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Tasting According to Food Manager Certification MN Training

Food Sampling Procedures You Need To Know In Food Manager Training

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We discuss product sampling in depth at Safe Food Training during food manager certification MN training. To consistently deliver high-quality food to your guests, it is crucial to taste or sample every dish, sauce, or prepared product to ensure that it meets your high standards. We must emphasize the importance of following the correct procedures when sampling your food product.

Food Sampling According to Food Manager Certification MN Training

 Food Sampling According to Food Manager Certification Training 

Food on the line must be tasted numerous times per shift to ensure each guest receives a quality meal. It is important to understand that something as simple as tasting can create a food risk. There are a few things that you should never do when tasting your cuisine in the kitchen.

  • Never use your fingers
  • Never double-dip a tasting spoon
  • Never use a stirring spoon to taste
  • Never lean over a pan or plate while tasting

This ” don’ts” list should be self-explanatory to the experienced food service worker. Touching a guest’s food with a bare hand, reusing a tasting spoon, and creating a scenario where food can drip from your mouth into a prepared product generate the potential for contamination. If you’re a food manager, you need to make sure your staff clearly understands the right and wrong way to taste the food they produce and give them the tools to do it safely.

Sampling Spoon Accessibility

To comply with the MN food code, we recommend that food managers supply your staff with ample food-tasting spoons stored above the food production line. Store them in a clean container to prevent contact with food or potential contaminants before use. Many restaurant workers store tasting spoons in their jacket or apron pockets to be close at hand when needed. We recommend that you train your employees not to store tasting spoons in their pockets. They risk coming into contact with food product or bare hands, and an increased potential of cross-contamination can result.

If you’re preparing a sample of a daily special or new menu food item, your staff should taste it away from the production area. This practice falls under the category of eating in the kitchen in the Minnesota Health Code. The food protection manager should move this process away from the production line.

Challenge of thermometer cross-contamination for CFPMs

The Challenge Of Thermometer Cross-Contamination For CFPMs.

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Certified food protection manager classes teach that using an internal probe thermometer is the best way to ensure food is cooked to the proper temperature. While a CFPM’s thermometer is one of the most essential tools in keeping your food safe, it poses an ominous cross-contamination risk that could lead to foodborne illness.

Challenge Of Thermometer Cross-Contamination For CFPMs.
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Reducing the Risk of Cross-Contamination from a CFPM’s Probe Thermometer

Cross-contamination is a constant risk in any kitchen. We have three simple tips to ensure your probe thermometer is safe from this risk.

  • Sanitize your probe after each use
  • Always store your thermometer in its storage sleeve
  • Keep the storage sleeve clean

The probe thermometer is in constant contact with potential contaminants. It is used into every protein, ready-to-eat food, and chilled item. Whether someone inserts it into undercooked chicken, chilled soup for storage, or hot items in the cafeteria, sanitizing it after each use is vital. Remember, your thermometer is not clean just because it looks like it is.

Secondly, CFPMs should always store the probe monitor correctly. Never store your thermometer loosely on a countertop, in food, or in any location where potential contamination could occur. Finally, it is essential for CFPMs to keep your thermometer’s storage sleeve clean to minimize the cross-contamination threat. It is possible for bacteria to form in the sleeve and transfer onto the probe when it is not in use.

Remember to Calibrate Your Thermometer Regularly

While not necessarily a cross-contamination issue, we feel now would be a good time to remind all CFPMs to check and calibrate their thermometer often. To do this, set your thermometer to 32 and submerge the probe in a large glass of crushed ice and water, then give the thermometer time to calibrate

Thermometer cross-contamination is only one risk CFPMs must deal with. There are many small cross-contamination risks from utensils in every facility. At Safe Food Training, we want to provide tips on preventing even the slightest danger. What are the cross-contamination risks you feel are being overlooked in your facility?

Going Beyond Unbelievably Simple Food Safety Storage Regulations

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Proper storage of all types of food products, whether raw meats, dairy, produce, or fully prepared foods, is essential in any segment of the food service industry. Improperly stored food can lead to loss of profits due to waste, and wasted time while employees search for product. Food safety training addresses the storage regulations issue, we’ll explore other storage solutions as well.

Going Beyond Unbelievably Simple Food Safety Storage Regulations

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Meat storage tends to be the most misunderstood and poorly implemented procedure when it comes to food storage. We know that raw meat should always be stored below cooked product, but according to MN food safety certification regulations, raw meats should be separated during storage and production. One way to safely store raw products and prevent cross-contamination is to make sure that products with the highest cooking temperatures are stored on lower shelves than those with lower temperatures. If raw meats were to be stored on the same rack, a properly organized refrigerator should look like this in descending order.

  • Raw steaks and full cuts of beef (145 degrees minimum)
  • Raw ground beef (155 degrees)
  • Raw poultry (165 degrees)

You will notice that we have not included seafood on our list. Even though seafood has a minimum cooking temperature of 145 degrees, we recommend separating it further from all other product. We feel that this is an important safety precaution to protect those who have allergies to seafood and shellfish.

The optimal way to achieve proper storage is to have dedicated areas for meat, dairy, and produce. Larger outlets such as large-scale food manufacturing plants can easily achieve this by using multiple refrigeration units. Many restaurants, hotels, and smaller institutional facilities do not have this luxury, so diligence is important.

Tips for Food Safety Managers Streamlining Food Storage

The first tip to ensure proper food storage is to label everything. Food should be labeled and dated when received or prepared. This is the obvious first step and is required to know for food safety certification in MN, but it is helpful to take labeling one step further than the minimum storage regulations.

Label the sections, shelves, and empty spaces in your refrigerators. This will ensure that employees will be able to see where each type of product is allowed to be stored, and will prevent the confusion of a constantly changing storage system.

Another tip is to store produce and meat as far away from each other as possible. In many cases, this can be achieved by splitting refrigeration space in half. One side of a walk-in refrigerator will contain produce, the other meat products. Two separate refrigerators would be the ideal storage solution, but this is not always achievable. In cramped quarters, the labeling of all available space will streamline your storage process.

Implementing proper food safety storage regulations appear simple on paper, but implementing an organized system is well worth the vigilance.

CFPMs Take Advantage Of The New Meal Kit Market

CFPMs Take Advantage Of The New Meal Kit Market

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Restaurant patrons have taken to cooking at home more over the past few years, and this gives food businesses and restaurants the opportunity to take advantage of this new market. If you’re looking for a way to reach new customers and give them a chance to cook their favorite menu items at home, you may want to consider offering meal kits with everything they need to prepare their favorite dish. Since you’re not cooking these meals in-house, there’s a different set of challenges involved. Let’s consider what Certified Food Managers ( CFPMs ) should consider when preparing meal kits for customers to cook at home.

CFPMs Take Advantage Of The New Meal Kit Market
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CFPMs Food Safety Challenges for Take Home Meal Kits

Meal kits can help boost your business, but certified food protection managers must make your staff aware of the unique food safety hazards is the key to doing it safely. Your kit can include raw protein ingredients, fresh vegetables, cooked products and dried spices, so there are several different food handling rules you have to consider.

The biggest concern will be cross-contamination during preparation and packaging. Make sure all fresh ingredients are stored away from raw products at all times. If you sell these kits at high volume, have your certified food protection manager designate space in your walk-in refrigeration so there can be no risk of cross-contamination during storage.

The highest risk of cross-contamination may occur during packaging. Many of these meal kits fit into one large box, so keeping raw food separated from fresh ingredients can create some difficulties. If you do use one large box for these kits, we suggest tightly sealed and separate containers for raw ingredients. We’d also recommend taking it a step further and placing these sealed containers in a separate box within the larger crate for dual-layer protection. It’s also important to consider some sort of cold pack or ice bag to keep cold foods cold during transport.

Since you’re not cooking these items in your establishment, temperature control is left up to the consumer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to give them the information they need to cook every ingredient properly. Include incredibly detailed recipe cards that list proper cooking temperatures. You can experiment with cooking times of meal kit ingredients in your restaurant and include that information, but CFPMs should remember not every oven will cook at precisely the same rate. Include warnings that will indicate the properly cooked temperature for each ingredient. You may even wish to go so far as to offer probe thermometers at an additional cost.

Are you using meal kits as a way to reach new customers?