I'm Just Here for the Food (48 page)

THE ZONE

The temperature range from 40° to 140° F is referred to as the Danger Zone because most bacteria multiply readily within this window. And that’s not good, because the more of these little bugs there are, the more likely you are to get sick—and of course the quicker the food’s going to spoil. You might argue that the bacteria that accumulate in a piece of raw chicken left on a counter for 5 hours may indeed be killed by proper cooking, but why run the risk? Also, that piece of chicken will leave a lot of bacteria on everything it touches, thus increasing the chance for cross contamination. Outside the Zone, bacteria advancement slows radically, or even stops altogether (although some bacteria can remain active well below the freezing point).

ACID

The strange case of fresh mayonnaise: Fresh mayonnaise is made with raw egg yolks, and that should tell you right off the bat that if you’re going to risk eating something that may, could, just might have a touch of
salmonella
in it, the very least you should do is get it in the fridge lickety-split, right? That way the cold and the acid in the vinegar can kick microbial butt, right? Wrong. Freshly made mayo is better off sitting on your kitchen counter for 8 to 12 hours after it’s made. How can this be? Turns out that acid is a very good disinfectant because acid coagulates proteins, and when cells get their proteins coagulated, they curl up and die. Acid assassinates best at room temperature. Nobody knows why. But if you refrigerate that golden goo right away, the best thing that will happen is the bacteria inside will stop reproducing. They won’t be nuked, however, as they would on the counter. So when it comes to acid, colder is not always better, sanitationally speaking.

MORE BAD NEWS

The globalization of our food supply—a result of our demand for strawberries in December and table grapes year round—requires that food, specifically produce, travel from further and further away. The consequence is
salmonella
on cantaloupes,
shigella
on green onions, and a host of other problems. Here at home, the upsurge in organic growing may also be a factor.

What You Can Do

At the Market

If you’ve never taken a close look at your market, take time to do it, because it doesn’t matter how carefully your food is raised and processed if it’s mishandled in transit or at the market itself. Some things to check for:

General cleanliness
Dark, dingy, or dirty stores are generally run by dark, dingy, or dirty management and should be avoided.

Meat department
If there are open cases, check a few meat packages. Are they tightly sealed? Do you see any leaking juices? Are the cases themselves clean? Are thermometers present? If not, bring one in and take the cases’ temperature yourself (an instant-read will arouse less suspicion, as you won’t have to stand around and wait for it to register). If it’s 40° F. or higher, mention it to the department manager. If he or she doesn’t jump, show them your thermometer and drop a reference to the article you’re writing for the local newspaper. That’ll put a chill in ’em.

Look in any closed cases
Meat should be on clean trays, and there should be thermometers aplenty. Fish should be on lots of clean, well-drained ice. Now close your eyes and smell the air—really smell, the way Hannibal Lecter did when he was trying to figure out what perfume Agent Starling was wearing. If you smell anything other than clean, there’s a problem somewhere.

Dairy and egg case
Again, check your thermometer. If you really want to know, stick the probe right into an egg (yes, you’ll then have to buy the carton). If it doesn’t read 40° F. or below, tell somebody, and if they don’t do anything about it, buy your eggs elsewhere.

Produce department
Most folks don’t think of fruits and vegetables as being high-risk foods pathogenically speaking, but because of their high moisture content and neutral pH, most of these make excellent bacteria resorts. And don’t forget that produce does grow in dirt, and dirt is full of . . . you got it. I remember seeing a couple of very serious guys in white jackets rush into a produce department and remove every single alfalfa sprout in the place; alfalfa sprouts are major
salmonella
carriers (though not as bad as turtles and iguanas).

My favorite fresh market keeps all its produce on big carts that roll into giant walk-in refrigerators each night. During the day, highly perishable vegetables like broccoli and spinach and the like are kept on nice clean ice. There are no misting systems. I hate mister systems: I’ve yet to see a vegetable that actually likes to get wet once it’s been harvested. This has less to do with pathogenic trouble than good old-fashioned rotting. Greens and things lose their turgidity when exposed to long periods of surface moisture and that turns them to goo. Of course if the misting system is dirty, then it can become contaminated with pathogenic organisms. That means that every time it goes off, your prospective dinner gets a germ bath. Want to scare the produce manager the way you did the meat folks? Take a water sample from the mister. Tell him or her you’re sending it to the lab for analysis. If he or she says “fine,” don’t bother sending it. If he or she develops a sudden facial tic find another market. Remember, it’s your food.

Transportation
If you’re planning to buy perishables, bring a cooler to the market with at least one if not two cold packs inside. It just doesn’t make sense to take food that’s been properly stored, walk it around a nice warm market and then out to a car trunk you could bake biscuits in. If your cooler is too big for your cart then at least have it standing by in the trunk for the ride home. Your frozen goods will stay that way, your veggies won’t wilt, and your meats will stay safely out of the Zone. You too will enjoy the freedom to go to the video rental place on the way home without having to calculate the
Listeria
growth rate in your fresh fish.

BRINGING MEAT TO ROOM TEMPERATURE

I like to rest meat out of the refrigerator for a half hour before cooking so that there will be less difference between the temperature of the meat and the temperature of the oven. But if there are any doubts about how well the meat was handled prior to purchase, there is a small chance that the inside of the meat could be contaminated with pathogens that would only be killed were the meat to be cooked to a very high temperature.

For instance, you buy your T-bone steak off the back of a truck because the price is good. The guy who cuts the steak used the same knife to cut up a chicken. If he cut the steak correctly this would technically not be too much of a worry as long as the entire steak surface came into contact with very high heat—as in grilling.

But suppose he was not only a dirty cutter, but a sloppy one and he poked his knife through the steak. Now the inside of the meat is contaminated as well. And if you like your steak cooked medium rare, those bugs won’t be killed.

And by pulling that meat out and placing it on the counter (and in the Zone) for a half hour, you create an environment in which those few microscopic nasties could grow into quite a powerful army.

But if you buy your meat from reputable sources—and practice safe handling at home—I feel that the danger is amazingly and perhaps incalculably low. To a healthy adult I’d say “go for it,” but then I’d also say “eat steak tartare.”

At Home

Once the groceries are home, three major issues face the cook: temperature abuse, cross contamination, and contamination by the human animal.

Temperature control

Foods whose temperature fall in the 40° to 140° F Zone are vulnerable to bacterial colonization, so proper refrigeration is key. Most folks have no idea what temperature their refrigerator maintains, but you don’t have this problem because you read the section on
thermometers
. Of course, the Zone gets abused on the other end as well. Take that big pot of beef stew you just finished simmering.

HOW LONG IS TOO LONG TO KEEP CANNED FOODS?

Canned foods should be stored in a cool, dry place. Never put them above the stove, under the sink, in a damp garage or basement, or any place exposed to very high or very low temperatures. Foods high in acid, such as tomatoes and other fruit, can be safely kept for up to 18 months; low-acid foods such as meat and vegetables are okay for 2 to 5 years. Canned meat and poultry will keep best for 2 to 5 years if the can remains in good condition and has been stored in a cool, clean, dry place.

While extremely rare, a toxin produced by
Clostridium botulinum
is the worst danger in the realm of canned goods. Never use food from containers that show possible botulism warnings including: leaking, bulging, or denting; cracked jars or jars with loose or bulging lids; canned food with a foul odor; or any container that spurts liquid as it is opened. Even a minuscule amount of
botulinum
toxin can be deadly.

Wow . . . looks like a good gallon of stew. That’s a heck of a lot of mass, upwards of 15 pounds of 200° potential germ chow. Once you spoon out a few bowls for you and yours, what will you do with the rest? Leave it on the counter to cool down? Okay, but that could take 12 hours or more, and most of that time will be spent in the Zone. Not worried? Figure you nuked all the bacteria during cooking? You may have gotten most of them, but trust me: you didn’t get them all. And of course there’s the air, the serving spoon, the finger that you used to pull out the sage leaves, that sort of thing. Remember the
Jurassic Park
rule: life will find a way no matter how clever you think you are.

So you should put it in the refrigerator, right?

That’s a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First, even the best refrigerator models are designed to keep things cold, not make them cold. Sure, you can chill a few beers, but it could take ten hours or more to chill that stew. And since the stew is so hot, it will raise the temperature in the box, thus nudging every food present into the Zone—and that’s not good. What you need is a way to cool the stew before it gets filed in the chill chest. If it’s cold out—say, 35° F—you could certainly set the pot out on your deck, patio, or carport. That will cut a few hours off the time in the Zone, especially if it’s windy, but it will still take several hours. If you could increase the surface-to-mass ratio, thus exposing more stew to more cold air, you’d be onto something. So pour your stew into the largest, flattest pan you have. A couple of baking pans or a large roasting pan should do nicely. If you’re afraid bugs may come to call during this alfresco chill, simply cover with plastic wrap, but push the wrap down right onto the surface of the stew.

Okay, so what if it’s July?

There are several methods for “shocking” food down to a safe temperature quickly. Soup and stew pots may be placed directly in a sink full of ice water (not just ice: conduction, remember?). Frequent stirring will bring more hot food in contact with the side of the pot, and since heat always moves toward cold, the heat will abandon the soup for the ice slurry.

If no sink is available, you can also fill a large zip-top freezer bag with ice, suck out all the air, and push it right down into the goo. This method has the added advantage of being able to capture any fat that happens to stick to the side of the bag and solidify. When the ice melts, either in the sink or the bag, take the food’s temperature. If it’s not close to 40° F, start over again. You’ll be surprised how quickly the food cools down.

Of course, not all big hot foods are soupy or stewy. Large pans of braised dishes, large roasts, and the like can’t really be stirred, and bagged ice is impractical. For these I break out my trusty cooler, fill the bottom with a couple inches of ice, sprinkle the ice liberally with salt, and place the roasting or braising pan right on top. (As any home ice-cream cranker can tell you, salt can melt ice without raising its temperature, creating a liquid that’s actually colder than the freezing point.) Check in an hour or two and your thermometer will most likely clear you for fridge access.

Cooking

Improper cooking is the big daddy of thermal transgressions. It’s the one most often associated with large outbreaks of both
salmonella
and
E. coli
in this country. As important as proper cooking is, there has been some overreacting out there of late. A government Internet site I checked out recently stated that poultry must be cooked to a final internal temperature of 180° F, while another site suggests that all fresh pork cuts be cooked to 170° F. Both seem pretty silly since
salmonella
dies instantly at 165° F (14 minutes at 140° F will do the job too), and
trichinae
(the parasites responsible for trichinosis) die at 170° F. Here’s how I temp stuff.

• All poultry, game birds, stuffed meats and any previously cooked foods that are being reheated need to hit 165° F to be extra safe. (I usually take this reading from the thickest part of the meat, sometimes the breast, sometimes the thigh.)

• Pork (non-ground) should be cooked to 150° F.

• Beef steaks can be cooked to desired doneness.