Food Safety for the Holidays

For some of us, gardening is a source of delicious produce and the healthy dishes it becomes in the kitchen. Thanksgiving is in part a celebration of agriculture—it’s a harvest festival intended in part to celebrate the end of the growing season. Many of us in the US are looking forward to a feast this Thursday, and while that’s a good and wonderful thing we’d like to remind you of a few food safety tips for the holidays so that you can better enjoy the celebrations. Good health practices are important at any time of the year, but especially now as so much cooking and feasting goes on. So let’s dig in and learn a bit more about food safety for the holidays!

First, let’s talk turkey—this iconic bird is a centerpiece of many Thanksgiving feasts and rightly so. Turkeys are native to the Americas and have played a role in holiday celebrations for decades. Here are a few tips for safely handling, cooking and serving your turkey this year:

• Thaw your turkey safety in order to avoid the risk of food poisoning. It’s best to thaw your turkey in the refrigerator rather than on the counter or worse yet outside. Allow 24 hours of thawing time for every 4-5 pounds/1.8-2.2 kilograms. As it’s safe to store turkey in the fridge, it’s better to start thawing a little too early than a little too late.
• Keep things clean! Raw turkey can carry bacteria that can cause food-borne illness, so keep the utensils and dishes used for preparing raw turkey separate from those used to prepare cooked food. Likewise, clean anything that came into contact with raw turkey carefully in hot soapy water or in the dishwasher.
• Cook turkey to a safe temperature, as measured by the internal/core temperature of the bird. The safe temperature is 165F/74C. Measure with a probe thermometer in a few different places in order to ensure that your bird isn’t undercooked anywhere.

Other foods require similar safe handling; any raw meat, poultry, or fish should be prepared with the same cleanliness standards used for turkey. Likewise, make sure that foods are cooked to a safe internal temperature—you can find more information for specific foods here. The biggest thing to remember is to keep everything clean: start with clean surfaces, clean utensils and dishes, and clean hands. Clean as you go and not only will doing the dishes later be easier but you’ll have a safer and healthier holiday celebration overall.

Now, let’s talk about leftovers. Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without them, and they play a starring role in other holidays as well. Safe handling of leftovers is much like safe preparation of foods—cleanliness, sanitation, and temperature all play key roles:

• Keep foods out of the temperature danger zone:Bacteria grow rapidly between 40F and 140F. So with that in mind, hot foods should be kept at temperatures above 140F and cold foods should be kept below 40F in order to keep them safe to eat.
• Cool foods rapidlywhile refrigerating or freezing in order to get them out of the danger zone as quickly as possible. Divide large dishes or large quantities of food into smaller containers or portions to help them cool faster, and move them to the fridge quickly.
• Store leftover food safelyby using clean containers, wrapping or sealing food tightly, and using airtight packaging.
• Thaw frozen foods safely. Remember how we thawed our turkey slowly in the fridge? It’s the same for other frozen foods: safely thawing them overnight in the fridge or quickly in the microwave is safer than thawing them on the counter.

This is a festive time of the year, and we hope you celebrate safely. By following some basic food safety practices throughout the process, we can all ensure that both Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season are the best they can be.

And from all of us at Gardzen: Happy Thanksgiving!