Kosher Cuisine Show #17 – Uber Food Safety. This is the original script for the show. Some of the non-essential text may have been edited out of the final version that aired on Community Radio due to time constraints. Also, some off-the-cuff comments may not appear in this script.  This script appears in its entirety for both 17a and 17b of the Bandcamp versions for continuity.

First Segment

Hava Nagila Music Intro [35 seconds then fade…]

Hello, everyone! This is Leah Kiser and you’re listening to Kosher Cuisine. This is a show about food safety, international kosher recipes and amazing music from areas around the world.

Today we’re going to talk seriously about food safety in the kitchen. This past week I had to sit for my recertification exam. In this county, a certified food service manager must be retested every 3 years, and last Tuesday I had mine. If you’re curious, I missed zero questions.

The recertification class and exam is only a half-day, whereas the original certification class and exam took almost the whole work day. You can request a form to register for the exam through the County Health Department. If you are involved in volunteering to cook or hold a potluck for a nonprofit, congregation, or civic organization, you should have this training even if you never plan to go into restaurant work or catering. Especially if your group is having an outdoor picnic or field day of some sort – knowing how the food should be properly handled can save a lot of people a trip to the doctor or emergency room.

So my plan today is to tell you some of the things covered on the recertification exam.

The first section you should know about for your home kitchen is the Time and Temperature Abuse section. These are when your food is most susceptible to getting food poisoning.

1. Storage, namely coolers and freezers. Many people don’t check the temperatures of their refrigerators and freezers until something is obviously wrong. But your fridge can begin to malfunction long before you realize it. You should either keep a thermometer in your fridge, or use one to check the temperature at least monthly, if not weekly. Ditto for freezers. And if your freezer has a manual defrost requirement, please don’t ignore it. A lot of ice piled up inside the freezer impairs it from working properly and can ruin all your food.

2. Thawing is probably the biggest culprit. So many of us, and I count myself in that group, have or have been tempted to just put the frozen food out on the counter and let it come to room temperature. That is a terribly dangerous way to thaw out food. The food can be room temp along the outer edges but still frozen in the middle, encouraging bacteria to grow. The safe ways to thaw are: A) in the fridge – this is the preferred option. B) , under cool running water as long as you’re going to use it immediately C) in the microwave – again only if you’re going to use it immediately, and D) during the cooking process.

3. Cooking is another problem area, especially for leftovers and meats.

A) If you are preparing whole meat roasts, their internal temperature must reach 130 degrees to kill bacteria.
B) If you are serving fish, steak, egg dishes, pork, or game such as bison or venison, the internal temperature must reach 145 degrees.
C) If you are preparing ground meat, meat that has been injected with a broth or flavor solution, or flightless birds like ostrich or emu, the internal temperature must reach 155 degrees to kill bacteria.
D) If you are serving poultry or ground poultry, or any meat, fish, or poultry that has been stuffed with vegetables or dressing, then the internal temperature must reach 165 degrees.
E) And if you are reheating leftovers of any kind, the temperature must also reach 165 degrees. So if you don’t have a food thermometer, you should have one.

4. The next problem area is cooling foods prior to placing in the fridge or freezer. You should never put hot foods into your fridge or freezer, because it raises the ambient temperature in there to above 41 degrees, which is the temperature where bacteria can begin to grow. On the other hand, you don’t want to leave it out on the counter for hours, either. Once your food drops below 135 degrees, either from sitting on the table during the meal or out on the counter cooling for storage, you are in the danger zone for bacteria growth.

5. Anything you make ahead and put into storage, or anything leftover that you plan to use again, should be marked with the date you put it in the fridge or freezer. This will let you know when it has been in there too long.

6. Keeping food warm while your guests or party-goers mingle, or if you are serving buffet style, is another problem area. In many home kitchens this means the food is just sitting out, which is a bad idea. Using a crock pot or a hot plate is better, as long as you are monitoring the temperature to make sure it is over 135 degrees. Likewise, cool things should be placed in a bed of ice, and the ice renewed if it melts too much.

7. And finally, as we mentioned, reheating is a trouble spot, primarily because people become impatient and don’t let the dish that was made ahead or saved as leftovers reheat all the way to an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

What bacteria needs to grow in your food and in your kitchen are four things:
1) A temperature between 41 degrees and 135 degrees.
2) Enough time for bacteria to grow
3) Enough moisture in the air or in the product for bacteria to grow
4) And a low acid environment.

And the last way that food gets contaminated is coming in contact with other contaminated foods, either in the fridge, on your counter, or by way of cutting boards and knives that were not washed in between changing items to chop and prepare. In a kosher kitchen, it is particularly important to have color coded cutting boards and knives to go with them, so that you are not cross-contaminating meat, fish, dairy and parve products. This is the same rule for commercial kitchens, and it’s a good rule to have at your home, too.

And finally, foods can come in contact with each other in the refrigerator. There is a particular order that food should be stored in your fridge to avoid cross contamination. First of all, fresh fruits and vegetables should be on the top shelf. Next should come leftovers that have been previously cooked. Under those should be raw meats, and then raw eggs. Next should be ground meats and raw fish, and injected meats. And finally, the lowest level should be stuffed meat dishes waiting to be cooked.

Your home fridge probably has the vegetable and fruit bins on the bottom, which is completely wrong for food safety. Another thing you may not realize is that bottles of salad dressings and other jars of condiments should be used within 7 days of opening, especially if you have small kids or elderly people in your home. Unless you eat a lot of ketchup, in other words, you should buy the small containers, not the jumbo sized ones.

So while you’re pondering the contents of your fridge and freezer, here is some relaxing music from the renaissance era. This CD is called Musique Judeo-Baroque, and is performed by the Boston Camerata under the direction of Joel Cohen. The three composers chosen for this CD were masters of the baroque era: Louis Saladin, Carlo Grossi, and Salamone de Rossi Ebreo. These are Jewish liturgical pieces set to what was then modern music in the style of Venice, d’Avignon, and Aix-en-Provence. Today, we call this music “classical.” Enjoy!

[Track 1 & 2 – Canticum Hebraicum by Louis Saladin]

Second Segment

Welcome back to Kosher Cuisine!

Today we’re talking seriously about food safety, since I had my recertification class last week and have a new handout covering the items on the exam. This is not all the items on the first certification test, but it does hit the highlights.

So now we’re going to talk about washing and sanitizing. There’s a difference between cleaning and sanitizing. Soap and water is great for cleaning, but doesn’t sanitize anything. So here are the health department rules for washing and sanitizing.

First, when you are preparing your food, if you’re doing something like Thanksgiving that is literally going to take you all day and maybe multiple days to prepare everything for your big family and friends, then all utensils, bowls, cutting boards and knives need to be washed about every four hours. In other words, you need to wash everything when you break for lunch and again in the later afternoon, and if you’re still at it in the evening then wash everything again before you quit for the night.

In a kosher kitchen if you’re preparing several days worth of meals, it is important not to wash meat and dairy dishes together, as well.

As we have mentioned here before, most American kitchens do not have a separate food prep sink. But it is not really sanitary to rinse or wash foods in the same sink that you use for dirty dishes. One solution is to have bins of some sort, preferably metal but plastic will do, to designate for washing various kinds of foods: especially one for meats and one for fruits & veggies. I have never seen anyone wash cheese, but I suppose it’s theoretically possible, so if you are so inclined, a dairy one wouldn’t hurt.

It is very rare for a home kitchen to have a three-compartment sink, but they are required in commercial kitchens. If you have young children, or very elderly people, or anyone who is immuno-compromised due to AIDS, chemotherapy, or auto-immune disease treatments, then you need to set up your kitchen to approximate having a 3 compartment sink. The first compartment is for the hot, soapy wash water. The second compartment should be running water, to rinse. If you use stagnant rinse water, be sure and change the water frequently. And the third compartment, which you will need a bin to create, is the sanitizing dip. This should be a solution of chlorine or vinegar to make sure the germs on the dishes are killed. Then the dishes should be air-dried, not wiped with a cloth. Stacking dishes with traces of moisture just gives them a warm, damp place for bacteria to grow in your kitchen.

Whether or not you are using a 3-compartment system, you must sanitize your sink and your bins after using them. Just soap and water is not adequate. If you prefer natural cleaners, a vinegar based solution will do. You can find recipes for natural cleaners online. There are also commercial products that are derived from natural ingredients that you can find at the Good Foods Co-op, Whole Foods, and other places. But generally a bleach solution or other germ-killing cleaner is used. I don’t recommend these, because of the toxic chemicals, but if you want to use them be sure not to dilute them beyond the package recommendations, or they will not be effective. Saving money is great, but giving your family food poisoning isn’t.

You might remember we talked about cleaning your appliances thoroughly before Passover, but in reality this is something you need to do on a regular basis. You need to pay special attention to your fridge, especially the gaskets. You need to wipe down the interior and remove the shelves and drawers in the fridge and wash them regularly. Many can be run through the dishwasher, if you have one. Also the shelves in your cabinets need to be wiped down regularly with a vinegar or other solution, because even dust is a place where bacteria and mold can grow.

You will need to run the self-cleaning cycle on your oven or clean it by hand regularly as well. You might think that an oven would be fairly safe, but if grease builds up on the walls, ceiling and floor then your oven is unsafe due to the possibility of a grease fire.

Appliances such as toaster ovens that normally sit on your counter must also be cleaned regularly, by removing the racks and catch-basins and thoroughly cleaning the interior as well. If your racks in your oven or your toaster oven are rusting or have peeling finish, they should be replaced.

Be sure and clean the base of your blenders, food processors, or other appliances on a regular basis as well. A buildup of food particles or dust in the vents can become a fire hazard, as well as contaminate your fresh foods with bacteria and mold.

Also, when you’re done cleaning your kitchen, you should have a towel rack away from the sink where used cleaning cloths, hand towels, and dish rags can dry before being placed in the hamper. You never want to put damp anything into your laundry hampers. That is just asking for mold and mildew, as well as bacteria, to grow and send out spores all over your house. Even if you don’t have allergies this isn’t a good idea. Some of those molds and mildews can be toxic.

So while you’re thinking of where you can hang up a new towel rack and what bins you need for your kitchen, here is some more renaissance classics from the Musique Judeo-Baroque CD.

[Track 4 – Canticum Hebraicum, continued, by Louis Saladin, Track 5 – Canticum Ebraica in Dialogo by Carlo Grossi]

Third Segment

Welcome back to Kosher Cuisine!

Today we’re talking seriously about food safety and kitchen maintenance. One thing that is very different in commercial kitchen than home kitchens is the grease trap. You may have heard about the Consent Decree that the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government signed with the EPA over our abysmal sewage system problems that were polluting local waterways with all sorts of sewage and gunk, including a buildup of grease in the sewer lines. One of the results of that agreement, all commercial kitchens must have a grease trap that prevents cooking oils and grease from going into the sewer system. But home kitchens have no such requirement.

Instead, we just get clogged drains, and then we call the plumber to come and roto-root it for us, and then a bit later we get clogged drains again, and so on and so forth. There are, however, some things you can do in your home kitchen that will help prevent clogged drains and sewer system problems.

First, garbage disposals really aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. It is better to compost your food waste, or as a last resort put it in the garbage, not down the drain.

When you have been cooking meat or cooking with vegetable oil, you should wipe down your pots and pans and dishes with a paper towel before rinsing them off in the sink. That way the grease and oil goes into the garbage, not the drains.

If you have a deep-fryer, do not pour oil down the sink drains or the toilet. The leftover oil must be discarded somewhere besides your sewer lines. You can use plastic grocery bags to double or triple bag it, which is what we do at our house. You can then take it to a grease recycling company or dispose of it in the garbage.

You should also follow the same procedures when cleaning your stove hood or other appliances – don’t rinse the rags in the sink that you use for your first pass wipe-down. Use paper towels and discard them so the grease doesn’t end up clogging your drains.

If you are interested in composting, there are specially made countertop containers you can find to hold food scraps to be taken outside at the end of the day. These have a removable carbon filter in the lid and can be washed in the dishwasher or by hand. You can compost any fruit or vegetable scraps, but not meat or dairy. If you are not interested in composting yourself, perhaps a friend or neighbor is.

If you reuse plastic food containers or ziplock bags, be sure and hand wash them thoroughly in hot soapy water and rinse with a vinegar solution to kill germs. Hang up the plastic bags to dry. We use one of those fold-out three-armed dish towel racks to hang ziplock bags. We have also in the past used our laundry drying rack and some clothes pins to hang up Ziploc bags.

If you don’t have space for any of those, you can create your own hook and eye system. Simply install two eye screws in opposite walls or door frames, then measure out the appropriate length of clothes line and tie it to the ends of the hooks. When you don’t need to hang anything up to dry on the line, simply unhook the two ends and store it in a small container or ziplock bag. This will keep dust and dirt from your junk drawer off of it.

On the blogpost for this week I will post a couple of pictures of the hook and eye system we had at our old townhouse, which was actually in the dining room. We moved the table to the side during the week and used the lines to hang up laundry and things like ziplock bags to dry. When it was time to get ready for Shabbat or when company was coming, we would take the laundry lines down and put the table back in the center of the room. It was great because there was a window for fresh air and a ceiling fan to help dry the clothes during the winter. The best part was you could run holiday lights and streamers through the eyes as well, which made a pretty awesome birthday or holiday party room. At our new place the hook and eye system is in the basement, so it’s not nearly as exciting as it used to be. Oh, well.

If you don’t reuse any food containers, or when you have reused them but they have finally cracked or broken, then it’s time to think about recycling. A lot of you may remember the old rosies we used to have, with the compartments for sorting your recycling. Then they urban county government changed to a single stream model, and they had everyone turn in their rosies with the containers. Well, I have to confess, we did turn in the rosie, but we kept the containers.

Right now, the big bin from that rosie is not a foot away from me, to hold paper recycling from my office. The two tall narrow bins we used for years at the townhouse in a hall closet for metal cans and glass jars, and those are now in our garage storing other items. The mesh bag we hung on hooks in that same closet to use for big plastic containers, and it is now also in the garage. At our new house, there really wasn’t anyplace convenient for those bins in or near the kitchen. We did try hanging up the mesh bag, but it just wasn’t working out. So now we have some plastic basket type bins in a kitchen island cabinet with doors for our kitchen recycling. Many people have bins in the cabinet under the sink, too.

The point is that, frankly, most people aren’t going to recycle if it is inconvenient for them. So it is best to have bins of some sort right there in your kitchen area. And it is equally important to wash them regularly. Yes, I know we all rinse out the things we’re going to recycle, right? Of course we do. But the water and some microscopic debris does fall into the bottom of your bins, and can breed germs. So don’t forget to wash your recycling containers, too. And if you have bins or baskets for your dish towels or other storage containers, also wash those several times a year as well.

So, while you’re pondering the grease from your kitchen and ways you can conveniently reuse and recycle, here is some more renaissance music from the Musique Judeo-Baroque CD.

[Tracks 7,8,9 – Les Cantiques de Salomon by Salamone de Rossi Ebreo]

Fourth Segment

Welcome back to Kosher Cuisine!

Today we are talking seriously about food safety, and this last bit of information from the County Certified Food Manager classes and exams ties in with our tikkun olam segment this week.

Regarding hand-washing and plastic gloves - in commercial kitchens, there is a dedicated hand-washing sink that is never supposed to be used for any other purpose. At our house our food prep sink is also the hand-washing sink, but most people wash up at the dish sink, or don’t wash their hands at all.

The health department rules are as follows: Wash hands before and after changing categories of items you are preparing.

If you are preparing and serving ready-to-eat foods, such as cut fruits and vegetables, cold salads and sandwiches, or precooked food that is served cold or room temperature, you must wear gloves to handle them.

You must wash your hands and change gloves between tasks. Also change gloves and wash your hands if you touch something besides the food and utensils.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen kids in the youth group open the garbage can lid with their hands and then go right on handling food. This makes me homicidal. Now, I made a new year’s resolution to try and be more nurturing and peaceful, but I promise if I see you doing this in any kitchen of mine, I will probably rip your head off. So let’s just not go there, shall we?

In restaurants and catering kitchens, there is a rule about being sick – namely, if you have diarrhea, vomiting, jaundice, sore throat and fever, or an infected wound larger than a band-aid, you are not supposed to be working. Also if you have been in contact with anyone who has Norovirus, Hepatitis A, Shigella, E Coli, or Salmonella, you are not supposed to be there until you are cleared by a doctor.

But neither my State of Kentucky, nor my county, mandates paid sick leave for food service workers. In fact, most food service workers have no sick days at all provided by their employer, and many are fired every year for not coming to work while sick.

As you can imagine, under these conditions, most food service workers do in fact come to work when they’re sick, because they have no other choice. They either cannot afford to take sick days due to sub-living wages, or their employer simply does not accept being sick as an excuse not to come to work unless you’re in the hospital.

This means that hundreds if not thousands of us every day right here in our County are exposed to sick food service workers when we eat out or buy items prepared at an in-house deli. By health department rules, these people should not be at work. By the rules of predatory capitalism, they have no choice.

This is not something we should be tolerating in this day and age. It is ridiculous for any employer to expect sick people to come to work, but it is dangerous to expect sick food service workers to continue working while they are contagious.

Sick days should be a basic human right for workers. And since predatory corporate leaders will not provide them, then we as a people must insist that the city council and the state legislature enact laws protecting us from robber barons who both make us work when we’re sick and expose us to other sick workers, especially in the food service industry. There is no excuse.

Children and elderly people, as well as immune-compromised people, are still dying every day from contagious illnesses and viruses in this nation because corporations make sick people work. It needs to stop. But nothing will change unless voters make themselves heard loud and clear. Those health and safety regulations are there for a reason, and we need to eliminate ways that greedy corporate rulers can bypass them.

This is a tikkun olam issue – standing up for the exploited and the poor, as well as for the children, the elderly, and the sick among us. It is not just a moral, ethical or religious duty, but a civic duty to ensure that nobody dies from going out to eat. It’s insane that this is still happening in this day and age.

So, while you’re pondering how you can help to make the world a safer and better place, here is some more uplifting renaissance music from the Musique Judeo-Baroque CD.

[Track 10,11,12,13 – Les Cantiques de Salomon, continued, by Salamone de Rossi Ebreo]

Thank you for listening to Kosher Cuisine. Next week we will have some more great international food and music and we’ll talk a bit more about food safety, kashrut, and tikkun olam.

This is Leah Kiser wishing you Sabbath peace, this week and every week. Shalom! [Hava Nagila fade…]