Healthy Living - Holiday Food Safety

Hello and welcome to Healthy Living. I'm Jacqueline Lapine communications director for the
Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. It's that time of year where the parties never
seem to end. Food has always been an important part of gatherings. Whether it be a Christmas
family dinner, a holiday office lunch or even a super bowl party. Nothing brings people together
quite like food. And we want to make sure that people know the proper steps to take to ensure
that they celebrate safely. I'm joined today by food safety specialist Mary Glassburner.
Mary, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for joining us.
Well we have some things that we want to go through and demonstrate real quickly so we
can ensure everyone has a healthy and safe holiday season when celebrating and cooking
for their friends and family. First we start off with cleaning. Obviously, cleaning our hands.
What's the best way to clean before we start preparing the food?
Any time you come into the kitchen you want to wash your hands and wash them thoroughly.
What we want to make sure that people understand is that you wash thoroughly for about
fifteen to twenty seconds with warm soapy water.
And then rather than using
a cloth towel use paper towels that's available that way those can be destroyed.
Great. Tell me a little bit about then cleaning our cutting boards and cleaning up after we prepared he food.
All surfaces, before you place food on them should be cleaned with soapy water.
A wood cutting board can be wiped down effectively the soapy water.
Smaller cutting boards can actually go into the
dishwasher or even into the sink with warm soapy water. Rinse well. And then use
a very mild solution
of bleach water.
And the best formula for making that solution with bleach water is
one ounce of bleach to one gallon of water.
And that makes
just the right amount to kill any bacteria that we might be concerned with.
Well, I know we want to keep our foods separate. Tell me a little bit about keeping our foods separate
so there's no cross-contamination.
Obviously we want to keep
the meats separate from
the ready-to-eat foods. These foods may not have any cooking to
kill any bacteria. So we want to be sure
we separate and keep them separate. Same way with your utensils.
You never want to use the same utensil for cutting you're ready to eat foods
as you do for cutting your raw meats. So, we're going to thaw our meat before we prepare
them for our holiday meal. Tell a little bit about that; The thawing process when preparing.
whether it's chicken planks
such as these or whether it's a cold turkey or a whole chicken and
we are trying to thaw the product.
It's always best to thaw it in the refrigerator not out on the counter. Because we
don't want the outside surfaces to be warmer than the inside. That allows the organisms and
bacteria time to grow. And that's what we want to prevent.
So, we thaw our meats in the refrigerator. If you have a turkey to thaw, you
need to plan ahead.
Because it's going to take several days in the refrigerator. Probably about
four hours for every pound. Now, if you're going to prepare food immediately after you thaw it
you can thaw it safely in the microwave.
But that would be much smaller cuts of meat. When we get into then cooking after we've thawed our foods
tell me what's the best temperature and what are some rules and guidelines that we should look for?
Anymore most turkeys have the little pop up
thermometer that comes out, but, still you need make sure that you do check the temperature
with an accurate thermometer.
We rely on those things to give us a hint
that it's about ready. But you need to use a thermomter and place it in the thickest part
of the turkey or chicken, either one, a whole one.
And you place it between the leg and the thigh, between the body and the thigh.
It takes longer to reach that one hundred and sixty five degree
temperature and that's what we're striving for is to reach that temperature.
One hundred sixty-five degrees in the thickest part of the turkey. Right.
Well, we heat our foods to the proper temperature and they're ready to serve.
What are some guidelines for leaving it out?
The general rule-of-thumb is two hours.
And that's from the time move it from the heat
and you put it in
a dish, a serving dish
and all during the time you serve it and sits out and then putting it away. So, a full two hours.
Tell me a little bit about leftovers and he heating those up. Of course, our holiday meals, one of the best parts
is those turkey sandwiches perhaps the next day. What should people know about
re-heating leftovers cold or hot?
Well after the two hours has expired and you're ready to pull your food into the refrigerator,
move them for safe, cold storage,
a large piece of meat such as a turkey or a large roast or ham
should be cut into smaller portions and, of course turkey is pretty easy to de-bone so you de-bone that
and place it into a
shallow dish similar to this, only about four inches deep,
and that way it will cool very rapidly. Same thing with any of your casseroles.
Most casseroles are in a shallow dish anyway and once the two hours has expired then you cover them and move them in
to the refrigerator to cool.
Great. Tell me a little bit about buffets and serving perhaps on a dish such as this.
This chafing dish is really nice and handy for serving
because it will keep hot foods hot
and that's what we're after is to keep hot foods hot. The best temperatures is a hudred and thirty five degrees
or warmer for hot foods.
Cold foods are a little bit different. Oftentimes we'll just put cold foods that are dairy,
for instance a cheese of some type or egg of some kind,
sometimes we'll just set them out and if we're willing to discard those
then that's probably not a bad plan. But if you want to save those things
then it's best if you have a
small bowl such as this
that we've looked at earlier and put ice in it and put your dish right down nestled into the ice.
So it's on a bed of ice to keep cold.
It also keeps the quality of the food a little better
A general rule of thumb is if it's supposed to be hot then you need to maintain it hot. If it's supposed to be cold
then you maintain it cold.
Great. Well I thank you so much, Mary, for joining us today with some really important tips.
We, of course, want people to remember the good memories of the holiday season and
not the food borne illness that could have been easily prevented.
So, we invite you to visit our website www.dhss.mo.gov
for further food safety tips and for all of the health information you need.