With World Cup fever upon us and most games scheduled during the evenings, hosting a Brazilian themed barbeque is an excellent way of ensuring your customers are getting some food into them whilst they enjoy a few pints!
Food safety hazards and controls of barbequed food are no different to any other form of catering. However, the risks are greater because of the potential for cross-contamination from raw to cooked foods and of the likelihood of foods being undercooked in particular, burgers and other foods made from mincemeat.
To ensure your customers return home recalling the football and not a dodgy tummy, the FSC has put together some World Cup BBQ food safety tips.
Don’t forget the basics
- Check your barbeque is safe to use and nice and clean, giving it a good scrub before you start with hot soapy water
- Ensure cook’s and service staff hands are clean before they start cooking, handling raw meat and during the catering session. Ideally a wash hand basin should be in a nearby building to easily enable this
- Touching food with bare hands must be avoided. The person cooking must use utensils to turn and serve food from the grill
- Don’t forget to fully defrost any frozen food you might be using
- Remember to keep raw meats separate from cooked and ready to eat food such as your salads and onions
- If you are marinating the meat, do not use the same marinade from the raw meat on other foods such as vegetables or cooked meat
- Food should not be prepared too far in advance
- Food to be barbequed should be kept indoors, covered and refrigerated until needed
- Don’t bring your high risk food such as salads, rice, coleslaw etc… out until you’re ready to serve your food from the barbeque
- Once outdoors all food must be kept covered until needed. Use insulated containers and freezer packs for short term storage of high risk food outdoors
Don’t get shown a red card
- Get organised and light your barbeque in advance, avoid that pressure of putting the food on because people are hungry, when the barbeque is not quite hot enough
- If you are using a coal barbeque make sure the coals are glowing red with a powdery grey surface before you start cooking. The flames should have died down before you start cooking
- Use separate utensils for cooked and raw meats and make sure there are plenty available for use
- Anything that has been in contact with raw meat must not be used for service
- Ideally the person doing the cooking should not be involved in handling the cooked products at service or when taking payment
- Don’t put raw meat next to cooked or partially cooked foods on the barbeque
- Turn meat regularly and move it around the barbeque to make sure it cooks all over
- Some difficult to cook foods such as chicken portions, should be thoroughly cooked in advance, then cooled and stored in the fridge. Then when needed, the food can be reheated on the barbeque without the risk of undercooking the interior
- Make sure your food is properly cooked through. Food is only safe to eat when:
- It’s piping hot in the centre
- There is no pink meat visible
- Juices are clear
- Don’t assume because it’s charred on the outside it’s cooked on the inside. If in doubt, use a clean knife to cut through the thickets part of the meat and make sure it’s not pink
- Some of your customers might enjoy their meat such as steaks and lamb cooked rare, as long as the outside is cooked, this is fine. Remember however this does not apply to all foods and food made from mincemeat such as burgers and sausages and chicken must be cooked through
- When you are ready to serve up your meat, don’t put your cooked food on a plate or surface that has had raw meat on it
- Make sure you keep the following foods cool at 8 degrees Celsius or below to prevent food poisoning germs multiplying:
- Salads
- Dips
- Milk, yoghurt, cream
- Desserts and cream cakes
- Sandwiches
- Ham and other cooked meats
- Cooked rice, including rice salads
- Don’t leave food out of the fridge for more than necessary and don’t leave food in the sun