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Jordan Powers: 0:00

Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity, where we get down and dirty with the experts on all the ways science and agriculture touch our lives, from what we eat to how we live. I'm Jordan Powers.

Emily Cabrera: 0:12

And I'm Emily Cabrera. We're from the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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Jordan Powers: 0:20

As we enter the time of year where holiday gatherings bring friends and family together, typically over shared meals and potlucks, we dove into our archives to pull out food safety advice to help you prepare for a safe season.

Emily Cabrera: 0:32

In this episode, you'll hear from Carla Schwan, Assistant Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist, and Manpreet Singh, who was at the time of the recording, Professor and Head of the CAES Department of Food Science and Technology, and is now Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Faculty Affairs and Strategic Initiatives for the college. In this short episode, Carla and Manpreet provide simple yet timeless food safety advice from preparing your meal to storing leftovers after the gathering ends. So you feel more confident going into this holiday season.

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Jordan Powers: 1:08

For anyone who's planning to host this season or is preparing food to bring to a gathering, Carla shares a few simple steps people can take to keep guests safe.

Carla Schwan: 1:16

There are several measures that we can take in order to prevent foodborne illness and contamination. So first, I would say, when you are preparing your dish at home, making sure the counters are clean, that you have cleaned them, and you wash your hands, and you have a clean surface to work with. And if you have raw meats and raw vegetables separating them, so having separate cutting boards, or if you only have one cutting board, preparing the vegetable first that is not going to be cooked. So there is no intervention, really, to kill anything if it was cross contaminated with the meat. So you prepare your vegetable first, washing really well, your cutting board, and then you prepare your meat that is raw and is going to be cooked. So there is an intervention step there to take care of any bacteria if they were present. So that's one thing. And when you're transporting your food to the party that you're going to utilizing containers that will keep your food either cold or hot. So if your food is cold, you can use ice packs to make sure that it's padded around the food and then transporting it to the place that you are serving it. Making sure that when you arrive to the party and you're serving food, or if you're hosting the party, you're serving food, that you keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. So for hot foods you want to keep it above 140°F and for cold foods you want to keep it below 40°F. Being aware and making sure that your guests are aware if you have any allergens. So right now, FDA declares nine big allergens, so we call the big nine. And obviously that's for regulation purposes. Being in your house, you're not going to be regulated by the FDA. So you don't necessarily have to do all the guidelines that they offer. But I highly encourage that if you have allergens, that you make sure you tell people what dishes have what allergens, because the last thing you want is somebody with an allergy coming in and eating a food and then having anaphylactic reaction to it.

Jordan Powers: 3:01

To protect those with food allergies and other food hypersensitivities, Carla suggests labeling your dishes and those that guests bring as well. Especially if they contain one of the Big Nine, which are, milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. To help prevent cross-contamination, she also suggests using one serving spoon per dish.

Carla Schwan: 3:24

So labeling your allergens, also hand washing, having soap and paper towels available for the guests to wash their hands and hand sanitizers as well throughout this space. Those are some tips when you are preparing or bringing food or serving food.

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Emily Cabrera: 3:40

I love how Carla's tips encourage being clean and organized to help ensure everything goes off without a hitch.

Jordan Powers: 3:46

Agreed. And while I feel like those tips address the whole meal, I love that up next Manpreet addresses the star of the show on many Thanksgiving dinner tables, the turkey. There is always trepidation around how long to cook your bird. The sweet spot seems elusive, because you definitely don't want to undercook Turkey and run the risk of serious foodborne illness, but overcooking is also a faux pas. Manpreet provides a simple and maybe obvious solution.

Manpreet Singh: 4:11

Not just cooking foods until the juice is dry, because I believe in thermometers. So if you cook a product, and if you're going to cook it to a internal temperature that is desired of the product. Have a thermometer ready. Now, the second part becomes using the thermometer correctly. So there's so many layers to this, but understanding that you need to have the tools not only produce but to actually cook food safely, making sure the meat is cooked properly.

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Emily Cabrera: 4:38

I appreciate that both Carla and Manpreet provide easy, actionable advice. But now I'm thinking about, before we even get to the part where we're cooking the bird or any other previously frozen meat, there are a handful of safe thawing methods and one really not safe way that I've shamefully been guilty of doing for years.

Jordan Powers: 4:59

So common misconception might be that thawing meat on the counter or in the sink is safe. But Carla, who also reviews "Food Safety Tips for Preparing a Holiday Turkey," a UGA Cooperative Extension Expert Resource, details methods for safe thawing, including refrigerator thawing, cold water thawing and even microwave thawing, not counter thawing.

Emily Cabrera: 5:20

Exactly, lesson learned. We'll share the link to that resource in the show notes. It also provides tips for safe cooking and safely storing leftovers.

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Jordan Powers: 5:31

I know in our family, and I'm assuming many of our listeners can agree that at a lot of these gatherings, food is set out on tables so people can graze throughout the day, and even after the main course, people don't necessarily jump up right away to sort leftovers in containers and get them in the fridge. So it was a bit of a shock to hear how fast bacteria on food can multiply.

Manpreet Singh: 5:51

When you cook products or when you cook foods at the house, there still could be certain bacteria which are a lot more resistant to heat than your normal cooking temperatures. There are bacteria which form spores, which are hardier than normal vegetative cells. Now those spores, when they're in warmer environments, can start germinating because they were just heat shocked with all of the heat that you provided to the food. So typical examples, or typical case of this, is around Thanksgiving with gravy type of products, when you cook the product, you let it sit out. It's warm. You shock the spores, if there was those type of bacteria in the food, and now those spores will start to germinate, and the bacteria starts to grow in it. So that's where it starts getting to be a little bit of a food hazard or a dangerous situation. Given ideal conditions, within 20 minutes, the bacteria double itself. So if there's ideal conditions and there's decent number of bacteria in there, high enough number, you can imagine that after three hours of sitting out on a counter, it could be pretty intense.

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Emily Cabrera: 6:56

This was a really shocking revelation to me, because I've always been under the impression that food should cool before we put it away. But Carla also spoke to the importance of getting leftovers promptly stored in the fridge.

Jordan Powers: 7:07

And she also provided tips for when the party is finally wrapping up and it's time to put those leftovers away, and even better, the next day, when it's time to pull them out and enjoy them all over again.

Carla Schwan: 7:17

When the party is wrapping up and you have leftovers, of course, you don't want to waste food. So making sure that you kind of keep a timeline on when that food was put out. So usually we recommend that if the food has been left out for two hours or more, you should throw it away. So that's the general recommendation for storage. And then, let's say next day, or in the next two days, you want to reheat that food and you want to eat that food that was left over from the party, making sure that you are reheating it to a safe temperature, and using a thermometer to make sure that the internal temperature of that food has reached at least 165°F.

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Emily Cabrera: 7:53

Whether it's prepping for your meal or storing leftovers, we hope this episode has helped you prepare for the upcoming holiday season and beyond.

Jordan Powers: 8:01

As we mentioned, we'll be sure to put all of the great resources we referenced in the show notes. And if you still have questions, always remember you can reach out to your local Cooperative Extension agent for answers. We'll include a link to find your county Extension office in the show notes as well. We hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday season.

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Jordan Powers: 8:19

Thanks for listening to Cultivating Curiosity, a podcast produced by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. A special thanks to Mason McClintock for our music and sound effects. Find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.