Yanno what I find crazy? -It's that annually in the US alone, Americans suffer 45-50 million cases of food borne illness a year. worse yet & tragically, around 3000-5000 of those people will die from it each year unnecessarily. The kicker is that over half (55%) of these cases stem not from restaurants or the massive, commercialized Big Ag food systems we have through the US but come from us - we do it to ourselves and each other at home in how we incorrectly handle, cook, store, cool and reheat the foods we eat at home. I can only imagine that this figure has gone up over 2020 as everyone was hunkered down at home.
I think the easiest and most accessible control for cooking that we have is internal temperature. Simply put, cook all your hot foods to an internal temperature of 165F or higher. This temperature will kill 99% of the food borne pathogens that make you sick. But what about steaks and chops you say? Well, most food borne pathogens exist only on the surface of something not within it. When you sear a beef/pork/lamb steak or chop, assuming it is stored at the proper temp in the fridge, any pathogen element on the surface is destroyed almost instantaneously when it hits the frying pan or grill grate, eliminating the risk. The two important caveats to this are any products that are ground up & mixed together (like a hamburger patty or meatloaf or frozen lasagna, or stew or chowder for that matter) and commercial US poultry which have shown to have the pathogens existing symbiotically within the flesh of the animal. In both cases, we must reach an internal temperature of 165F to neutralize those pathogens that either are introduced internally through processing (ground beef, meatloaf, lasagna etc.) or exist within skin/muscle naturally. Beef/Pork/lamb chops and steaks can be cooked to an internal temperature below 165F because the pathogens that have shown to exist in poultry dermis/muscle, do not exist within beef, pork and lamb muscle allowing for varying degrees of doneness starting at 125F (rare).
Now that's not so bad right? I can remember that - but wait, there's more! Pathogens are not the only concern - bugs like Staphyllococus, themselves are relatively harmless to a healthy human, but their waste is not and when you leave food out at room temperature for too long, or are refrigerating at the wrong setting/temperature, these bacteria are having an absolute orgy, are growing & multiplying like crazy making millions of staph babies and with all this reproduction, they're creating massive amounts of waste compounds that are odorless, tasteless and invisible to you. To make this matter worse, cooking to 165F does not destroy them. Correct temperature controls are the key and hereto once again save the day. We all assume our refrigerators work correct and with their computers and sciency awesomeness, they for the most part do. That does not mean that we don't use them incorrectly or that they malfunction because they absolutely do to the chagrin of Whirlpool and repair people around the globe. Hold your foods between 33F and below 41F and you're properly holding your RTE foods & raw foods that will be used for making RTE foods. At 32F you're technically freezing (subsequently your freezer should run around 0F) and 41 or higher, and you've created a Tropicana vacation resort orgy land for bacteria of all sorts. For the love of god, please do not use your refrigerator to cool down hot food. Not only do refers suck at this job, you're elevating the temperature of literally ALL of your refer foods reducing their quality, shelf life and exposing them to dangerous pro- bacterial growth temperatures.
I said there's more right? Yeah, there is. Still want to cook dinner for your family? Truthfully, one of the biggest honest errors I come across at family gatherings is how and in what time frame we cool food down before puting it back in the refrigerator. This scale changes a bit state to state by a few degrees here or there, but generally speaking it is this: Crash temperatures from 140F+ to 70F within 2 hours and 70F to below 41F within 4 hours. Now this seems straight forward and it is until you realize that a covered pot of hot soup or stew or beans put into a refrigerator running at say 35F can be around 75-78F at its center 24 hours later. Want a bowl of that staph or lesteria soup? Yum. How we control the cooling process is just as if not more important to our family and our own safety as how we initially hold and cook our food.
With how complex food safety really is, it is no wonder that we are poisoning ourselves 25 million times a year in the US alone. Good folks with well meaning intent to feed their families are ignorant about the rules on how to store, hold, cook and cool foods safely. I can guarantee you that if I went out and asked random people the fundamentals of food safety - Most if not all of those people would fail that quiz. I cant help but think about how pervasive this ignorance is and how it could be oh so much better if we had not devalued the skill set of self preservation and removed home-ec from core primary school curriculum. Great, you can complete and quadratic equation - go cook dinner for your family without bending them all over a toilet.
anyhow, such an important topic of any food forum and rarely spoken about.
Eat safely my friends.
I think the easiest and most accessible control for cooking that we have is internal temperature. Simply put, cook all your hot foods to an internal temperature of 165F or higher. This temperature will kill 99% of the food borne pathogens that make you sick. But what about steaks and chops you say? Well, most food borne pathogens exist only on the surface of something not within it. When you sear a beef/pork/lamb steak or chop, assuming it is stored at the proper temp in the fridge, any pathogen element on the surface is destroyed almost instantaneously when it hits the frying pan or grill grate, eliminating the risk. The two important caveats to this are any products that are ground up & mixed together (like a hamburger patty or meatloaf or frozen lasagna, or stew or chowder for that matter) and commercial US poultry which have shown to have the pathogens existing symbiotically within the flesh of the animal. In both cases, we must reach an internal temperature of 165F to neutralize those pathogens that either are introduced internally through processing (ground beef, meatloaf, lasagna etc.) or exist within skin/muscle naturally. Beef/Pork/lamb chops and steaks can be cooked to an internal temperature below 165F because the pathogens that have shown to exist in poultry dermis/muscle, do not exist within beef, pork and lamb muscle allowing for varying degrees of doneness starting at 125F (rare).
Now that's not so bad right? I can remember that - but wait, there's more! Pathogens are not the only concern - bugs like Staphyllococus, themselves are relatively harmless to a healthy human, but their waste is not and when you leave food out at room temperature for too long, or are refrigerating at the wrong setting/temperature, these bacteria are having an absolute orgy, are growing & multiplying like crazy making millions of staph babies and with all this reproduction, they're creating massive amounts of waste compounds that are odorless, tasteless and invisible to you. To make this matter worse, cooking to 165F does not destroy them. Correct temperature controls are the key and hereto once again save the day. We all assume our refrigerators work correct and with their computers and sciency awesomeness, they for the most part do. That does not mean that we don't use them incorrectly or that they malfunction because they absolutely do to the chagrin of Whirlpool and repair people around the globe. Hold your foods between 33F and below 41F and you're properly holding your RTE foods & raw foods that will be used for making RTE foods. At 32F you're technically freezing (subsequently your freezer should run around 0F) and 41 or higher, and you've created a Tropicana vacation resort orgy land for bacteria of all sorts. For the love of god, please do not use your refrigerator to cool down hot food. Not only do refers suck at this job, you're elevating the temperature of literally ALL of your refer foods reducing their quality, shelf life and exposing them to dangerous pro- bacterial growth temperatures.
I said there's more right? Yeah, there is. Still want to cook dinner for your family? Truthfully, one of the biggest honest errors I come across at family gatherings is how and in what time frame we cool food down before puting it back in the refrigerator. This scale changes a bit state to state by a few degrees here or there, but generally speaking it is this: Crash temperatures from 140F+ to 70F within 2 hours and 70F to below 41F within 4 hours. Now this seems straight forward and it is until you realize that a covered pot of hot soup or stew or beans put into a refrigerator running at say 35F can be around 75-78F at its center 24 hours later. Want a bowl of that staph or lesteria soup? Yum. How we control the cooling process is just as if not more important to our family and our own safety as how we initially hold and cook our food.
With how complex food safety really is, it is no wonder that we are poisoning ourselves 25 million times a year in the US alone. Good folks with well meaning intent to feed their families are ignorant about the rules on how to store, hold, cook and cool foods safely. I can guarantee you that if I went out and asked random people the fundamentals of food safety - Most if not all of those people would fail that quiz. I cant help but think about how pervasive this ignorance is and how it could be oh so much better if we had not devalued the skill set of self preservation and removed home-ec from core primary school curriculum. Great, you can complete and quadratic equation - go cook dinner for your family without bending them all over a toilet.
anyhow, such an important topic of any food forum and rarely spoken about.
Eat safely my friends.