Current Issues – UrbanMonique

It’s All About Food Safety

I post this regularly, for very good reasons. In the restaurant biz, either a contracted private outfit, or the local health department, shows up unannounced in my cafe several times a year, and takes a very serious, in depth look at at what we do and how we do it – It’s all about food safety.

That might sound scary, and it sure would be, if you didn’t run a clean restaurant. Me, I welcome it, because frankly, this is Job #1, and I don’t ever want to be anything but stellar in our efforts to assure that folks who eat with us are absolutely safe in doing so.

That said, what about the home front? While it’s a must in the business, it’s all too often lacking at home, so we’d best revisit the ground rules and spell ‘em out in big letters. In this day and age when more and more foods are making folks sick and even killing some, you simply must take matters into your own hands.

You can and should print this one out and stick it to your fridge with one of those goofy magnets.

The Golden Rules

Understand and Respect the Food Temperature Danger Zone.
Bacteria love temperatures between 40º F and 140º F, so naturally, we want to strictly limit food from hanging out in that range. The mantra is ‘Keep cold food cold and hot food hot,’ and yes, it is that simple. Couple temperature with time, and you’re ahead of the curve. Don’t let anything hang in the zone for longer than 60 minutes – and that’s a total running time. Think about this: Between shopping, prep, and finally cooking, how much time has elapsed with food in the temperature danger zone? You buy a steak first thing at the store, and you’re doing a good sized shopping – comparing, saving, all that stuff. By the time you get that steak home and in the fridge, how long has it been in the danger zone? For most of us, I’ll bet you’re real close to an hour, and you haven’t even started prepping and cooking yet. Before we fix that issue, let’s look a bit closer at the spectrum itself.

Cooking, Prep, & Storage Temperature Ranges
165°F+ – Most bacteria die within seconds
141°F to 164°F – Safe range for holding hot foods. Bacteria aren’t killed, but don’t multiply.
40°F to 140°F – Food Temperature Danger Zone: Bacteria can thrive and multiply. Perishable foods spend NO MORE than one hour here, period.
33°F to 39°F – Fridge range. Bacteria aren’t killed, but they multiply relatively slowly. Food is safe here for a limited time.
32°F – Freezer zone. Bacteria aren’t killed but don’t multiply. Note that, gang; freezing does not kill bacteria, it just puts them into suspended animation. If ever there was a reason to follow safe food handling practices at home, this is it, since this is the long-term food storage method the vast majority of us use.

Here are the specific methods you need to adopt.

1. Prep potentially hazardous food like the professionals do, which is ice to ice.
When you pull potentially hazardous foods out to prep, place them in a double pan or bowl, with a thin bed of ice beneath the one holding your food. Do the same with the plate, pot, or bowl you’re prepping into. This simple process will truly help keep you and yours much safer.

2. Cook smarter, not harder.
Use a thermometer when you cook, so you’re cooking to temperature, not to time. If you’re not using a thermometer and you’re not a seasoned cooking pro, how do you know what temperature you’re cooking something to? Fact is, you probably don’t, and that’s not good for food safety or quality. The top end of the Food Temperature Danger Zone, 140º F is not the temp at which bacteria die, it’s just the point at which they more or less stop multiplying. You need 165º F to kill most things that can hurt you, like salmonella and e. coli, and that’s 165º F internal temperature for at least 5 minutes. No thermometer equals not sure, and not sure equals not good, so fix that. You’ll want a thermometer that allows recalibration, and you’ll need to read the directions on how to do so. Here’s a link to the model I use at home and at work; it’s the fastest, most accurate, reasonably priced model for home use I’ve found.

3. Get cooked food out of the danger zone ASAP.
Within the food safety danger zone, the temperature range between 125° and 70°F allows for the most rapid growth of microorganisms. As such, you’ve got to get leftovers that have been cooked out of that range as quickly as possible. The 2-stage cooling method is what we use in professional kitchens. That means you want to,
Cool from 140°F to 70°F with two hours, and then
Cool from 70°F to 41°F or below within four hours.

That initial two hour cool is the most critical time period, since that’s when the food is passing through the most dangerous temperature range. Here’s the hard and fast secondary rule you’ve got to strictly abide by:
If food has not reached 70°F within two hours, it must be reheated to an internal temperature of 165°F for 15 seconds and then properly cooled again, or thrown away.

Keep in mind the unassailable fact that food needs help cooling down quickly; it can’t do it on its own. Critical factors that affect how quickly foods will cool down include,

Size of the food item being cooled, (thickness, or distance to its center, plays the biggest part in how fast a food cools).

Density of the food, (the denser the food, the slower it cools).

What the storage container you use is made of. Glass and stainless steel transfer heat from foods faster than plastic. If you’re using plastic wrap, leave it loose at first, to allow cold air to freely circulate around the food; once it’s cooled, tighten up the wrapping to keep air away and avoid drying out and cross-contamination.

Size of the container. Shallow pans, (depth less than two inches), allow heat from food to dissipate faster than deeper ones.

And here is a concept you absolutely must embrace wholeheartedly – Food will not move through the temperature danger zone fast enough if it is still hot when placed in the fridge or freezer. In fact, sticking hot food straight into the fridge can actually raise the temperature of everything in there, putting a whole lot of your food into the temperature danger zone. Sound crazy? Ever put a big pot of soup or stew into the fridge, including the steel pot? I rest my case… Here’s how to properly handle things.
* Reduce the size. Cut large hunks of food into smaller pieces for storage. Take that soup out of the pot and transfer it to smaller containers.
* Use an ice-water bath, (50% each, ice and water), and stir foods that are stirrable for fast, even cooling.
NOTE: The only way to accurately know that time and temperature requirements are being met is by actively monitoring the process. That means that you need to use your thermometer for cooling as well, (Look closely at your favorite cooking show; I’ll bet you’ll see that the real chefs all have pocket thermometers). Get used to regularly check temperatures and monitoring the time.

4. Keep it all clean.
Wash your hands with hot, soapy water, actively, for at least 20 seconds. Do it before and after you work with food that has greater potential for bacteria, like meat, poultry and fish, and do it again before you move on to prepping something else. Wash and sanitize your cutting boards (Use a mild bleach solution on those; they’re semi-porous, so you really need to pay attention to cleaning them), knives, and anything else that touched potentially high risk foods before you prep something else with them. Does your sponge stink? If it’s not dirty and worn out, toss it into your microwave for 30 seconds; it’ll come out smelling much better, because you’ve offed some bacteria. If it is worn out and dirty, toss it and use a fresh one; same goes for kitchen towels.

5. Don’t defrost or marinate at room temperature.
Best practice is to defrost in the fridge. If you must defrost quickly, fill a bowl big enough to hold what you’re working with the coldest water you can get from your tap, immerse the food in the water and let it run as low as you can get it until it’s ready. NOTE: If you cannot get water colder than 70º F, do NOT use this method, period!

6. Use your senses and resources.
When food spoils, is it dangerous? The answer is, not always but quite possibly, so err to the side of caution, (Making cheese is basically controlled spoilage, as is fermentation). Bacteria like the same things we do, from food to comfy conditions, so always keep that in mind. When food spoils, rots, etc, it looks, smells, tastes and feels off; respect your senses and let it go if it ain’t right. I can guarantee you won’t get sick if you don’t eat it. Bacteria need pretty specific conditions to thrive, involving the temperature, moisture and PH level of the things they live on, AKA, our food. Know the attributes of the food you’re cooking and storing and act accordingly. Use the section of your fridge meant for butter, cheese, eggs, veggies and fruit; modern fridges really can help control moisture levels as well as temp, so allow them to do their thing.

7. Reheat properly.
When reheating hot food, get it back up above 165º F internal temperature before you serve it. Sad as it may seem, you only get one shot at it – No second reheats – So plan, portion and cook accordingly.

Follow these rules religiously. Take care when you buy; always look for quality and freshness, get to know your purveyors, buy locally whenever possible. Make it at home whenever possible.

Status Report

as prolific as I try to be, I must of course have a real job in order to pay the bills. I’ve just made a major shift out of restaurant management, into an Area Manager position with Schwan’s, here in my home town.

This move will cancel too many years of 2-3 hour daily commutes to and from work, as well as blessing me with a Monday through Friday work week. I couldn’t be happier about those changes, frankly.

I’ve got to learn a whole lot in a relatively short time period, so during the transition, new posts will be few and far between. Fortunately, there’s something like fifteen years of good stuff here to revisit and revise. I’ll be leaning on those archives while I get up to speed.

That said, what I post may well still be new to you, so stay tuned! By the same token, please do poke around and see what’s here. I’ll be back on track with weekly new posts just as soon as I can.

if there’s something you want and can’t find, or if you’ve got a specific request, drop me an email or message, and I’ll go to work for you.

Thank You for being here, it’s deeply appreciated!

It’s Time to Talk About Kitchen Waste

Controlling food waste is critical to restaurants, and it’s no less so to home cooks.

One of the greatest challenges we face in the world is food waste. Yeah, we hear about it most when it’s colossal, like from countries, or major grocery and restaurant chains, but fact is, it’s every bit as pervasive and problematic right here at home, in our own kitchens. It’s time to talk about kitchen food waste, and act on that.

Dive into food waste numbers just for the USA, and prepare to be seriously bummed out. Overall percentage of what’s produced – 40%. 20% of what goes into landfills. According to a NRDC study in 2015, American households tossed $165 billion worth – That’s billion with a B – or roughly $2,200 per household. Worldwide, the figure is around 1.3 billions tons and $990 billion annually. Sobering figures to say the least. When you hear that the biggest problem with feeding the world isn’t the ability to grow it, it’s pretty much true.

What’s to be done then? Obviously those figures are completely unsustainable. While it might seem like little ol’ us are such a drop in the bucket that we couldn’t possibly alter those numbers, I beg to differ – Understanding the nature and magnitude of the problem is the first step. Every little bit helps, and frankly, we can fairly easily do more than just a little bit at home – That’s important not just to help stop wasting food, but to buoy our pocket books and consciences too.

Battling food waste is huge in the restaurant business, (is if you want to stay in business in any event). We track it closely, in order to construct a viable and effective plan to keep the numbers down. Recording waste lets us study things a bit and decide where the problem lies – That might be how much we order or prep, or a mistaken assumption about how much of what we’ll sell. Waste can also stem from over-portioning, or improper storage – There’s a lot to think about, but once you get a good system in place, it becomes a lot easier to manage.

Considering those figures on average waste are in tons and thousands of dollars per American household, I don’t think there’s any question about the importance of having a plan and system in place at home, is there? Same answer comes to mind for the question of whether or not the additional effort is worthwhile – If you didn’t cook at home a lot and care about that, you wouldn’t be here. What then is a viable and effective plan to help reduce food waste for the home cook?

First thing that comes to mind is how much perishable food we buy, and how often. For the former, we really need to plan our shopping, and not do any significant part of that willy nilly. Having a realistic shopping list, one based on what your household will actually in all likelihood eat in the period you’re shopping for, is key. Secondly, sticking to that list, (and never shopping when you’re hungry), is equally important – Impulse buying does no one any good.

A shopping list is a living thing, usually composed over several days. When it comes time to head to the store, a review is in order, to determine not just if you missed something, but also if there are things there you don’t really need – Especially when the items in question are perishable. If you love to cook and are always looking for new things to try, it’s easy to think you’ll make that crying tiger beef this weekend and then buy a bunch of stuff to do just that – If life then intrudes, you may well be left with things that end up getting tossed.

When you shop, you absolutely must pay attention and be picky, picky, picky. When I go, I see maybe a couple people other than me who are really and truly checking things out – Squeezing, inspecting, sniffing, and rejecting anything that doesn’t look spot on – checking packaging and expirations dates, (and that pickiness includes not buying something you wanted if there just aren’t any good ones that day.) Fact is, very few shoppers do that – Most folks grab whatever and take it home, and frankly, whatever usually goes bad really quickly. You get what you pay for, and if you’re assuming all produce, proteins, dairy, and other perishables are on equal footing, you’re being a pretty clueless shopper.

Same goes for meal planning. Avoiding waste means not buying for, or cooking far too much, for your household to reasonably use before it spoils. Yes, leftovers can and should be refrigerated or frozen whenever possible, but far too many fridges and freezers are filled with things that sit there until they are eventually thrown out – Be realistic about what you can, like to, and really will eat. As we advocate around here, plan meals around judicious and inspired use of leftovers – A single chicken used wisely is two or three great meals for a small family.

The concepts from that last paragraph are especially important for us empty nesters – We had kids and grandkids over for dinner last night, and prepared what was easily two to three times the normal amount of food we’d do up for a Sunday night as a result – That’s fine if it’s going to get eaten and/or sent home with the kids – but not so much if it’s happening several nights a week because we’ve forgotten that, these days, it’s just the two of us. Always keep in mind who you’re cooking for on a day to day basis.

How we store perishables, especially fruits, veggies, and proteins, is potentially a huge contributor to excessive food waste. Bags, plastic or natural, and most crisper drawers, do a fairly shitty job of maintaining fruits and veggies. Of course the first line of defense is knowing what should be in a fridge and what shouldn’t, (potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, shallot, bananas and most citrus fruit don’t go in the fridge.)

We’ve researched a bunch of storage options, especially for veggies since they tend to go bad so quickly, and found that glass or rigid plastic containers with tight fitting lids do a great job for most things, while specialized containers for lettuce, cabbage and the like do an amazing job – We’ve extended the shelf life of a lot of things from 2 or 3 days to 10+ just by using the right container, as you can see from some of the images here in. Yes, they’re plastic in some cases, but they’re not even close to single use.

Realistic consideration of what you will cook in the next few days should dictate what gets refrigerated and what gets frozen. A lot of food gets wasted because we violate that rule. Expensive proteins, from beef to firm tofu, need to be scheduled for cooking, and that schedule stuck to – If you can’t or don’t, wrap them properly and freeze them well before they go bad, (and mark the packages for date and content.)

Yes, clearly marking what something is and when it got stored is critical. Everything in a restaurant gets FIFOd, (First In, First Out rotation), and our home fridges and freezers shouldn’t be any different. As for marking what they are, if you’re seriously thinking about trying to tell me that you don’t have, right now, containers in both appliances that you have no clear idea of the contents or age of, I’ll call bullshit on y’all. freezers need to be emptied, inventoried, and thoroughly cleaned at least twice a year, too – See our post on that.

Look this essay over and you’ll realize there’s really not that much here, and certainly not much that’s genuinely revelatory – Tackling a food waste reduction program at home is no more difficult than reading about it, frankly. That said, common sense goes a long way in the kitchen, just as it does in life, right?

Are Home Cooks an Endangered Species?

Steve Sando runs Rancho Gordo, our go to bean purveyor. He also speaks his mind in a way I particularly enjoy.

His most recent newsletter included a ‘rant’ which resonated with me – he wrote,

‘You may not realize it but as time marches on, we home cooks are becoming rarer and rarer. The fact that we get excited about a new bean, a cooking pot, or even a new wooden spoon, puts us in the minority. Most of us think of cooking as fun and a great way to bring people we care about together. We see a pound of beans and we imagine how we’ll be cooking them, how we’ll be serving them, and maybe the smiling faces that will be eating them. I have a constant vision of leaving the kitchen and walking towards the dining room table with a huge pot of something good between my hands as I ask for help finding a trivet. This is possibly my favorite moment of the day. I try and do it most nights.

A meal kit is fine. A frozen dinner is an emergency. A dinner out is fun and sometimes inspirational. But a refrigerator full of cooked beans, roasted vegetables, stocks and broths, pickles and condiments, is like a palette waiting to be put to use to create something new.’

Notice that the title of the newsletter was, You Are Not Normal – So I gotta ask, do you think that’s true? Does Steve’s rant resonate with you, too? The thought that struck me most was his first line, ‘You may not realize it but as time marches on, we home cooks are becoming rarer and rarer.’ Do you think this is true? If so, it’s a very sad state of affairs.

It was also not lost on me that this mornings check of social media found an unusual volume of politics, doom and gloom news, and general negativity. When that’s the case, finding something positive, something genuinely wholesome and good to focus your energy around is a critical process – If we don’t, we drown. As far as I’m concerned, that really aughta be cooking great food at home for those we love – If not doing that is ‘normal,’ I want nothing to do with normalcy.

If that last thought seems shallow to you, I respectfully disagree. When I do orientation for new hires in the café, I tell them a story about how they’re going to be at work one day, and they’ll come back to the line and exclaim, ‘man, I don’t see how somebody can get that worked up about a sandwich.’ Then I tell them why it happens – it’s because people deal with overwhelming waves of crap all day, and they think, ‘I’m gonna go to the café and get my favorite thing to eat, and for a time, all will be right with the world,’ – And if we screw that up, it cuts deep. Food is closer to the heart for humans than dang near anything else.

Secondly, what we eat has a huge impact on our health and wellbeing, spiritually, mentally and physically. We must eat well to thrive, and that’s especially so when times suck. Highly processed food, fast food, junk food – All that is poison when you’re feeling down. What’s called for is healthy, fresh stuff, made with love, at home.

A friend posted this on FB, ‘When you notice your mental health declining, do one small thing that brings you peace. Take a shower, text a loved one, step outside. One little step is all you need to remind yourself that this is not permanent.’ And that’s key – Sure, grilled cheese is just a simple sandwich – But when you’re feeling vulnerable and overwhelmed, the process of making and sharing a delightfully crunchy, melty creation with family or friends, in the warmth and comfort of your own home, is exactly what’s needed to reestablish balance.

And what are we teaching our kids and grandkids, if we don’t cook at home, regularly and with love? That sustenance is just a thing to be shoveled down, and nothing more? What a sad thought. Food is life, sharing great food is love, and without that, we perish, literally and figuratively. When schools no longer teach Home Ec, who will if we don’t? Who will pass on family favorites, comfort food, and the will and desire to explore exotic culinary worlds? If we don’t do it at home, Steve’s right, and a critical skill and joy in life is extinguished. It’s already happening in this country, more so than most others, and that trend absolutely must be reversed.

I don’t think it matters what you make, or how often you make it. It certainly doesn’t matter if it’s simple or complex. It probably won’t be ‘restaurant quality,’ and that’s likely a very good thing. What matters is that you come home, decompress for a bit, maybe have a glass of wine – And then you go see what’s what in your fridge and pantry. I hope that, when you check out that palette, you find stuff that makes you think, ‘I dunno if that’ll really work or not, but… what the heck, let’s take a swing at it.’

Do that with love. Repeat same the next night, and the next, and so on for most nights. Find some peace, share a meal, teach your kids and grandkids those passions. That’ll do much to bring the balance back.

Operation Reduce Kitchen Plastic – Ork Pee!

Hello! We’re back from winter vacation – We trust the holidays were good to you and yours, as they sure were to us – Family, food and fun are three of our favorite F words. (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

In any event, here’s what’s up in our kitchen. I researched, tested and chose some new non-stick pans – A thing I didn’t like very much until I got my paws on these new ones, which I think highly enough of to include on our essential Cookware page. What? You don’t see that page? Well truth be told, no, you don’t, yet – But that, along with some other fresh Essentials pages, will be appearing soon, so please do stay tuned! Then finally, Santa gifted us with a home sous vide unit, so expect some process and execution thoughts and recipes from that in the not too distant future as well.

We’ve also been working diligently on Operation Reduce Kitchen Plastic, (ORKP, or Ork Pee, if you prefer), and have an update on that worth sharing with y’all – Here then are a few considerations for you.

The focus for this phase of ORKP is elimination of single use plastics, arguably the heart of the kitchen problem. While we tend to think of this in terms of ziplocks and such that we employ at home, the trail really begins at the store. There, everything from bags for produce and bulk foods to the bags our stuff gets stuffed with really adds up over time. The solution is simple – Reusable bags to replace all that – And those work great, if you can remember to get them out of the trunk when you arrive…

For big grocery bags, there are a lot of options. We went with a set of Earthwise cotton canvas whoppers. With hefty fabric, larger size than typical, double-stitched and machine washable, they hold up really well to hefty, regular use.

To replace produce bags, we got a great set of 10 solid and mesh bags made by Colony. They’re sized just right for the stuff we usually buy, and they’re machine washable cotton, well made, and hefty enough for a decent lifespan. Added bonus, the flip side of each name tag tells the cashier the tare weight of the bag, so you’re not paying for stuff you ain’t buying.

More and more stores are offering reusable cloth bags for bulk foods too – They’re light and rugged, and just right for stuff like nuts or coffee beans that we buy regularly.

In house, we’ve replaced plastic bags with glass containers with air tight nylon lids – Here again, we’ve tried all glass and found the breakage rates excessive for our needs. We continue to employ canning jars as well, for freezing broth, soup, stock and such. As long as you don’t fill past the tapered neck, you’re generally good to go, (albeit you must be more careful, because they will indeed break with rough handling.)

And finally, there’s plastic wrap – Super useful, but super wasteful, so it’s house made waxed cloth wraps to the rescue. There are a bunch of these offered for sale these days, but the prices sure gave us pause, so we decided after some research to make our own.

There are a bunch of recipes out there, some that use everything we did and some that don’t. The bottom line is this – you can make wraps with just beeswax, but what you won’t have with that formula is much of a tacky quality to them – they won’t stick to themselves very well. For that, you need to add pine rosin, and since cling wrap is what everyone is trying to replace, using it made sense to us. The third ingredient we went with is jojoba oil. It helps to keep the wraps supple over time, and also imparts some antimicrobial properties to the mix – Not a bad thing in our book.

There are a ton of step by step recipes out there, so rather than repeat that, we’ll show y’all some pics of the basic process, and add some caveats that we did not see very often covered in the stuff we researched – Here are our bullet points.

1. Use new, 100% cotton fabric of a fairly lightweight weave. A lot of sites talk about something about like a bed sheet,but to be honest, we found that too far too light – We went with 100% cotton duck, and washed it first to get the sizing out, (which is important, says M.)

2. Think about the kinds of things you cover commonly, and size things to achieve that. We made a set of small, medium, and large in square, rectangular, and circular shapes, and that seems to cover most of what we ask of them – Too many sites talked about very specific sizes, and that may not be what you typically use, so measure your stuff and go with that.

3. Contrary to what almost everybody says, it’s damn near impossible to get this stuff out 100% of a nice cooking vessel, so don’t use your nice Calphalon set, (right, Babe?). Go find a cheap double boiler insert and dedicate that to this process – It’ll be well worth the eight bucks it costs you.

4. These things do NOT wear out when they start to show lines and creases – They can be reheated and recoated easily, and should be! You will get many, many moons of service from them.

5. Use parchment when you bake the wraps to avoid contaminating a baking sheet.

The production process was easy and fun – In essence, you’re going to cut fabric to size, melt the ingredients, paint that onto the fabric, and then bake them for a spell to fully impregnant the sheets, and that’s pretty much it. Just be careful with it – Hot wax, rosin, and oil can and will get everywhere if you’re not paying attention. As stated, the end results are very satisfactory, and a joy to use – You might even call them the bees knees.

NOTE: As with everything we test and report on, the times described here in we’re not received in any kind of a deal with the maker. We buy them, test them, and use them, just as you would, with our very own money – Guaranteed!

Quick Follow Up to Kitchen Chaos Post

Which began with a couple of examples of extraordinary acts by extraordinary Chefs – And sometime, those can lead to pretty amazing places, such as it seems to have for Chef Jose Andrés.

Check out the story here.