It's all about the Sides

From USDA:

Posted by Amelia Kermis, MPH CHES, Food Safety Education Staff, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA, on December 18, 2014 at 9:30 AM

By keeping your side dish components separate, you can avoid cross-contamination.

Main dishes may dominate most holiday tables, but the space on your plate will probably be filled with more sides than whatever holiday meat is served. Proper food handling and cooking will make sure these items come out just as safe and delicious as your main meat.

Making a safe side dish can be even harder than making a main dish safely because side dishes usually contain many ingredients. The more ingredients in the dish the greater the opportunity there is for cross-contamination. By keeping your side dish components separate, you can avoid cross-contamination.

Below is a list of holiday side dishes that offer unique food safety challenges.

Casseroles

Kugel, a traditional Jewish dish, and many other types of casseroles served during winter holidays, contain eggs. As with all dishes containing egg, Salmonella bacteria are a concern. You cannot tell if an egg contains Salmonella. In fact, the bacterium has been found inside even a clean, unbroken egg.

The only way to make sure these dishes are safe to eat is by fully cooking the eggs they contain. You know the dish is fully cooked when a thermometer inserted into the center of the mixture reaches 160 °F.

Cook casseroles completely at one time – do not partially cook them and then finish cooking later. Harmful bacteria will grow between the time you start and finish cooking, even if you refrigerate the food in between. Those bacteria may produce toxins that can make you sick.

Meaty Sides

Lots of holiday side dishes include meat. Whether you’re serving Brussels sprouts and bacon, stuffing with sausage, or another meaty accompaniment, make side dishes containing meat with extra care. The following tips will help ensure your meaty sides are food safe:

• Cook raw meat, poultry, or shellfish ingredients to safe temperatures before adding to the rest of the side’s ingredients. This reduces the risk of food poisoning from the bacteria that may be found in the raw ingredients.
• Stuffing is safe to eat when the center reaches 165 °F. This is particularly important for stuffing inside a roast or containing meat.
• Resist the temptation to taste your side dish before it is fully cooked. Eating undercooked meat, poultry, and egg products can place you at increased risk for food poisoning.
• Cook your meaty side dishes after you prepare your sides that will not be cooked. This prevents cross-contamination.

Ready-to-Eat Sides

If you are in a rush this holiday and plan to pick up a meat or cheese tray to bring to a party, make sure the tray is refrigerated in the store. You should also keep the tray cold until serving because these cut items provide bacteria a wonderful environment to replicate in. Be careful to keep it separated from raw meat and poultry.

If you want to serve precooked appetizers such as mini quiche make sure you have your food thermometer nearby. Check the internal temperatures of a sampling of these items to confirm they’ve reached a safe internal temperature before serving.

Get the Most Out of Your Holiday Roast

From USDA:

Posted by Amelia Kermis, MPH CHES, Food Safety Education Staff, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA, on December 16, 2014 at 2:00 PM

Roasting is the recommended method for cooking tender meats. To roast, meat is placed on a rack in a shallow, uncovered pan and is cooked by the indirect dry heat of an oven.

The traditional centerpiece of many holiday meals served this time of year is the roast. Whether you use pork, beef, goose, turkey, or chicken, the most popular means to cook your meat of choice is in the oven.

The roasting recipe that was handed down to you from your great grandmother may need a little updating though. Whether it asks you to marinate at room temperature overnight, or cook until ‘the juices run clear,’ some instructions in heirloom recipes might be outdated. To help you make the dish your great grandmother intended, we pulled together a list of holiday roasting tips.

Beef, Veal, Pork and Lamb: To avoid overcooking beef, veal, pork and lamb roasts use a meat thermometer. These roasts should be removed from the oven when they reach an internal temperature of 145 °F. For safety and quality, allow meat to rest for at least three minutes before carving or consuming. If you’re concerned about serving a dry roast, use a continuous read thermometer or start checking the temperature of your meat earlier then the recipe’s cooking directions.

Turkey, Duck, and Goose: Domestic ducklings and geese have a great deal of fat. While it helps them float when swimming, fat is undesirable in a cooked duck. Therefore, it’s recommended to prick or score the skin of a whole duck before cooking so that most of the fat will render out. These birds should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 °F as measured by a food thermometer. Temperatures should be taken in three areas of the bird: the thickest part of the breast, the innermost part of the wing, and the innermost part of the thigh. For more information on safe poultry handling and cooking, read our Thanksgiving material.

For approximate cooking times to use in meal planning, visit FoodSafety.gov. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook meat to higher temperatures but at the recommended temperatures the food is safe to eat. Following the guidelines at FoodSafety.gov will ensure that your roast brings you back to holidays past.

Tis the Season to Avoid Raw Meat

From USDA:

Posted by Megan Buckles, Congressional and Public Affairs Staff, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA, on December 11, 2014 at 10:00 AM

Everyone loves spending time with family and friends enjoying special winter treats, but you might want to think twice before reaching for some traditional dishes. Raw meat dishes like tartare may be more common this time of year, but they still come with health risks.

“Tiger meat” is another traditional winter dish. Despite the name, this dish is not made using meat from tigers. It’s a holiday mixture of raw ground beef, raw eggs, onions and other seasonings served on rye bread or crackers. Beef tartare, tiger meat, and dishes alike have ground beef and eggs that pose a health hazard when eaten undercooked or raw.

Not All Traditions Are Safe

Raw ground beef has been associated with several large outbreaks of foodborne illness. In 2012, an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that sickened 17 people in Wisconsin was caused by this traditional dish.

E. coli infections can ruin your holiday, causing severe stomach cramps and diarrhea, kidney failure, and even death. E. coli is particularly dangerous for people with weakened immune systems, children, and older adults.

In addition to E. coli, eating raw ground beef and raw egg can expose you to Salmonella, Listeria, and Campylobacter bacterium.

Cook To the Right Temperature

Most bacteria in meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs can be killed by thorough cooking. To prevent illness, ground beef should always be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 °F. The only way to tell if the temperature is right is with a food thermometer. Color is not an accurate indicator that ground beef is fully cooked. Also, if you’re cooking another dish like meatballs or meatloaf, remember not to try any of the dishes before cooking, even if you just want to taste the seasoning.

Raw beef being ground into a bowl.

In Indiana, the Cooperative Interstate Shipment Program Opens Meatier Markets for Small Processors

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Elanor Starmer, National Coordinator for Local and Regional Food Systems, on April 8, 2014 at 1:00 PM

Lou’s Gourmet Sausage, a small family business run by the Vinciguerra brothers of Cleveland, Ohio, takes sausage seriously.  For over fifty years, the company has been supplying Cleveland restaurants and grocery stores with Sicilian, Andouille, Cajun, mild and hot chicken and veal sausages. But despite strong demand for its products, it took a USDA program to make Lou’s sausage available outside Ohio.

In 2012, Ohio was the first state to join USDA’s Cooperative Interstate Shipment program (CIS).  The program, authorized under the 2008 Farm Bill, allows inspected and approved small state-inspected meat processors, like Lou’s Gourmet Sausage, to bear an official USDA Mark of Inspection and ship meat and poultry across state lines. Previously, only products from federally inspected plants could be sold in other states. To participate in the program, state certified plants like Lou’s Sausage work with USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) to integrate their systems to meet federal inspection standards.  Once inspected and approved for compliance, these smaller plants can ship across state lines and are poised for bigger market opportunities.

This week, Indiana followed Ohio’s lead and joined North Dakota and Wisconsin to become the fourth state to participate in the Cooperative Interstate Shipment program. Each time a state works with FSIS to participate in the program, it is expanding market opportunities for the region’s small meat and poultry producers – many smaller producers process their animals at small state-inspected plants – while strengthening state and local economies and increasing consumer access to safe, locally-produced meat. In Indiana, it will mean that meat processed by selected smaller operations will be available beyond the Hoosier state.

Interstate shipment may not sound like a local food issue, but CIS actually has important implications for local food producers and consumers – especially when one state has a major market right across its border, as is the case with southern Wisconsin and Chicago. Implementing CIS is part of USDA’s broader strategy to strengthen local and regional food systems and to help small and midsize producers access new market opportunities. USDA coordinates its work on these issues under the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, which includes a variety of resources to help producers and businesses tap into consumer demand for local foods. One such resource, a guide called Tools for Small and Midsized Livestock and Poultry; USDA Resources for Producers and Processors, was released in March as part of a wider package of support for America’s small and mid-sized farmers and ranchers.

FSIS’ Small Plant Help Desk, a customer service phone line at 1-877-FSIShelp, is also a valuable resource for small and midsize meat and poultry plants and can address issues and answer questions specific to smaller meat processors. The Small Plant Help Desk has fielded over 10,000 inquiries since 2009.

For businesses like Lou’s Gourmet Sausage, USDA’s commitment to local food and to small and midsize producers is epitomized by efforts such as the Cooperative Interstate Shipment program and the Small Plant Help Desk. With these resources and opportunities, small processors are accessing new markets – and consumers are happily digging in.