Check Your Steps: Chill: How to Pack a Cooler to Prevent Food Poisoning
By Diane Van, Food Safety Education Staff Deputy Director, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service
This summer has been a scorcher! So this week’s Check Your Steps blog focuses on a timely food safety step—Chill. You may feel like this guy, but we recommend other techniques to keep your food cold and safe – no fans necessary.
Bacteria grow rapidly between 40 °F and 140 °F, and when it’s above 90 °F outside, cold food heats to those temperatures much faster. Portable coolers can be your best friend during outdoor summer activities or grocery shopping, but pack them correctly to keep food at 40 °F or below so it doesn’t spoil or make you sick.
You’ll need a cooler:
- If your grocery store is more than a half hour away from home
- When transporting food on roadtrips
- While boating, camping, or visiting the beach
- At cookouts
Make sure you have:
- Plenty of ice or frozen gel packs
- Preferably more than one insulated cooler
- An appliance thermometer
Keep these tips in mind:
- Pack perishable foods directly from the refrigerator or freezer into the cooler. Meat and poultry may be packed while still frozen—it will stay colder longer.
- A full cooler will maintain its cold temperatures longer than one that is partially filled. If the cooler isn’t completely filled, pack the remaining space with more ice.
- Keep raw meat, poultry, and seafood in a separate cooler or securely wrapped at the bottom of a cooler so their juices won’t contaminate already prepared foods or raw produce.
- Store food in watertight containers to prevent contact with melting ice water.
- Reserve one cooler just for beverages (which will be opened frequently), so that your food coolers will stay cold longer. Limit the times the food cooler is opened, and open and close the lid quickly.
- An appliance thermometer takes the guesswork out of knowing your food is safe to eat. So put one in your cooler, and make sure it reads 40 °F or below.
- When the temperature outside is above 90 °F, put perishable food back in the cooler within 1 hour after eating. Otherwise, cool it within 2 hours.
- For long trips, take along two coolers — one for the day's immediate food needs, like lunch or snacks, and the other for perishable foods to be used later in the vacation.
- At the beach, partially bury your cooler in the sand, cover it with blankets, and shade it with an umbrella for extra insulation.
FoodSafety.gov has more information on safe food storage temperatures. This concludes the Check Your Steps blog series, but you can follow #checksteps on Twitter for updates on the Food Safe Families campaign.
Check Your Steps: Separate Raw Meats from Other Foods
Over the past two weeks as part of the Food Safe Families campaign, I’ve blogged about the basic food safety steps of cook and clean. Both are important but easy to implement in your food prep routine. Today, I’m going to focus on preventing a sneaky food safety hazard that can show up at many points between purchasing and eating food: cross-contamination.
Cross-contamination is when juices from uncooked foods come in contact with safely cooked foods, or with other raw foods that don’t need to be cooked, like fruits and vegetables. The juices from some raw foods, like meats and seafood, can contain harmful bacteria that could make you and your family sick.
When shopping:
- Separate raw meat, poultry and seafood from other foods in your shopping cart and on the way home. Their shrink-wrapped containers may leak, so place them in plastic bags to prevent their juices from dripping onto other foods.
In the refrigerator:
- Place raw meat, poultry and seafood in containers, on plates or in sealed plastic bags to prevent their juices from dripping onto other foods.
- Store eggs in their original carton and refrigerate as soon as possible.
When preparing food:
- Use hot, soapy water and clean paper towels or clean cloths to wipe up kitchen spills. Wash cloths often in the hot cycle of your washing machine.
- If possible, use one cutting board for meat, poultry, and seafood and another one for fruits and vegetables. Otherwise wash cutting boards, dishes, and counter tops with hot, soapy water after preparing each food item and before you go on to the next item.
- Always use a clean cutting board, and replace cutting boards that have become excessively worn.
- Marinate food in the refrigerator, following the storage guidelines above. Reserve a clean portion of marinade for using on cooked meat, poultry, and seafood. To reuse marinade that held raw food, bring it to a boil before using it on cooked food.
When serving food:
- Never place cooked food back on the same plate or cutting board that previously held raw food unless the plate has been washed first in hot, soapy water.
- Likewise, never serve cooked food with the same utensils that handled raw food, unless they have been washed first in hot, soapy water. This means taking two sets of plates and utensils out to the barbecue grill—one set for handling the raw food, and one set for removing cooked food from the heat.
For more information on preventing cross-contamination, go here. Check back every week for another Check Your Steps blog post and follow #checksteps on Twitter for updates on the Food Safe Families campaign.
Check Your Steps: Wash Hands and Surfaces Often
Bacteria exist everywhere in our environment, and some of them can make us really sick. Illness-causing bacteria exist in or on food, on countertops, kitchen utensils, hands, pets, and in the dirt where food grows. As part of the Food Safe Families campaign, this week’s Check Your Steps blog focuses on cleaning before, during, and after preparing and eating food to keep your family safer from food poisoning.
Can I just rinse my hands?
Washing your hands is important, and not just during flu season. Pathogens like E. coli can be passed from person to person, so wash—don’t just rinse—your hands for twenty seconds with running water and soap at these key times:
- Before and after handling food
- After playing with pets
- After using the bathroom
- After changing diapers
Do I have to wash the food I’m going to peel anyway?
Because it’s easy to transfer bacteria from the peel or rind while you’re cutting your fruits and veggies, wash all produce, even if you plan to peel it. Scrub melons, cucumbers and other firm produce with a produce brush before slicing. Skip soap or detergent—these can leave behind residue that you don’t want to ingest. Using clean running water is the safest way to remove bacteria and wash produce.
Will washing raw chicken make it safer?
No! Rinsing meat, poultry or seafood with water increases your chance of food poisoning by splashing juices - and any bacteria they might contain - onto your sink and counters. The best way to cook meat, poultry or seafood safely is to cook it to the right temperature.
How clean is clean enough?
You may have seen this video showing what overzealous cleanliness in the kitchen looks like. In reality, we don’t recommend using a sprinkler to keep your kitchen clean!
Kitchens and dining areas have many surfaces that come into contact with food. Utensils like spatulas, knives, small cutting boards and food thermometers should be washed with hot, soapy water after each use. Dish cloths go in the washing machine. Flood countertops and large cutting boards with one teaspoon of unscented liquid bleach per quart of water (there is no advantage to using more bleach), and let it stand for ten minutes. Rinse with clean water, and let the surfaces air dry or pat them dry with fresh paper towels.
For more information on cleanliness in the kitchen see Clean: Wash Hands and Surfaces Often. Check back every week for another Check Your Steps blog post (last week’s focused on Cook), and follow #checksteps on Twitter for updates on the Food Safe Families campaign.