As severe weather becomes more common, the increased risk of power outages can threaten food safety. Make sure you monitor your TCS foods to prevent spoilage and discard items that have gone out of temperature range. Steritech advises that you monitor and document food temperatures as long as it is safe to stay in the building. Promptly after losing power, prepare ice baths for your TCS foods. Dry ice can also help you keep refrigeration temperatures at 41° F or below – just be cautious with it as it can produce dangerous gas in enclosed areas. Avoid opening cooler doors as much as possible – a freezer in good condition may maintain its temperature for 24 hours if unopened. Test foods using a calibrated thermometer and throw out any TCS foods that have been warmer than 41° F for more than two hours.
If you’re cooking with apples this season, handling them appropriately will help you minimize food waste. The produce distributor Freshpoint advises that to maximize the shelf life of apples you buy, be careful when moving crates of them to prevent bruising, and avoid washing them until just before they will be eaten. Store them away from strongly scented produce like onions, since apples can absorb their flavor, and ethylene, which can shorten an apple’s shelf life and make it mealy. Finally, store apples toward the front of your cooler – the warmest part – as apples are susceptible to chill damage that impacts their flavor.
If you serve food from warming trays or chafing dishes either within your restaurant or off-premises while catering, make sure your kitchen team replaces the trays and doesn’t simply pile new food onto the old, which can be a contamination risk, advises Statefoodsafety.com. Further, the FDA notes that some warmers only keep food between 100 and 120°F, but hot foods should be kept at an internal temperature of 140°F. Use a food thermometer to ensure you keep foods out of the danger zone.
As the bounty of local summer produce begins to wane in many areas, your cooler can help you store favorite items and draw out the season. Make sure you’re storing ingredients in a way that maximizes your available space and keeps the contents fresher for longer. FreshPoint suggests that you make the most of the cooler space you have by storing items not in the cardboard boxes they arrived in but smallers containers that fit more snugly in your cooler. Order splits instead of full cases, particularly if you have a smaller cooler. Remove items that don’t need to be refrigerated, such as onions and root vegetables. Finally, the cold air in your cooler flows from the back to the front, making certain areas of your cooler colder than others, so make sure you store items where they are happiest – berries and carrots at the back, cucumbers in the middle and apples and melons at the front.
Foods such as cereals, rice, pasta and spices may seem benign when it comes to foodborne illness, but if these foods are cooled slowly without refrigeration, they can become prime targets for Bacillus cereus, a pathogen that forms heat-resistant spores and can lead to diarrhea or vomiting. The bacteria are found in soil and in foods that grow close to the ground. As the Food Safety Information Council reports, starchy vegetables, meat products, grain-based foods, sauces, puddings and spices are all culprits. While the spores Bacillus cereus produces are dormant, they can multiply when exposed to warmth and moisture. Cooking or reheating the food will not destroy the toxin, so to help prevent it, store cooked foods in shallow containers and refrigerate them promptly, don’t let frozen foods thaw at room temperature, and make sure any precooked foods are stored in the refrigerator for a maximum of two or three days.
Knowing the right temperatures to cook proteins isn’t necessarily intuitive. As Statefoodsafety.com reports, it may sound odd to a new kitchen employee that ground meats, for example, need to be cooked to a higher temperature than whole meats, save for poultry. When training your team, emphasize where pathogens exist and what conditions will make them multiply. In ground beef, pathogens aren’t only on the surface but inside the meat too. Similarly, sausages, stuffed meats and whole poultry need to be cooked all the way through. In steak, chops and other whole meats, dangerous bacteria is primarily on the surface of the protein. Cooking to the proper temperatures will ensure that pathogens – wherever they’re lurking in a protein – won’t survive and sicken a guest.
When large portions of food are cooling down, they can be havens for bacteria. Cool these foods in smaller containers so they aren’t in the temperature danger zone for too long. That goes for large cuts of meat too. As Statefoodsafety.com reports, leftover meat needs to be cut up into smaller portions so that it can cool down quickly. Otherwise, it’s too easy for bacteria to thrive and make the food unsafe for consumption.
When monitoring the temperature of food, the only gauge to trust is a food thermometer inserted into the food in question. As Statefoodsafety.com reports, you can get an inaccurate measure if you rely on the temperature reading of the equipment used to heat or cool the food, or the thermometer reading of the water that may surround the food in its serving container. Make sure any hot-held food reaches at least 135˚F and cold food stays 41˚F or cooler.
Your food inspector isn’t the only person scrutinizing your safety practices. Your guests evaluate you too — and there are a number of areas in your restaurant that, if mishandled, can alert people to the possibility of more serious problems. The Food Network talked to dieticians for tips on what to watch out for. In addition to the more obvious signs of a problem — dirty bathrooms, tables and menus, for example — be extra vigilant if you have a salad bar or buffet where foods are sitting out at room temperature. Any hot foods should be served hot. Finally, your staff can send the wrong message if they don’t take allergies or food sensitivities seriously, or if they are careless about handling money and food.
As menu items with fresh chopped vegetables and fruit become more popular in warmer months, remember that as soon as you cut into them, they could well become time/temperature control for safety (TCS) foods. StateFoodSafety.com says cut leafy greens, raw sprouts, protein-rich vegetables, and sliced melons and tomatoes are some of the most common TCS foods. To keep them safe, they advise that ready-to-eat foods be eaten within four hours. Cold TCS food can be served for six hours as long as its temperature stays below 70˚F. Discard the food after four hours if you have not checked the food’s temperature at regular intervals.
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