Northeastern food safety expert Darin Detwiler shares how to avoid foodborne illness at your next cookout, from burgers to bagged lettuce.
It’s summertime, and your calendar is packed with cookouts and pool parties. But as people fire up the grills, sometimes it comes with the same old mistakes.
The meat isn’t cooked well enough or is kept out too long. Food isn’t stored properly and hands aren’t washed. Then your summer of fun turns into the summer you came down with food poisoning.
Northeastern University assistant teaching professor Darin Detwiler has made a career out of food safety and has some advice for avoiding incidents like this.
“If you go into a gathering with a food safety mindset from the beginning, you’re going to be happy,” he said. “This event will not be remembered for all the wrong things.”
We asked Detwiler for his best advice to avoid a food fiasco. His comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Sometimes people get frozen hamburger patties. If they’re frozen and being put on the grill, they’re not going to cook properly. They’ll be burnt on the outside before they’re cooked through the middle. They should thaw out over 24 hours in the refrigerator, not out on the counter.
Then there are people who put the raw hamburger patties on a plate. Don’t use the same plate to take the cooked patties because you’re now cross-contaminating. You’re putting the juices from the pre-cooked and basically marinating the cooked thing. It completely defeats the purpose of cooking it.
Then we have the cooking itself. We want to make sure that hamburger patties are cooked through, even to the middle. You want to get it to 165 degrees. Don’t just eyeball it.
You need to use a thermometer to insert it into the thickest center of the hamburger patty to make sure it’s properly cooked. That’s the only way you can tell. You cannot tell by color. You cannot tell by time. You cannot tell by just looking at it.After you cook it, you should not be leaving it out. (The temperature will) decrease and that’s when pathogens grow. I’ve seen situations where people will cook a ton of hamburger patties at once and then leave them sitting out for hours.
Make enough for a little bit and then come back and cook some more later (or) wrap up some of the patties that you cooked, put them in the refrigerator, or the cooler and then take them back out later to heat them up again.
One tool that’s very important is a thermometer. There are many different kinds of thermometers. They’re not too expensive, and there’s some that are so easy to read. There’s one that has a digital readout and gives you indicators to see if you’re cooking to the right temperature and if your food has been sitting out for too long.
Are you keeping food out of that danger zone between 40 and 140 degrees where pathogens grow? I also think having portable ice alternatives to keep things cool (is good).
(Sometimes people use) a china marker. It looks like a pencil, but it acts like a crayon, so you can write on a dish what time it came off the stove or the refrigerator. Because when you’ve got a ton of things going on, how do you remember it’s been 2 hours since you took that salad out of the refrigerator? The last thing I would recommend as a tool, if you want to call it that, is communication. Communicate about hand washing, not leaving things out too long, and using a single utensil for a single dish, that kind of thing. You don’t have to be like some kind of food safety overlord, but communicate (that you’re) making sure you’re safe.
This is a very complicated question. I avoided red meat for many, many years, but it got to a point where if I was to avoid everything that was ever involved in a food safety failure, there’d be nothing left.
One thing (to do) is cook the most protected foods after the least protected foods. Let’s say someone wants to have veggie burgers. Cook veggie burgers before you cook meat products because if you cook them together, you’re getting the meat juices onto the non-meat things.
The second thing is you shouldn’t have very young kids eating ground beef hamburger patties. Most of the people who get sick, are hospitalized and even who die from contaminated hamburgers are people who are 5 years and under. Perhaps there are better options for them. Maybe you cook those hot dogs or something like that for the elderly, for someone who’s immunocompromised, and someone who’s very young first.
That’s why communication is one of those valuable tools. If Uncle Bob wants to eat that steak or ground beef, that’s so rare that it still moves, OK, but don’t serve that to little nephew Timmy, who is 4 years old.
A lot of people like to go to the deli and get sliced meats and cheeses. It’s important to realize that most cases of listeria involve those kinds of deli items.
If you want to bring cantaloupe, bring a whole cantaloupe, cut it open and serve it all. Don’t have any leftovers. Do not buy pre-cut cantaloupe. Once you take a knife through the outer rind of the cantaloupe, you now introduce pathogens into the inside, and the pH is such that pathogens can grow rather rapidly. So I personally avoid it. Even if I knew that you were taking every precaution to make sure that it was safe, I would still avoid cantaloupe.Bagged lettuce and any kind of spring mix may be more convenient, but the reality is that there are so many outbreaks and illnesses and recalls tied to those mixed bags of pre-cut lettuce. Buy a head of lettuce instead.I have to admit, if I were to be hosting a big party, I would make sure that I buy food from a reputable source. Don’t save money by buying them from some guy in a pickup truck. Go to a place where you are comfortable and you know if they have a recall, they’re going to communicate with you.