Question

How long is it safe to hold food prepared using this cook-chill system before it is re-thermed and used?

Answer 1

If you cook then chill food, its temperature needs to be reduced safely from 70°C to 3°C within 90 minutes. If you are freezing cooked food, the temperature needs to go from 70°C to -18°C in no more than 240 minutes. Otherwise you are breaking the law. Worse, you are putting your customers at risk.

This is because bacteria grows most aggressively between 5°C and 63°C – so the food needs to get past this ‘danger zone’ as quickly as possible.

It’s no good putting hot food into a refrigerator or freezer – it won’t cool fast enough, the resulting rise in the cabinet temperature will endanger other food being stored there, and it will overwork the refrigeration system.

The only safe way to comply with the food safety regulations governing the chilling or freezing of cooked food is to use a blast chiller or blast freezer.