Interactive cooking doneness guide — select a protein, adjust temperature, and see exactly what your food looks like inside.
Cross Section Preview
Medium Rare
135°F / 57°C
Adjust Temperature
Quick Select
📋 Doneness Reference
🔥 Carryover Cooking Calculator
When you remove meat from heat, it continues cooking internally. Thicker cuts carry over more. Adjust your pull temperature accordingly.
Pull at 128°F
Remove from heat 7°F early — it will rise to your target during resting.
📖 Quick Reference Table
Doneness
Fahrenheit
Celsius
Touch Test
🌡️ About Doneness Dial
Why this project?
Most cooking doneness guides are static charts or photos you scroll through. No interactive tool lets you explore the relationship between temperature, thickness, and visual doneness across multiple protein types in one place. Doneness Dial fills that gap.
What is it?
An interactive cooking reference tool that shows you exactly what different proteins look like at various temperatures. Select a protein type (steak, chicken, fish, or egg), adjust the temperature slider, and watch the cross-section preview update in real-time. Includes a carryover cooking calculator and a full quick-reference table.
How does it work?
The cross-section preview uses layered CSS circles with dynamically adjusted colors, sizes, and opacity to simulate the cooked/uncooked gradient in a protein's interior. Each protein type has its own color palette — myoglobin chemistry for red meat, albumen coagulation for eggs, collagen denaturation for fish. The carryover calculator uses empirically derived rest-rise values based on thickness.
How to use it
Select a protein: Click Steak, Chicken, Fish, or Egg tabs at the top.
Adjust temperature: Drag the slider to see how doneness changes with internal temperature.
Change thickness: Thicker cuts have more gradient between crust and center.
Quick select: Click any doneness level chip (Rare, Medium-Rare, etc.) to jump to that temperature.
Doneness Reference: Browse all doneness levels as visual cards below.
Carryover Calculator: Enter your target temp and thickness to find when to pull from heat.
Quick Reference Table: Scroll to the bottom for a complete temperature guide.