Superbowl: Food Safety

Taylor Hillman Features, This Land of Ours

collage of fast food producrs
Some ways to prevent food borne illness from intercepting your plans to throw the best Superbowl party ever. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.

This Land of Ours – Superbowl Food Safe

The game (or the ads) may be the main event, but the food usually steals the show. With more than 1.3 billion chicken wings – 4 million pizzas – and 139 million pounds of avocados expected to be eaten during the big game, there are plenty of opportunities for a food safety penalty to occur. To make sure this doesn’t happen at your party – some helpful tips from The U-S Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

• Use effective clock management with your food. Perishable foods should not be kept at room temperature for more than two hours. Switch out these items during half time to prevent the same foods from sitting out the whole game.

• Keep hot food hot and cold food cold.

• Use a food thermometer to ensure that meat and poultry are cooked to a safe internal temperature.

• Raw beef, pork, lamb and veal should be cooked to 145°F with a three-minute rest time.

• Raw ground beef, pork, lamb, and veal should be cooked to 160 °F.

• All cuts of poultry should reach at least 165 °F.

• Make sure to thoroughly wash your hands before starting to prepare food, after handling any raw meat or poultry and trash, and after finishing cooking.