Food Safety

I’ll Take you Right Out of the Danger Zone:

FOOD SAFETY DOS AND DON’TS DURING THE HOLIDAYS

Food safety is important year-round, but never more so than during the holidays. With a plethora of activities and celebrations packed into such a short period, no one wants to spend even a second of it feeling under the weather, no matter the cause (and there are already plenty of causes like colds and flus).

Given that the holidays tend to revolve around food, there are no shortage of potentially risky situations when it comes to foodborne illness. Holiday feasts where dishes sit out in the “danger zone” longer than they ought to, potlucks and buffets where there may be cross contamination, and plenty of alcohol in the mix to impair peoples’ judgment, can all put a damper on the party if food safety is compromised. Let’s take a look at what you can do to keep you and your guests safe.

The Danger Zone

While we are not referring to the catchy tune from Top Gun here, it doesn’t hurt to get it stuck in your head if it helps you to remember the concept. When talking about food safety, the danger zone refers to the temperature range in which bacteria is most likely to grow. Allowing food to hang out between 40° F and 140° F (4° C and 60° C) is what we are trying to avoid here. Specifically, this means not allowing food to sit out for more than two hours, or one hour if the temperature is above 90° F (32° C), the latter of which should not be too much of an issue in Alberta in the winter, unless you are planning to dine in a sauna.

A good rule to follow to avoid flirting with the danger zone, is to remember to keep hot foods hot, and cold foods cold. An accurate and reliable thermometer is your best friend when it comes to checking and ensuring that temperatures are where they need to be. Investing in a good one, like the Thermapen (thermoworks.com/thermapen-one) is an excellent idea, and they often go on sale, especially around the holidays. To prioritize keeping the hot hot, and the cold cold, there are a number of things you can do to keep yourself on track. While it may sound obvious, timers and alarms are a good starting point. It’s easy to lose track of time when entertaining, so setting a 2-hour timer when food is put out at room temperature, to remind you when it needs to get back in the fridge is a good idea.

Also, when serving meals buffet-style, investing in the proper set up to hold dishes at the right temperature is ideal. Chafing dishes with Sterno burners ensure that your hot options stay nice and toasty, while nesting cold dishes in an ice bath ensure that they stay chilled. Be especially mindful with dairy-centric options, like eggnog for example, as milk products are a breeding ground for bacteria and keeping everything adequately cool is your best defense.

Thawing and Holding Food Pre-Meal

Everyone has a holiday image of a family member thawing a frozen turkey in a peculiar way. Maybe it was left in the garage until it was ready to cook, or in a panic when someone remembered that they hadn’t pulled it from the freezer soon enough, it sat out at room temperature overnight. While people do these kinds of things all the time and don’t get sick, the reality is, it is always a risk to leave food in the danger zone for more than two hours. So if you decide to take that risk, at least let it be an informed one.

Thankfully, there are things you can do to avoid the highway to the danger zone (I couldn’t resist). The best place to thaw a frozen turkey is the fridge, as it ensures that the temperature stays consistent. It takes about a day to thaw 4 to 5 pounds worth of bird, so give yourself three to four days for a 15 to 16 pounder. If you need to speed up the process, thawing it in an ice bath in the sink is a much better option than just leaving it on the counter. It will actually thaw much faster because the water circulating around the bird will speed up the process. Allowing half an hour to thaw for every pound of meat should do the trick when using this method.

When whipping up a feast around the holidays, refrigerator space inevitably becomes a limitation. While it’s tempting to stuff your fridge to the brim to fit in every last bit of goodness, you are actually taking a risk by dropping the temperature and potentially creating an environment where food sits in the danger zone longer than you are aware of. One way to avoid this is to sit down and make a schedule of all your meal plans, prepping a list of what you need to buy or thaw and when, so that it doesn’t all get thrown into the fridge at the same time. Even in doing this, you could likely run out of space. Having an extra cooler or two on standby doesn’t hurt. Depending on the weather, keeping these outside could make sense. You will also want to have plenty of extra ice handy so that you can keep everything as cold as it needs to be. Lastly, your thermometer will come in handy here, checking regularly to ensure that you are adequately recreating the conditions of an actual fridge.

Cross Contamination and Spoilage

We’ve focused mostly on temperature control as the biggest threat to food safety, however there are other issues to keep an eye out for. Avoid cross contamination, aka mixing and matching food items that don’t belong together.

For example, never cut vegetables on the same cutting board that you just used for raw meat, even if they are cooked. To avoid this, it could even be helpful to have colour-coded cutting boards for different food items, so there is never any risk of overlap. For example, only using a green board for vegetables, while a blue board gets used for chicken and poultry. Hand washing is another key defense against cross contamination, as well as frequently sanitizing and changing kitchen towels and dish clothes so that they don’t become sponges for bacteria.

Spoilage is another concern to consider, to avoid food going bad faster than it needs to (see temperature control points above) and to act accordingly when it does. Take a hint from the chef’s playbook and get in the habit of labelling and dating all your food and leftovers, so you are not relying on your brain to remember when it needs to be thrown out. FIFO, or, first in, first out, also helps to organize your fridge so that the oldest things don’t get forgotten in the back recesses. If something is walking the line of good or bad, when it doubt - throw it out.

Don’t take the risk if you don’t have to; this may be the moral of everything we’ve covered here. There are always going to be risks when cooking foods that you’ve procured from elsewhere. We can’t control every step of the process, but we can control how we cook and store our food to avoid the danger zone, cross contamination, and spoilage.

judgment, can all put a damper on the party if food safety is compromised. Let’s take a look at what you can do to keep you and your guests safe.