Food Safety: Sunday roast safety
Nothing looks more appealing to a diner's eye than a carvery offering a splendid array of tempting and well-presented dishes. But a great deal of forethought and planning goes into achieving this, with the prime focus being on the quality of food and its safe control.
And as the popularity of carvery meals grows, the operating times increase accordingly. With this in mind, it is vitally important to have strict quality controls in place. In fact, a carvery food safety record should be developed to enable you to take temperature readings at regular intervals throughout the course of the serving sessions.
The record should chart each product being served and the times at which core temperatures were taken, keeping details of which food was left. This should be followed with notes of what action was taken - taking care to note that it was covered, labelled and dated when stored. Ideally, all food safety documentation should be archived for at least six months.
Stringent rules must also apply to holding hot food. A minimum temperature of 63ÞC should always be maintained and food should never be out on the carvery unit for any longer than two hours. So you should draw on your experience to give due consideration to the peaks and troughs of customer numbers at any given time or day. Though this can never be an exact science, it can certainly be an efficient way to prevent undue waste. For example, if vegetables are left for any length of time in a dish or bain-marie, the quality will rapidly dissipate - therefore a 'less is more' philosophy should be adopted.
It is sometimes overlooked but the gravy we put on our meal at the carvery is a very high-risk product, so care should always be taken never to mix freshly made gravy with that which has been standing for some time.
Food must never be taken back to the kitchen to be reheated and returned to the carvery. To do this would vary the temperatures and such highs and lows can create a prime breeding ground for bacterial growth.
Consequently, if food is being taken back to the kitchen unserved, then it should be chilled within 90 minutes of its return, down to a temperature of 5ÞC, and then stored in the fridge. This will give the food a shelf life of three days but it must be used within that timescale - otherwise it should be disposed of.
The carvery unit itself should always be kept in pristine condition. Together with the food presentation and staff on duty, it is your shop window to attract the customers who so often 'eat with their eyes'.
