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undercooked

adjectiveB1+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,152 of 15,258leans spoken

Undercooked means taken off the heat too soon to be safe. Undercooked chicken, slightly undercooked, dangerously undercooked.

Poultry, pork and minced beef are the ones that matter, because the surface bacteria get mixed through mince where a whole steak keeps them outside — which is why a rare steak is fine and a rare burger is not. A thermometer settles it better than colour does.

Definitions of undercooked

  1. 1adjectiveundercookedTaken off the heat too soon to be safe.B1+

    “The chicken was undercooked and still pink in the middle.”

    • Said"That chicken's undercooked; send it back, it's pink in the middle."
    • WrittenUndercooked rice crunched between his teeth, and he said nothing to anyone.
    • UsedTest the centre of the meat; undercooked pork is not safe to eat.
    • ContrastUndercooked, not cold. Cold food was once done and has lost its heat; undercooked food was never done at all. cold →
    • Not thisRare steak is not undercooked if you ordered it rare. Undercooked means less done than is safe.
    • Exchange"Is it undercooked?""Still red inside. Give it five more."
    • SimplyThe chicken is undercooked. Cook it more.

    Patternundercooked + noun (chicken, rice, pasta) · slightly undercooked · undercook · overcooked

undercooked is a quality of cooking.

Remember it

UNDER-COOKED → COOKED for UNDER the time

It was cooked for under the time it needed: pink in the middle and not safe to eat yet.

hooks ontocook

Where it comes from

undercook comes from under- + cook.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

undercooked in the wild

  • Molto al dente is the Italian term for slightly undercooked pasta.

    Al dente

  • Humans acquire the cysts through consumption of uncooked or undercooked pork and the cysts grow into adult worms in the small intestine.

    Taenia solium

  • The parasites are spread when humans or animals eat infected raw or undercooked food, such as bivalve molluscs or fish.

    Echinostoma

  • The larval nematode is acquired by eating raw or undercooked fish and meat.

    Gnathostoma spinigerum

  • Humans have been infected by eating undercooked snake meat or through direct contact.

    Armillifer armillatus

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.