A Guide to Online Holiday Food Safety Resources
With more people preparing meals during the holiday season than any other time of the year, government agencies, consumer groups, and public health organizations are offering holiday food safety literature left and right to help cooks and non-cooks alike ensure holiday meals are both delicious and safe.
So you don’t have to run around googling and bouncing around twitter–here is a guide to some great online holiday food safety resources:
Under the Obama administration, foodsafety.gov, the federal government’s central food safety site, has gotten a serious facelift. For years the site was outdated and hard to use, but it’s now a great resource for those seeking food safety tips. For this holiday season, the site offers tips on roasting non-traditional holiday meats–from wild game to cornish hens–and hosts fact sheets and podcasts on food safety tips for hosting parties or cooking for large groups.
You can also find podcasts and fact sheets on how to safely mail baked goods and on how to buy and prepare everyone’s favorite holiday beverage: eggnog.
Also, don’t miss the site’s Food Safety Widget, which offers the most current food recall alerts. You can download the widget here.
Partnership for Food Safety Education Education (PFSE), in partnership with the National Turkey Federation and the Georgia Pecan Commission launched this fantastic holiday food safety website in November.
There are many elements to the site’s Holiday Food Safety Success Kit, ranging from useful tips on preparing a holiday turkey to how to keep a food-safe kitchen. There is also a section dedicated to safely handling common holiday ingredients and the site features food safety videos in English and Spanish.
Web MD’s Top 10 Holiday Food Safety Tips
This article, reviewed by a couple of doctors, has some great food safety tips. Web MD suggests that anyone preparing a holiday meal have a “master plan,” on how to keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. The article also advises cooks to keep “sticky fingers” and guests out of the kitchen to prevent raw food consumption and cross contamination, and warns against serving unpasteurized cider.
Bites Infosheet on How to Avoid Foodborne Illness During the Holidays
This info sheet, produced by the phenomenal food safety team at Kansas State University, offers simple, straightforward tips for anyone preparing a turkey for the holidays. The info sheet encourages cooks to clean and sanitize utensils, wash hands, and always cook the turkey to 165 degrees.