How Often Must You Check The Temperature Of Cold Food That Is Being Held With Temperature Control?

How oftentimes do you check your cold concord and hot concur temperatures?

In nutrient service nosotros must be careful to maintain proper temperatures on temperature control for safety foods (TCS), sometimes referred to potentially chancy foods (PHF'south). Temperature command volition control the growth of pathogenic leaner and other microorganisms that could cause spoilage.

Regulation

Think, most cold TCS food must be maintained at a temperature of 41°F or below. Some reduced oxygen packaged food and pasteurized crab meat must be held at 38°F or below. Hot foods must exist maintained at a temperature of 135°F or above for no more that 4 hours.

Monitoring

Monitoring of these temperatures is critical. How often yous monitor depends on what you would want possible corrective actions to be. If you cull to monitor every 4 hours and you observe the temperature of cold food to be above 41°F or hot food beingness held below 135° F, the merely cosmetic activity will exist to discard. Withal, if yous monitor every ii hours y'all may take sufficient time to take a cosmetic activity that will save your nutrient.

Corrective Activeness

For cold food you can remove from unit that is not maintaining temperature, quick chill in a unlike unit or freezer and get temperature downwards to 41°F or below. Hot nutrient that is below 135°F tin can be quickly reheated to 165°F or above and your 4 hours starts over.

At that place is a But! This only works if the original temperature reading is verifiable. That means it must take been recorded on the product package or in a log volume. The saying goes, "if y'all didn't certificate, you didn't practise it".

Hither is an example: You placed some craven soup on hot hold at 12 PM. You record temperature and place a sticker on the holding pot. The temperature was recorded at 155°F. At 3 PM a customer complains the soup is cold, you check the temperature and discover the soup is at 100°F. You quickly place soup in a stock pot and reheat. Y'all just saved the soup. But had the temperature not been recorded at 12 PM you could not have taken this corrective action and would have had to discard the soup.

Another example: At 10 AM you bank check the temperature of you lot walk in by looking at the thermometer hanging in the warmest office of the unit. It is 38°F, perfect. Around 1:xxx PM an employee mentions that the unit feels a little warm. Yous check and the temperature is 57 °F! Oh no! Only since you didn't write the temperature down it is not verifiable and the TCS food in the walk-in should exist discarded.

Same example but this time yous recorded the temperature, y'all check the unit at 12 PM and discovered the unit was 48°F. You immediately call for service, remove TCS food, place in other units for a quick chill, cheque the temperature of the food at 4PM and information technology is all 41°F or beneath and you simply saved a lot of money by taking the time to check your cold units every two hours and recording the temperature.