The holiday season means holiday feasts, and with all these wonderful meals we may be cooking a bit more than usual. While our blog is normally focused on plants and gardening, we also care about health and safety. So, towards that end, we’d like to offer some reminders for food safety and kitchen safety for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any other holiday you’re celebrating at this time of the year. We hope this list gets you started thinking about how make sure you’re holiday meals are prepared with love, care, and proper food safety protocols.
· First and foremost, keep things clean! And by “things” we mean “everything”. Washing our hands frequently while cooking is important to avoid cross-contamination from one foodstuff to the next. Anything that has contact with raw meat or poultry—utensils, work surfaces, cutting boards, hands—should be cleaned thoroughly before being reused or put away. During the Thanksgiving holiday season in particular, raw poultry is a prime suspect for food contamination or food poisoning, so clean up thoroughly after working with your turkey.
· Defrost food safely! It’s best to defrost meat, fish, and poultry in the fridge, not on the counter overnight. This keeps thawing food out of the “danger zone” for bacterial growth: 40F to 140F/4C to 60C. In this temperature range, harmful microorganisms can grow like crazy in our food and make us sick if we ingest them. Defrost food slowly and under controlled conditions to avoid illness.
· Cook food to a safe temperature! This most often applies to anything containing meat, fish, or poultry, Turkey, to use a seasonal example, should be cooked to a consistent internal temperature of 165F/74C in order to ensure both full flavor and maximum safety. We recommend using a reliable kitchen thermometer and checking the temperature at multiple places in the roasting turkey. Don’t rely on the pop-up thermometers that come with some turkeys; in our experience they’re often unreliable.
· Don’t leave food sitting out too long! This relates directly to what we just discussed about temperature and bacterial growth, and it most commonly affects buffet-style Thanksgiving meals. As a general rule of thumb, once food leaves the stove/oven or fridge it’s safe for about two hours and then needs to be refrigerated or reheated out of the “danger zone”. When things get busy it can be easy to lose track of time, so we recommend setting a timer or a reminder on your phone so that you know when it’s time to start putting leftovers away.
· Reheat leftovers safely! It may seem like this is turning into a blog about food and temperature, and in a way it is. When reheating food, a good rule of them is to let it reach 165F/74C in order to ensure that harmful bacteria or other microorganisms haven’t taken up residency in your leftovers and ensure that you won’t make yourself or someone else sick. Also: reheat and serve in a clean container or serving plate/bowl as a “best practice”.
There’s more to food safety than this, but we hope this blog serves as a useful reminder of how to make your Thanksgiving dinner and your holiday meals both safe and delicious. We also hope you’re enjoying your celebrations this week—from all of us to Gardzen to all of you celebrating, happy Thanksgiving!
Leave a comment