Four Steps to Food Safety

Another best practice to avoid cross contamination is to segregate raw foods from ready to eat foods. There is also a hierarchy of how to store foods, obviously ready to eat is on top. The hierarchy is based on the minimum internal temperature each type of food needs to be cooked to kill the germs. After ready to cook food you can store fish or seafood. Next you can store Beef, Veal and Lamb. Next will be ground meats and then finally poultry including ground chicken and turkey. This hierarchy needs to be a steadfast rule that is never broken. Another best practice is to have separate cutting boards and/or utensils for raw vs ready to eat food.

Food is cooked safely when it's cooked to its correct minimum internal temperature. Beef, Veal, and Lamb needs to be cooked to 145°F. Seafood needs to be cooked to 145°F as well. Ground meats like beef and pork need to be cooked to 160°F. All Poultry including ground chicken and turkey need to be cooked to 165°F. Also when reheating food they should be heated to 165°F. Having good instant read thermometers is crucial. You will not know for sure if food is cooked correctly unless you have a correctly functioning and calibrated thermometer.

Bacteria can replicate and spread rapidly in the temperature danger zone of 40°F and 140°F. Food should never be left in the danger zone for more than 2 hours or 1 hour if temperature is above 90°F. Walk-ins or refrigerators should be 40°F or below as freezers should be at 0°F. After cooking food for prep it should be cooled as fast as possible. They should be cooled to 70°F within 2 hours and down to 40°F in the next 4 hours. Depending on what you are cooling, be careful putting large quantities of food directly in the refrigerator. It could raise the temperature of the refrigerator and put all food in that refrigerator into danger. To thaw food refrigeration is best, however, it is acceptable yet less safe to use cold running water or the microwave.