Days are getting warmer, baseball season is in full swing, and Memorial Day is fast approaching—all signs that the summer cookout season is nearly upon us. As you welcome summer at your Memorial Day weekend barbecue this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) reminds you that no recipe, whether it is meant for the kitchen or the grill, can be a success without including food safety steps. In addition to working to ensure that meat and poultry establishments prevent pathogens from contaminating food, FSIS also would like to provide consumers with the necessary tools to further protect their loved ones from foodborne illness.
"As summer cookout season approaches, we want to urge consumers to take the necessary precautions to protect their families from foodborne illness," said USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety Dr. Elisabeth Hagen. "By following these simple tips, consumers will have the tools and knowledge to ensure that their Memorial Day cookouts will be a fun and safe start to the summer."
FSIS has compiled all of its summer and grilling food safety resources into one convenient location on its website under the heading "Grill It Safe." To find fact sheets, videos, and podcasts about safe handling and preparation of food in warmer months, go towww.fsis.usda.gov/Food_Safety_Education/Grill_It_Safe/. FSIS also offers tips on how the four basic food safety steps—clean, separate, cook, and chill—that the agency recommends year-round can be tailored to fit summer activities.
Clean
First things first—start with clean surfaces and clean hands. Be sure that you and your guests wash your hands before preparing or handling food. Hands should be washed with soap and warm water for 20 seconds before and after handling food. Equally important is making sure that the surfaces that come in contact with raw and cooked foods are clean before you start and are washed frequently.
Separate
Raw meats and poultry should be prepared separately from vegetables and cooked foods. As you chop meats and veggies, be sure to use separate cutting boards. Juices from raw meats can contain harmful bacteria that could spread to raw veggies and already cooked foods.
Cook
Never begin grilling without your most important tool—a food thermometer. Color is not a reliable indicator of doneness. Meat and poultry cooked on a grill often brown quickly and may appear done on the outside, but still may not have reached a safe minimum internal temperature to kill any harmful bacteria. Whole cuts of pork, lamb, veal, and beef should be cooked to 145 °F as measured by a food thermometer placed in the thickest part of the meat, followed by a three-minute rest time before carving or consuming. Hamburgers and other ground beef should reach 160 °F. All poultry should reach a minimum temperature of 165 °F. Fish should be cooked to 145 °F. Fully cooked meats like hot dogs should be grilled to 165 °F or until steaming hot.
As you take the cooked meats off the grill, be sure to place them on a clean platter, not on the dish that held them when they were raw. The juices left on the plate from raw meat can spread bacteria to safely cooked food.
If you are smoking meats, the temperature in the smoker should be maintained between 225 °F and 300 °F for safety. Be sure to use your food thermometer to be certain the food has reached a safe minimum internal temperature.
Chill
Keeping food at a safe temperature can be a concern at outdoor picnics and cookouts. Too often, food is prepared and left to sit out while guests munch over the course of several hours. Bacteria grow most rapidly between 40 °F and 140 °F, so perishable food should never sit out for more than two hours. If the temperature is higher than 90 °F—which is common in the summer—food should not sit out more than one hour. Refrigerate or freeze leftovers promptly and discard any food that has been sitting out too long.
It is important to keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. Hot foods can be kept hot on the grill and cold foods can be kept chilled with ice packs or ice sources in a cooler.
Still have questions? Ask Karen!
When grilling out this summer, make Mobile Ask Karen the first guest on your list. Ask Karen is USDA's virtual food safety representative available 24/7 atwww.AskKaren.gov or m.AskKaren.gov on your smartphone. Mobile Ask Karen can also be downloaded from the Android app store. Consumers can also email, chat with a live representative, or call the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline directly from the app. To use these features on the app, simply choose "Contact Us" from the menu. The live chat option and the toll-free USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline, 1-888-MPHotline (1-888-674-6854), are available in English and Spanish from l0 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET Monday through Friday.
Grill It Safe and Mobile Ask Karen are part of a multi-faceted USDA initiative to prevent foodborne illness. Recently, as part of this initiative, USDA joined the Ad Council, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to launchFood Safe Families, a consumer food safety education campaign. It is the first joint public service campaign to empower families to further reduce their risk of foodborne illness at home by checking their key food safety steps: clean, separate, cook, and chill. For more information, go to www.foodsafety.gov.
