Entertain Your Guests Without Poisoning Them - 5 Ways You Might Be Poisoning Guests Without Knowing
Do you realize that every time you cook and serve food to guests you have over, you could be endangering their lives? All of this, without you even knowing you could be harming them and you as well.
Every year, millions of people get sick because of contaminated foods.
In this article, I will be going over five ways you might be harming your guests while serving meals.
Body: 5 Ways You Might Be Poisoning Your Guests: 1) Raw Eggs - You need to watch out for egg nog or even cakes that aren't cooked all the way through.
Sometimes, you might take out a cake from the oven that isn't quite ready yet and the eggs in it might still be not fully cooked.
The same thing goes for cookie dough.
Eating raw eggs can be an issue.
Raw eggs could give you salmonella poisoning.
The symptoms are nausea, vomiting, and blood in your stool.
The symptoms can occur in as little as six hours.
2) Turkey - The idea here is to make sure you let your turkey thaw out in your refrigerator and not on your counter top.
You don't want to be leaving meat out in room temperature too long.
The meat will start growing bacteria.
Another problem with turkey or other meats, is the thermometer you use to check the cooking temperature.
If you take the thermometer out for any reason while the meat is cooking, make sure to wash the thermometer before putting it back into the turkey or other meats.
You definitely don't want to put back a bacteria filthy thermometer back into your meat.
3) Reusing Platters - Make sure you don't touch plates and other food platters with your hands and pass it all around to your guests and next they touch the plates or platters with their hands.
Basically what you are doing is getting the platters and plates contaminated with germs from your hands.
Make sure to wash any plates or platters thoroughly before reusing.
4) Breaking the two hour rule - You don't want to be leaving perishable foods out of the refrigerator for more than two hours.
Really though, you should aim for only one hour for food being left out.
Once perishable foods are left out, all that is needed is a temperature between 40 to 140 degrees for bacteria to begin multiplying.
So one really small bacteria, one that you can't even see, doubles every 20 minutes.
So, in actuality, you are eating a mouth full of bacteria when you eat some of this food.
This type of bacteria is called Listeria.
The thing with Listeria is that it can effect you a few months later or even longer.
Listeria will usually go into your brain and causes meningitis.
Also, when you are finished with your meal, don't store any left over food in your tin foil containers.
You should be storing the left over food in some seal-able containers that are not higher than two inches in height.
The reason for this is so that these containers will help the food to cool much quicker once inside the refrigerator.
Also, make sure your refrigerator is set at below 40 degrees to get your stored food out of the dangerous state.
5) Leftover Too Long - You need to make sure you consume your left over food in a reasonable amount of time.
So, for turkey, make sure you use it up in around 3 to 4 days and one to two days for the gravy.
Although, you should use up the gravy, even in 24 hours time.
If you have any baked goods stored up in the refrigerator, you should either eat them, freeze them or throw them out if you haven't ate them in one or two days.
The problem with stored baked goods is that they can start to mold without you even noticing it.
Every year, millions of people get sick because of contaminated foods.
In this article, I will be going over five ways you might be harming your guests while serving meals.
Body: 5 Ways You Might Be Poisoning Your Guests: 1) Raw Eggs - You need to watch out for egg nog or even cakes that aren't cooked all the way through.
Sometimes, you might take out a cake from the oven that isn't quite ready yet and the eggs in it might still be not fully cooked.
The same thing goes for cookie dough.
Eating raw eggs can be an issue.
Raw eggs could give you salmonella poisoning.
The symptoms are nausea, vomiting, and blood in your stool.
The symptoms can occur in as little as six hours.
2) Turkey - The idea here is to make sure you let your turkey thaw out in your refrigerator and not on your counter top.
You don't want to be leaving meat out in room temperature too long.
The meat will start growing bacteria.
Another problem with turkey or other meats, is the thermometer you use to check the cooking temperature.
If you take the thermometer out for any reason while the meat is cooking, make sure to wash the thermometer before putting it back into the turkey or other meats.
You definitely don't want to put back a bacteria filthy thermometer back into your meat.
3) Reusing Platters - Make sure you don't touch plates and other food platters with your hands and pass it all around to your guests and next they touch the plates or platters with their hands.
Basically what you are doing is getting the platters and plates contaminated with germs from your hands.
Make sure to wash any plates or platters thoroughly before reusing.
4) Breaking the two hour rule - You don't want to be leaving perishable foods out of the refrigerator for more than two hours.
Really though, you should aim for only one hour for food being left out.
Once perishable foods are left out, all that is needed is a temperature between 40 to 140 degrees for bacteria to begin multiplying.
So one really small bacteria, one that you can't even see, doubles every 20 minutes.
So, in actuality, you are eating a mouth full of bacteria when you eat some of this food.
This type of bacteria is called Listeria.
The thing with Listeria is that it can effect you a few months later or even longer.
Listeria will usually go into your brain and causes meningitis.
Also, when you are finished with your meal, don't store any left over food in your tin foil containers.
You should be storing the left over food in some seal-able containers that are not higher than two inches in height.
The reason for this is so that these containers will help the food to cool much quicker once inside the refrigerator.
Also, make sure your refrigerator is set at below 40 degrees to get your stored food out of the dangerous state.
5) Leftover Too Long - You need to make sure you consume your left over food in a reasonable amount of time.
So, for turkey, make sure you use it up in around 3 to 4 days and one to two days for the gravy.
Although, you should use up the gravy, even in 24 hours time.
If you have any baked goods stored up in the refrigerator, you should either eat them, freeze them or throw them out if you haven't ate them in one or two days.
The problem with stored baked goods is that they can start to mold without you even noticing it.