Be Aware When You Prepare – Food Prep Tips
The subject of food preparation covers some very broad, basic principles within food safety, with many steps associated with “risk” in some recipes. Certainly, preparation steps are where the most mistakes have occurred if a foodborne illness should occur. Outbreaks usually happen when more than one mistake occurs during prep, but sometimes it only takes one. Cooking is the biggest risk for raw foods, but all foods become ready-to-eat foods at some point in final preparation steps and that’s where the most care is required.
Food Prep Steps — Regardless of how many steps may be involved in food production and service, foodborne illness prevention requires effective food safety measures that ensure good personal hygiene, avoiding cross-contamination and temperature abuse. In small food establishments, such as a convenience store or sandwich shops, the steps for storage, preparation, and service is a fairly simple sequence done by one or two crew members. In large restaurants, supermarkets, or institutional feeding facilities, food production may span several hours or days in many more complex steps done by several food workers. Educating all workers about preparation hazards is a crucial task for managers.
The Preparation Principles include these basics:
Control time and temperature. Keep food out of the temperature danger zone of 41°F to 135°F (5°C to 57°C) as much as possible. Prepare food in small batches. Use “batch preparation” methods to only take as much food out for preparation in room temperature conditions as you can handle in a short period of time. Refrigerate food if interrupted during preparation. Refrigerate or cook food as soon as you are done with preparation.
Always pre-chill ingredients and dressings for any cold salad or cold dish before mixing them together, such as chicken or tuna salad, potato or pasta salad.
Always cook food to the required minimum internal temperature to keep it safe. Check the minimum internal cooking temperature or core temp. for each food with a stem thermometer. Temperatures vary from food to food, so check the FDA Food Code as well as your local state requirements.
[download id=”818″]Cool food rapidly. Use the 2 stage cooling method. Stage 1: Cool food from 135°F to 70°F (57°C to 21°C) within 2 hours. Stage 2: from 70°F to 41°F (21°C to 5°C) or lower in an additional 4 hours or less. To cool food quickly: divide the food into smaller portions, put the food containers in an ice-water bath, and stir regularly with an ice paddle if a liquid food. Use shallow pans – metal cools faster than plastic. You can also use a blast chiller to cool the food more rapidly. Do not cover hot foods tightly – the faster the heat is allowed to be removed, the safer your food. Improperly cooling hot foods is the #1 bacterial cause of foodborne illness.
There are 4 acceptable ways to thaw food safely. 1) In a refrigerator at 41°F (5°C) or lower. 2) Under running water at 70°F or lower. 3) In a microwave oven, if the food is small enough. 4) As part of the cooking process.
Prevent cross-contamination. Wash your hands before working with each food type (raw vs. ready-to-eat foods). After handwashing, follow a policy of no bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food as an additional food safety barrier by using utensils, gloves or paper wraps at the appropriate steps. Mistakes in the handwashing and hygiene area account for the #1 cause of all foodborne illness outbreaks. Use different cutting boards to keep raw and ready-to-eat food separate. Clean and sanitize equipment and work surfaces after each task.
Bottom Line: Think ahead – allow enough time for thawing, cooking, and cooling within the safety limits of the “temperature danger zone”. Talk you your crew about their role in safe preparation of food and be specific about the tasks they do. Each crew member may not be involved in all the preparation activities mentioned above, but it is important to remember the general principles for food safety and to follow the “prep step” rules at your workplace.
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About the Author: Lacie Thrall
Lacie Thrall passed away in early 2017 after a long illness. She dedicated her 35-year career to improving the health and well-being of others by promoting food safety best practices. Lacie worked in environmental health for 17 years before joining FoodHandler in 1997 as the Director of Safety Management. While at FoodHandler, she trained employees and customers on safe food handling practices, including proper hand hygiene and glove use. Later as a FoodHandler consultant, Lacie provided the foodservice industry with food safety information and advice through her blog on FoodHandler.com.
Exclusion and Restrictions: Understanding Employee Health and the Food Code
I received a call earlier in the month from a foodservice operator who suspected that one of their employees may have fallen ill and wondered if they had to send the employee home for the day. Once I started to ask a few more questions, it became obvious that the operator wasn’t really in-tune with the food code requirements on restrictions or exclusions for employees who may not be feeling well. Given that most operations are dealing with staff shortages currently and the fact that we are about to head into the fall and winter – when we tend to see an increase in upper respiratory and other illnesses, such as the flu - it seemed like a very timely and important topic for the blog this month.
Cross Contamination and the Surfaces that go Unnoticed
In October, I ran across a new research study published in the Journal of Food Protection in early-September. The article explored cross contamination in consumer kitchens during meal preparation. One of the authors was a previous SafeBites presenter, Dr. Ellen Shumaker, at North Carolina State University. Although the setting was consumer kitchens and not the commercial kitchen many of you deal with daily, the findings were very applicable to what we often see in the foodservice setting.
Emergency Preparedness: The Not-so Calm After the Storm
If you and your foodservice operation have been hit by an emergency or other disaster, what comes next and how do you move forward? Much of the answer to this is predicated on the actual disaster that you are dealing with – a flood is certainly a much different than a fire, but some of the food safety considerations remain the same if your business has been left intact and has not been damaged by the disaster.
Emergency Preparedness and Responding to a Disaster with Food Safety in Mind
As I write the first blog this month, the realities of the devastation in Florida are coming to light as we also deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, which impacted Puerto Rico late in September. Recent news has been focused on the recovery efforts for all who have been impacted. Thus, I thought it would be fitting this month to discuss emergency disaster planning resources in our first blog and delve into recovering from a disaster in our second blog later this month.
