Dry Food Storage – How Vital is it to Food Safety?
Common in many food safety training classes is a rich discussion about many topics – produce storage temperatures, the temperature at which eggs should be delivered, how to wash hands, how to properly calibrate a thermometer. One thing we often don’t talk about is the importance of proper dry storage. I remember going through our food safety inspection at the restaurants and the inspector would look at it – but it was really a superficial glance at the area.
If you look at many foodservice businesses, the dry storage area makes up a large portion of their overall inventory. Proper dry food storage is not just about keeping ingredients on the shelves; it’s about keeping them safe and maintaining a proper quality, so we don’t have waste. Here are some tips to help protect those dry goods in your inventory:
…safeguarding dry-stored items may not be as vital as our perishable items in the overall scheme of your food safety plan. But it is still important to a strong and active food safety (and food quality) program.
Keep it Dry
The first, and likely most important, rule of the dry storage area is to keep it dry. Moisture is the nemesis of many dry goods, causing clumping, mold growth, and an overall deterioration in quality. To combat this, having a climate-controlled storage area with proper ventilation is paramount.
Keep out Pests
How many remember the 6” rule? It is the one portion of protecting dry goods that is included in the food code. Pests are unwelcome guests in any kitchen and pose a significant threat to the integrity of dry goods. Being proactive with your pest prevention plan is crucial. Make sure your staff seal all dry goods to create a barrier against insects and rodents. Inspect storage areas regularly and be sure the area is being thoroughly cleaned by your staff. At our business, we ran into issues with no one wanting to “claim” the dry storage area, so we assigned it to our dish room staff. Be sure to inspect it regularly to make sure cleaning is taking place as expected.
Maintain Temperature Consistency
While dry goods are not as temperature sensitive as other raw ingredients we might deal with on a daily basis, maintaining a consistent temperature of the dry storage area will help to preserve the quality. While there is no official temperature, most will indicate that a good goal is to keep your dry storage area between 50ºF and 70ºF.
As always, be sure to label any open food. And never, never, never store chemicals in the same area as your food supplies. Several years ago, before there were any regulations that prohibited this practice, there was an incident at a mental hospital in Oregon where a patient who was helping in the kitchen mistakenly brought back roach poison, instead of the powdered milk he was asked to retrieve. This poison was then accidentally mixed into the scrambled eggs. Within minutes of consuming the tainted eggs, patients started to die. In the end, 47 patients died. While this is an extreme example andm any operators will say this would not happen in their business, we often find chemicals (even single bottles) mistakenly left in or around food supplies.
In the end, safeguarding your dry-stored items may not be as vital as our perishable items in the overall scheme of your food safety plan. But it is still important to a strong and active food safety (and food quality) program.
Don’t forget to check out our most recent SafeBites Webinar, “Cold and Flu: Prepare for the Season…it’s Coming!” If you have any topics you’d like us to address in 2024, please reach out and let me know. In the meantime, all of us here at FoodHandler wish you the very merriest of holiday seasons. Risk Nothing.
Foodborne Illness Myths & Facts
“It must have been something I ate.” That’s the typical statement when a person develops some relatively minor symptoms from food. Maybe not severe enough to go to the doctor so you choose to tough it out without medical care. Sudden onset of flu-like symptoms such as onset of stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting and fever could possibly mean you are the victim of a foodborne illness. The illness is sometimes referred to as “food poisoning”, but it’s often misdiagnosed.
Don’t Compromise: Clean and Sanitize
The subject is cleaning and sanitizing. Chefs, food service directors, managers and staff try to practice safe food-handling at every turn in the kitchen. Don’t let that effort go down the drain by slacking off on the many aspects of sanitation. That includes dish and ware-washing techniques (pots, pans, equipment), and cleaning all the areas that give us that “neat as a pin” appearance in your customers eyes. Customers seldom fail to bring that soiled silverware or glass with lipstick on it to the attention of the manager or wait staff. Improperly cleaning and sanitizing of food contact equipment does allow transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to food and ultimately our customer.
The Route to Safer Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
Although fruits and vegetables are one of the healthiest foods sources in our diet, we continue to have foodborne disease outbreaks of significance from produce, sometimes affecting large groups of people in multiple states because of their wide distribution. The CDC estimates that fresh produce now causes a huge number of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States. Produce needs our continued food safety efforts at the restaurant level as well as at the stages in agricultural production. Occasionally, fresh fruits and vegetables can become contaminated with harmful bacteria or viruses, such as Salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7, Norovirus, and Hepatitis A. This contamination can occur at any point from the field to our table. If eaten, contaminated fruits and vegetables can cause foodborne illness.
Be Cool, Chill Out, Refrigerate Promptly!
The Cold Chain -- Keeping perishable foods at proper cold holding temperatures (between 28°F and 41°F maximum or 0°F for frozen food) from your food producers / manufacturers to your customers has to be one of our strongest links to safe food and high quality. Sometimes that is referred to in the food industry as “maintaining the COLD CHAIN”. Any slip ups in the cold chain, and we have a weak link. Most all of our state food regulations require 41°F as a cold maximum, but colder is a “best practice” policy to maintain.
