The Food Safety AppThe four chilling safe methods
Every method in this section is about the same risk from a different direction: food that is not cold enough, or not cold yet, or no longer cold. It is also the section with the most daily record-keeping behind it.
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One of the five sections of the 31 safe methods. The methods describe how you keep food cold; the daily numbers that show you did live in the temperature records.
What each one asks you to write down
| Safe method | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Chilled storage and display | If these foods are not kept cold enough, harmful bacteria could grow. |
| Chilling down hot food | Harmful bacteria grow in food left to chill slowly, and large quantities are hardest to chill quickly. |
| Defrosting | Food still frozen or partly frozen takes longer to cook, so the outside can be cooked while the centre is not. |
| Freezing | If frozen food starts to defrost, harmful bacteria could grow. |
The risk is the middle of the tray
Two of these four are really the same warning about size. A deep tray of rice cools from the outside, so the middle can sit in the range bacteria like for hours while the surface reads perfectly well, and a part-frozen joint cooks from the outside for the same reason in reverse.
That is why the pack asks for a method rather than a temperature: shallower trays, splitting a batch, an ice bath, starting earlier in service. The cooling records are where the result gets written down, and a flagged cool-down is a prompt to change one of those things rather than a failure to hide.
What the app does with them
Each sheet in the app is the FSA’s own sheet, transcribed question by question, and it prints back onto the FSA’s published form. Completing one stamps the date and the initials of whoever signed it, and those stamps fill in the completion record at the front of the pack.
Sheets are versioned. When the FSA revises a method, a sheet completed against the older wording is flagged stale and asks to be re-confirmed rather than quietly continuing to count, while a method marked not relevant to your business is left alone.
Questions
What temperature counts as cold enough?
The app works to 8 °C or below for chilled food and -18 °C or below for frozen, which is what the pack works to, and it applies the same bands to deliveries.
Is defrosting in the fridge always right?
The method asks you to write down how you defrost and to make sure food is fully defrosted before cooking, because partly frozen food cooks unevenly. How you achieve it is yours to describe.
Where do the daily fridge numbers go?
Onto the temperature records, not onto the safe method. The method is how you work; the record is the evidence you worked that way.
Keep reading
Cold food, and the proof it stayed cold
Free on iOS and Android, with the daily records kept for you.