How to Store Foods Properly

HI, I’m Jennifer McEntire with the Institute of Food technologist. And we’ve been talking about how to handle your food safely. We’ve gone through hand washing, keeping food separate, chilling them, cooking them, now we’re all pretty much all finished and we’re ready to pack up and put this food away.

What you want to do is store food in containers that are two inches deep or less. So when you have bigger containers, it’s recommended that you put foods that already cold, like your salad in them, not hot foods that you’re looking to store. The reason that you want two inches or less is so that the food chills very quickly, you don’t want in a larger container were to be so full that the outside gets cool but the inside is still very warm and gives bacteria the opportunity to multiply. This can result in you becoming ill.

So we’ll take a smaller container, put a serving in it. Smaller containers also make it much more easy to defrost the food, to reheat the food in the microwave when you have just a single serving like this. Because this hamburger is kind of small it will chill very quickly so we can put it in a larger container. And let me put food in the refrigerator. We only want to leave it there about three or four days. We want to eat it pretty quickly. We don’t want it to be there for weeks, months, and so it’s recommended that you do put a little bit of a label on it and you out a date on it that you put that food in there so that you remember “Did I make this on Tuesday or did I make this on Thursday?” And make sure that it’s good for you to eat.

Again, when you’re ready to eat this food you want to practice proper defrosting, proper heating in the microwave and then you can enjoy your food safely.

So again the basic steps that we have covered, wash your hands, keep raw and cooked food separate, defrost your food properly, reheat your food thoroughly to a 165 degrees, check the internal temperature of your hamburger to a 160 degrees or on my preference 165, and then store your food properly and make sure that you eat it in a timely manner. These are the steps to a good food safety. The basics, cook, clean, chill, and separate, try to prevent food-borne elements for yourself and for the people that you love.


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