Summer Months Food Safety with Grilling

Cornell in our Community Column

Submitted by: Whitney Kmetz

Community Health and Wellness Supervisor for EFNEP and SNAP-Ed

This time of year, we embrace the warmer weather, family gatherings and most of all we enjoy BBQ’s!  With gatherings and celebrations, comes a very important topic food safety, especially grilling meats. Before you get started, make sure to take some safety precautions to keep yourself and others healthy and avoid food born illnesses.

You want to avoid cross-contamination by keeping raw meat, poultry, and seafood away from other foods while shopping and preparing. Keep your meat refrigerated until you’re ready to cook them. Always make sure your hands and surfaces are clean before, during, and after dealing with raw meat. Cook your meat to the proper temperature to kill harmful germs and refrigerate leftovers to prevent bacterial growth. Now you’re ready to grill safely! Here are the four key components: separate, chill, clean, and cook.

Separate- When you are shopping in the grocery store, purchase your meat or seafood last. This will ensure that it stays colder for as long as possible. When putting your groceries in your car, you should separate the meat so the juices are not running on other foods purchased. Also, make sure you take a colder bag with ice packs to keep food out of the danger zone of 40 degrees to 140 degrees.

Chill- Once home from the grocery store, it is best to refrigerate or put your meat into the freezer right away. It should never be out for more than two hours. This becomes a danger zone for bacterial growth. You should always keep your meat refrigerated until you are ready to grill it. If you must transport raw meat, make sure it does not get above 40 degrees in route in your cooler bag.

Clean- It is best to wash your hands before and after working with raw meat. Always wash work surfaces, utensils and the grill before and after cooking. Do not wash your meat!!!!

Cook- Use a food thermometer to ensure food is cooked to the proper internal temperatures to kill the harmful bacteria. When smoking meat, keep the temperature between 225 degrees to 300 degrees to keep the meat in a safe range. Here is a guide for safe temperatures to cook meat at!

For more information about grilling safety/food safety please visit: www.cdc.gov/foodsafety

Check out a tasty SNAP-Ed recipe that goes great on the grill this Summer! Chicken Burgers – SNAP-Ed New York (snapedny.org)

Whitney Kmetz is the Community Health and Wellness Supervisor. She runs the EFNEP and SNAP-Ed programs and can be reached at 607-334-5841 ext. 1132 or emailed at wdg43@cornell.edu if you have any nutrition related questions or are looking to schedule programming.