Keep safe this BBQ Week!
It’s BBQ Week! With summer just around the corner, you may well be thinking about spending sunny evenings with friends and family, enjoying a lovely BBQ.
Everyone wants to give their friends and family some fun and a tasty evening NOT a few days of diarrhea or sickness resulting from food poisoning.
So to help create a memorable occasion for all the right reasons we have some easy steps you can follow:
- Pre-Cook your meat in the oven and then finish off on your barbecue for flavour
- If you are choosing to ONLY cook on the barbecue, the two main risk factors are:
- Undercooked meal
- Spreading germs from raw meat on to food that is ready to eat
- When cooking most meats (chicken, turkey, pork, burger or sausages)
- The coals are glowing red with a powdery grey surface before you start cooking, as this means they’re hot enough
- Frozen meat is properly thawed before you cook it
- You turn the meat regularly and move it around the barbecue to cook it evenly
- Some meats, such as steaks and joints of beef or lamb, can be served rare (not cooked in the middle) as long as the outside is properly cooked.
- However products made from minced meat such as burgers and sausages must be cooked thoroughly.
- Avoid cross contamination
- Store raw meat separately before cooking
- Use different utensils, plates and chopping boards for raw and cooked food
- Don’t wash raw chicken or other meat – it splashes germs
REMEMBER:
Charred doesn’t mean cooked!
Most meat is safe to eat only when:
- The meat is steaming hot throughout
- There is no pink meat visible when you cut into the thickest part
- Any juices run clear
Using a Pocket Digital Thermometer like the PDQ400 Waterproof Pocket Digital Thermometer is a great tool to help keep the family safe and gives peace of mind when it comes to the readiness of your barbecued meat.
