Tip of the Week
Cooling protein foods safely is one of the riskiest procedures in your kitchen. The spores of certain bacteria can survive normal cooking, and these can then germinate and multiply in warm foods not cooled correctly . However, if you don’t have a blast chiller it is not easy to cool high risk foods quickly in a hot, busy kitchen.
Follow these rules for cooling your Turkey and other high risk foods safely:–
- Do not put hot food into your fridge as it will raise the overall fridge temperature affecting all foods in the fridge
- Cool high risk foods within 90 minutes before placing in fridge
- If you have a Blast Chiller, always use it for cooling high risk foods
If you don’t have a blast chiller follow these rules:-
- Let poultry or meat rest for 20 – 30 minutes after cooking to allow the moisture in the food to redistribute. This resting time is part of your 90 minute cooling time so, once rested, you have one hour to safely cool the joint.
- Decant food into cool containers and place on either a bed of ice or on a reusable plastic ice pack. You can purchase gastro sized ice packs from your equipment supplier.
- Cover lightly with cling film and pack smaller reusable plastic ice packs on top and around the food
- Your food should reach a temperature low enough to go into the fridge within the 90 minutes window
- Cover, date label and place in fridge
Alert
Always record the cooling times and temperatures for all high risk foods cooled as an essential part of your due diligence.
Weekly Food Fact
Did you know that, in 2008, a Swedish man named Linus Urbanec achieved the stomach-churning record of consuming 31 sprouts in 60 seconds!
With each having to be skewered and swallowed individually, he achieved the title of “the most sprouts consumed in 1 minute”.
