Food Control Plan Checklist - Tararua District Council

Serve SafeHot holding prepared food1 Goal 2 Why?To reduce the time that prepared ready-to-eat food is held inthe temperature danger zone (4ºC to 60ºC).• Food in the temperature danger zone (4ºC to 60ºC) willencourage harmful microbes to grow rapidly.3 How this is doneAlways reheat food first before putting it in abain-marie or hot cabinet etc. Never use thebain-marie or hot cabinet to reheat food.Hot holdingThe Reheating prepared food procedure is followed whenfood is reheated before being hot held.• Equipment such as bains-marie and warming cabinets arecleaned and preheated before food is put into them.• Bains-marie are not overloaded.• Food is held at 60ºC or hotter.• Food is stirred to make sure it’s kept hot right through.• Existing batches of food are never topped up with newbatches.Use a probe thermometer to check the temperatureof food that has been hot held for 2 hours.(see Checking temperatures).4 What if there is a problem?• If hot food has been held at a temperature below 60ºCbut higher than 21ºC for more than two hours, it must bethrown away.• If hot food has been held at a temperature below 60ºC fortwo hours or less it can either be:--thoroughly reheated and served hot (above 60ºC), or--cooled to 4ºC within four hours and kept at thistemperature until it’s eaten.Replace food and/or serving utensils that could have becomecontaminated through poor food handling practices or misuse.5Write it downWrite down in the ‘2hr hot-held food’ recordthe temperature of foods that have beenhot-held for two hours.Write down any problems that you havehad in hot holding food at an internaltemperature of 60oC and what action youtook.Make a note in the Diary of any items thatyou had to throw away, and why.Also write down any matters that mightneed following up (eg, maintenance, training,review cleaning schedule etc).Food Control Plan Version 3.0 2011S11