All your Thanksgiving food safety questions have answers

All your Thanksgiving food safety questions have answers

Family disagreements about Thanksgiving extend beyond table politics: If you've ever stood in the kitchen arguing with your grandma about whether the turkey is ready Yeah, you know what we mean. That's why we asked food safety expert Ben Chapman to solve your most likely disputes.

Can I wash off the drippings from raw turkey?

Simple: No. Your raw turkey may be riddled with bacteria, but rinsing it "doesn't mean removing anything, just spraying it around your kitchen," Chapman says. Tiny water droplets containing bacteriacan land on surfacesfrom a meter away.

This advice applies even if the turkey is covered in unidentifiable slime. This is actually abiofilm made up of sticky bacteria that cannot be completely removed no matter how you clean it. It's completely safe to leave these bacteria on your turkey because remember: You're going to cook it.

If the turkey is covered in blood or feather fragments, Chapman recommends wiping down the turkey with a paper towel (and then throwing it away) or a kitchen towel (throw it straight into the washing machine). This removes the gross stuff without spraying germs everywhere.

How are you? Do you know when the turkey is ready?

Use a thermometer, of course. . The color of the meat or juices does not indicate doneness, as this guide explains: The juices may turn pink or clear, depending on how stressed the animal was at the time of slaughter (this means The pH of the meat). The color of the bones depends on the age of the bird at the time of slaughter. Pink flesh may depend on roasting conditions, or equally on the age of the bird. There may be pink juices, meat, or bones even if the bird is cooked, or there may be clear juices even if it's uncooked.

So you have a thermometer. What is your target temperature? Chapman said the previous recommendation was to cook turkey to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, but that recommendation was based in part on people's preferred meat texture. The guidelines were later revised to recommend a safe minimum temperature of 165 degrees, regardless of how the meat tastes. You can cook it hotter if you want, but that doesn't mean it's safer.

However, there is a way to get around this rule. The magic temperature of 165°C is the temperature that instantly killsSalmonellaetc. However, you can also kill the same bacteria by keeping the meat at a lower temperature for a longer period of time. For example, you can cook a turkey to 150 degrees, just make sure it stays at 150 degrees (or higher) for five minutes. You can check this with a Bluetooth thermometer like the iGrill. This high-tech thermometer stays inside your body while the turkey cooks and sends data to your smartphone. Compare the readings tothese poultry time-temperature charts to make sure your turkey is safe.

Do I need to wash the vegetables in my salad? What about the vegetables I want to cook? Chapman said washing raw vegetables can "reduce the risk" but does not guarantee safety. Washing a head of lettuce can remove 90 or even 99 percent of harmful bacteria, but the remaining 1 percent can still make you sick. When foodborne illness outbreaks are traced to fruits and vegetables (which are actually theroot causeof such illnesses), they are so high in bacteria that washing them doesn't do much good.

Boiling reliably kills these bacteria, so you don't need to wash the vegetables you want to cook. You may need to scrub them if they're covered in dirt, but if they look clean, they're good to go. Wash it if you want, but if you're pressed for time, why not worry about it?

When I cut raw meat on this cutting board and then wash it with soap and water, is it safe to use? Again?

Chapman said: Almost there: one more step. After cleaning your cutting board, you need to dry it.

For everyday use, this is no problem: cut the food, wash the plate and put it in the drying rack (or just use the dishwasher). It'll be ready the next time you make dinner. However, Chapman said he uses multiple cutting boards on turkey day because there isn't enough time to dry a single reused cutting board.

In this case, he recommends using a set of cutting boards for slicing raw meats and vegetables to be cooked, and a separate board for prepared foods that have already been cooked and served.

More than two hours have passed. Have the leftovers gone bad?

Not necessarily, but it’s a good rule of thumb. The advice for home cooks like you and me is to get food from the oven to the refrigerator within two hours.

This is caused by a microorganism called Cooking may not completely kill Clostridium perfringens. AlthoughC. perfringens cannot survive cooking; they form heat-resistant spores—think of them as eggs that can later hatch into baby bacteria. After a few hours of sitting on the turkey at room temperature, the spores will hatch and the bacteria will multiply and produce aheat-stable toxinthat can make you sick. Total time from oven to bacteria taking over: about four hours.

Technically, you can leave leftovers at room temperature for four hours, Chapman said, but the two-hour rule is set up so you can stand by the stove without a stopwatch. , then this result can provide a certain margin of safety. If you aim for two hours and have the ingredients ready in three hours, you should be fine.

Do I need to let leftovers cool before putting them in the refrigerator?

No, Chapman said, this is an outdated rule. Older refrigerators can become overloaded if you put in a lot of hot food at once, but this isn't a problem with products made in the last few decades.The best thing to do is to cool the food as quickly as possible: put it in the refrigerator as soon as you know you haven't eaten it.

Chapman said that when he carves the turkey, he puts the leftovers into Ziploc bags before he serves them. By breaking it into smaller packages, it will cool faster. After dinner, he wraps the rest of the meat in the same way.

And make sure your refrigerator is set to the correct temperature, he warns. Check with a thermometer: The temperature shouldbelow 41 degrees Fahrenheit and preferably closer to 32 degrees Fe. The cooler the refrigerator temperature, the longer food will last.

The main danger of refrigerated leftovers is listeria, a bacteria that can grow at refrigerator temperatures. Food can be kept for three to four days. So if you're craving a turkey sandwich on Monday, you can cook the leftovers again to kill the listeria. Reheating kills this pathogen but not the C. Clostridium perfringens- This means that reheating won't preserve food that was left out too long on Thursday.

1. To ensure food safety during Thanksgiving, it's crucial to properly handle the turkey. For instance, you should never wash off the drippings from raw turkey as this can spread bacteria around your kitchen.
2. After the Thanksgiving feast, when storing leftovers, it's important to remember that food should be transferred from the oven to the refrigerator within two hours to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria like Clostridium perfringens.

Source: aussiedlerbote.de