infoMore information can be found here or by contacting the Environmental Health Office

infoFor a more comprehensive guide to safe food handling and the legal requirements and their impact on your business, please call:

The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health on 020 7827 5830 or 020 7827 99288 or log onto www.cieh.org

The Food Standards Agency Scotland on 01224 285100 or click here

Meat management in the kitchen

Knowledgeable handling and responsible preparation of meat are vital stages even before cooking commences. This section tells you how to look after your meat, and customers.

Minced and chopped meats, rolled joints

‘Proper’ cooking requires the centre of the meat to reach a core temperature of at least 70°C for 2 minutes, or an equivalent, as follows:

Internal Meat
Temperature

Duration

60°C

45 minutes

65°C

10 minutes

70°C

2 minutes

75°C

30 seconds

80°C

6 seconds

Note: due to the ‘mixing’ that inevitably happens to produce these products, bacteria have a greater likelihood of finding their way into the meat whereas intact joints are internally protected by the meat’s surface.

Whole cuts or joints?

Whole cuts or joints of lamb and beef are traditionally served pink or rare. However, if the meat is pierced or on the bone, you should adhere to the table above. Of course, different dishes need different cooking times. If you work out the temperature and time you need to cook a particular dish in your oven, you can use these settings and times to cook the dish in the future.

Reheating meat

When reheating meat, it needs to be piping hot all through and reach a core temperature of 82°C (rest of UK 75°C). It should not be reheated a second time.

Play it cool

Once cooked, meat that is not going to be served should be cooled as fast as possible. The safest way is to divide it into smaller amounts in shallow dishes. It should not be ‘forced’ by refrigeration as this could warm up other food in the fridge.

Storing food (hot and chilled)

Temperature control is essential to prevent risk to health and there is also a legal obligation to keep to standard.

By adhering to the following rules there will be one less thing to worry about and you can get on with serving great dishes to your customers:

Hot
Hot food must be kept above 63°C

Chilled
Chilled food must be kept at or below 8°C: the coldest part of your fridge should be between 0°C and5°C

Source: Food Standards Agency Scotland

Sirloin Steaks Great looking sirloin steaks, but does your team store them properly?

Storage advice

  • Stick to fridge layouts – raw and ready-to-eat should never be stored together
  • Raw meat should be stored in a raw meat only fridge
  • Salamis and other charcuteries can be stored in a general fridge
  • In an operation where raw meat needs to share space with other items, it should always be at the bottom
  • Raw meat should be stored in containers so it cannot drip
  • Monitor your stock – overcrowding your fridge means it has to work really hard to keep things at the right temperature, and sometimes will not
  • Label with ‘Use by’ or ‘Best before’ and storage details (‘Chilling required’). Use the first in, first out rule so that food with a shorter shelf life is used first and never use after the date has passed
  • Always check the labels – the time invested in sticking them on will be redundant otherwise
  • Read the supplier labels too – there could be some valuable information on them
  • If the packaging is opened or pierced in any way the information is no longer relevant
Internal Temp Always use a good probe

Service and Display

Service and display is also a means of ‘storing’ food so avoiding risk of cross-contamination and inconsistent temperature control. The following guidelines must be ruthlessly applied when keeping food out of its temperature-controlled environment:

  • Hot foods can be kept below 63°C for a maximum of two hours (and removed from their temperature controlled state only once)
  • Chilled foods can be kept above 8°C for a maximum of four hours (and removed from their temperature controlled state only once)
  • Separate raw and ready-to-eat foods in display and use separate utensils for handling product

After these times have elapsed, the food should be thrown away or chilled as quickly and safely as possible until final use.

Cross-contamination

If your customers suffer from food poisioning after eating food in your establishment, the consequences for your reputation and your business would be devastating.

Cross-contamination is one of the major causes of food poisioning and should be avoided at all times. There is no excuse for cross-contamination in any establishment!

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