

Those temps are the “instant death” numbers for salmonella.

But they’re also overkill.

They’re intended for worst-case food-handling scenarios and the least competent food preparers. 

Unfortunately, chicken breast cooked to 165ºF will be dry and desperately seeking gravy.

While chicken breast cooked to 150ºF (using SafeCook™) will be fork-tender, moist, slightly pink - and every bit as safe! No gravy required.

And steaks can be safely cooked as low as a very medium-rare 130°F.

Oversimplified rules lead to overcooked food.

SafeCook automatically factors in time and temperature. 

SafeCook uses “integrated” AKA “cumulative” bacterial destruction to determine food safety.

It adds up the body count of bacteria at every step in the cooking process.

This is the same method commercial food preparers use. But with SafeCook, the Predictive Thermometer does all the math.

Here’s exactly how it works:

  • Bacteria start dying at a certain temp (130-135ºF, depending on the type of food). 
  • The population of bacteria dies incrementally, based on time at temperature 
  • Given each increment of temp + time, 90% of the population dies (think of each bacterium rolling a d20 save and they need a 19 or 20 to survive!)
  • Repeat this process with more increments of time + temp
  • Every increment lowers the possible number of survivors by 90%
  • Eventually the death rate will reach 99.99999%**
  • Meaning about 1 in ten million bacteria are left alive (could be less)
  • That’s when your food (chicken in this example) is considered “safe” by the USDA!

For example, chicken will almost always meet the safety standard within 30 seconds after reaching 150ºF.

That’s because the vast majority of bacteria already died in the time it took for the temp to rise from 130ºF to 150ºF!

All home cooking is at your own risk.

No warranty or guarantee of safety is implied.

Please read the legal stuff below.

Use your own best judgment.

SafeCook legal stuff

All home cooking is at your own risk.

Combustion has used reasonable effort to ensure that the "SafeCook" feature is accurate and follows the guidance contained in the 2022 FDA Food Safety Code and USDA FSIS Cooking Guidelines for Meat and Poultry Products Revised Appendix A.

However, Combustion LLC does not give any express or implied warranty as to the accuracy, correctness, and completeness of the information provided by this feature, that it is free of bugs or defects, that it will guarantee food is safe for consumption and will not cause food borne illness, or that this feature will be suitable for any purposes other than to provide general consumer education about factors the contribute to food safety.

USDA-FSIS and FDA reference materials

SafeCook uses USDA-FSIS guidance and FDA Food Code standards combining time and temperature.

The complete documentation is nearly 800 pages; here are the links, if you'd rather do the math longhand:

Older versions of the Combustion app included the USDA SAFE feature. SafeCook is the streamlined and user-friendly update; both versions apply the same stringent US government standards of food safety.

SafeCook Instructions

How to cook food that is safe and still delicious:

  • Turn on your CPT 
  • Open the Combustion App
  • Where it says “Safeguard this cook with SafeCook” tap “Add” 
  • Toggle on (the toggle will turn red)
  • Choose your meat type (the default is “Poultry”)
  • Choose the form that best describes your prep (for instance “intact cut” for a steak)
  • The app will automatically show you the minimum safe cooking temperature and the required food safety standard
  • Tap “apply”
  • This activates SafeCook
  • When your food is safe, the app will display a green SafeCook badge