With the holidays fast approaching, food and festivities will play a much larger role in your life. On top of all the traveling and visiting relatives and parties, much of your celebration days will be filled with ungodly amounts of tasty dishes, and if you are hosting, long hours spent in the kitchen preparing food. While the festivities may interrupt your workout schedule and diet, it could also be set even further off track by a bout of food poisoning (and lord knows you probably wouldn’t end up hosting another party if any of your guests experienced the same). It isn’t exactly easy to drag your butt to the gym when you are stuck lying on the floor hugging the porcelain goddess, puking your guts out, and getting people sick isn’t exactly the best way to be seen as a good host for future holidays (which could actually turn out to be a positive thing in the long run). Here are some food safety guidelines for you to follow to ensure that you aren’t getting anyone sick. While these tips are pertinent during the holidays, they are just as important the other 95 percent of the year when you might not be as wary with your food preparation.
The guidelines can be broken down into four simple categories:
1) Clean
2) Separate
3) Cook
4) Chill
1) Clean
Before cooking, you should always make sure to clean sufficiently to cut down on any potential dirt and bacteria getting into your food. Your hands are an obvious place to start, and you should make sure to wash them with soap, and scrub them sufficiently for roughly 20 seconds before handling food. However, people often overlook the cleaning of the surfaces they are about to use. What else goes on your counters besides food and cooking appliances and tools? You should also give the utensils, appliances, cutting boards and dishes that you are about to use to make sure that they were cleaned well the last time they were used, and that they haven’t accumulated any dust or grime while they’ve been stored.
Food is also something that should be cleaned thoroughly before you start cooking. You should cut away any non-edible leaves, buds or rotten and bruised parts, and then wash produce under running water while scrubbing out any dirt or even bugs that might have come with your produce from the store. A scrub brush is a good idea to use on firmer produce, but you shouldn’t use soaps or commercial wash products as these can be absorbed into the skin and flesh of the produce you are washing. Meats shouldn’t be washed to avoid potentially spreading bacteria in splashing juices.
2) Separate
Just as you keep foods separate while you are shopping (or in your fridge), you should never mix foods during preparation time to avoid any possible cross-contamination. Basically, make sure you keep your raw meats and your produce, carbohydrates and starches separate from each other. The juice from raw meats can contain some really nasty bacteria, and if the juice gets into any produce or on any dish or utensil that isn’t cleaned afterwards, you run a very high risk of getting sick. Make sure you use separate cutting boards to cut meat and produce, as well as separate strainers, holding dishes, and serving dishes. You also need to make sure that you don’t put cooked food on plates or dishes that held raw meat. It is easy to become absent-minded during the hustle and bustle of food preparation, but this is possibly the most important part of food safety. A good systematic approach can help prevent any risk of sickness.
3) Cook
The safety guidelines for the actual cooking typically revolves around the heat that food need to reach in order to sufficiently kill bacteria, and the length of time required at that heat to cook things through all the way. The easiest way to ensure that foods are thoroughly cooked is to use a food thermometer (stuck into the thickest piece of food), and to check against the base temperatures for various types of foods:
Type: Poultry Min. Temperature: 165°
Type:Ground Poultry Min. Temperature: 165°
Type:Beef, Pork, Ham Min. Temperature: 145°
Type:Ground Beef, Pork, Ham Min. Temperature: 160°
Type:Egg dishes Min. Temperature: 160°, or until white and yolk are firm
Type:Fish Min. Temperature: 145°, or until flesh flakes easily
Type:Shrimp, Crab, Lobster, Scallops Min. Temperature: Until flesh is opaque and firm
Type:Clams, Oysters, Mussels Min. Temperature: Until shells open up
Type:Casseroles Min. Temperature: 160°
Once foods have reached these internal temperatures, it is assured that all bacteria that could be in the food have been killed and they are safe for consumption. Some foods will continue to cook after they have been removed from the heat, which can be important for ensuring that bacteria are completely killed. So, it is good to have a few minutes of rest time after you have finished cooking. However, watch the amount of rest time that you give dishes, since bacteria will start to thrive again once foods start to cool and are only moderately warm. If you are going to let foods sit, try to make sure that they stay above 140 degrees to prevent bacteria from developing. Use an oven, a slow cooker, or even a catering chafing dish to keep those foods at proper temperatures before serving them up.
4) Chill
As important as good methods during food handling and cooking are, they might be even more important during the storage phase. Bacteria can start developing in cooked foods as soon as two hours after they have been prepared. If the food isn’t going to be consumed within those two hours, you should make sure to get the food chilled in the fridge, or properly packaged for longer-term storage in the freezer. Make sure the settings on your refrigerator are between 32 and 40 degrees and that your freezer reads 0 degrees, to ensure proper cold storage. You also want to make sure that the vents that circulate the cold air into the fridge aren’t blocked in order to maintain the right temperature--so don’t overstuff your fridge.
Foods in the fridge (and even the freezer) do still have a shelf life. Here is a handy table to show you how long you can store foods before they perish:
Type :Casseroles/Salads Fridge: 3-5 days Freezer: Not recommended
Type: Poultry Fridge: 1-2 days Freezer: 9 months -1 year
Type: Beef, Pork Fridge: 3-5 days Freezer: 6-12 months
Type: Ground meats Fridge: 1-2 days Freezer: 3-4 months
Type: Bacon Fridge: 7 days Freezer: 1 month
Type: Sausage Fridge: 1-2 days Freezer: 1-2 months
Type: Soup Fridge: 3-4 days Freezer: 2-3 months
Type: Eggs Fridge: 3-5 weeks Freezer: Beat together before
When thawing, never thaw foods out on the counter. Always plan to take a couple days to thaw the food in the fridge where it can still be cold enough to prevent bacterial growth--but thaw quick enough to cook within the designated storage period in the table above.
Conclusion
When it comes to food, safety should always come first. A delicious meal and great party can be ruined really quickly if someone gets sick, and whatever you ate will stick with you for quite a long time as well (as your brain makes a negative association between that food and the sickness). Make sure that you follow the above guidelines to prevent any potential illnesses and everything will be that much more enjoyable.
Resources:
Food, Types Of. Home | FoodSafety.gov. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. <http://www.foodsafety.gov/>.
Peter Bauman – Peter is a chef first and personal trainer second, with a background in the biological sciences and degree in psychology from UC Berkeley. He takes the tactics that work with elite athletes at California Strength—one of the leading athletic training facilities in the country—and helps to apply them to the lives of the Average Joe to get results.