In the 1980’s a survey was carried out in the US and results showed that virtually all types of food poisoning was down to two main areas, improper cooling of food, and the improper refrigeration of food.
For individuals its worth remembering that to avoid harmful bacteria growing once you have bought frozen food or food that needs to be chilled you need to refrigerate it as soon as it arrives in the kitchen, so bacteria can capitalise on the sudden fluctuation in temperature immediately.
For businesses it’s not uncommon to have different refrigerators for different food items. Large scale catering companies often spend millions to ensure that the quality of their food is not compromised, as a direct result of the strict standards set by the industries food regulator, who monitor and can impose fines or even shut down the entire kitchen if food storage is found to be compromised in any way, the two most important things to remember is that the specification of whichever one you choose must allow you to ‘control the temperature’ and enable hygiene maintenance.
To keep food at the right temperature there are general operating temperatures published for example:
- Cooked foods need to be between 0 to 3 degrees.
- Frozen foods to be from -18 to -21 degrees.
These temperatures not only help maintain food safety but also the quality of it in the long term, the law also states that storage information and instruction should be displayed clearly on the packaging on all frozen food items.
