DIY Home Health and Safety
Your Guide to Healthy Grilling
When the rich, savory smell of grilled meat wafts through your neighborhood, it's a sure sign that summer has arrived. Grilling isn't just a tradition, it also can be one of the healthiest ways to cook. There's no oil to add extra fat and calories; no heavy breading and frying to weigh grilled meat down.
Yet there are a few dangers lurking under that grill cover. Undercooked or improperly prepared meats can lead to a nasty case of food poisoning. Eating charred grilled meats too often could increase the risk for certain types of cancer.
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Here's the beef on grill safety and tips on how to grill the right way, so you can enjoy your cookouts without having to worry.
Food Safety Tips
Each year, 76 million Americans are diagnosed with food poisoning, most often from eating undercooked meat, poultry, and other animal products. Bacteria such as E. coli and salmonellaare regular residents in chicken, beef, and meats. If you don't cook meat to a high enough temperature to kill the bacteria, they can wind up in your intestinal tract and lead to symptoms like vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. Usually food poisoning is mild, but it can get serious enough to send 325,000 people to the hospital each year.
Preventing food poisoning starts in the preparation. Follow these food safety tips to ensure that your grilled meat doesn't make you sick:
- Separate your food. Keep raw meat away from fruits, vegetables, and any other foods you're going to eat without cooking, to avoid bacterial cross-contamination. Cut raw meats on a different surface than other foods. Then wash every cutting board, plate, and utensil the raw meat touched with hot water and soap. Always use new serving plates and utensils for your cooked food.
- Clean up. Wash your hands with warm water and soap for at least 20 seconds before preparing food and after you handle raw meat. Ask the same of anyone else who is going to be handling food.
- Keep it cold. Store meat and poultry in the refrigerator until you're ready to grill it. If you have any meat left over from grilling, either keep it warm (140 degrees or hotter) or put it in the fridge within two hours (within 1 hour if the temperature is over 90 degrees). Freeze any ground meat or poultry that you don't use within 1-2 days.
- Cook it through. Your burger might look done on the outside, but it could still be raw on the inside. Internal color isn't a reliable guide of whether or not it is cooked. To be certain that your meat is cooked thoroughly, insert a food thermometer into the thickest part of the meat and keep cooking until it reaches these temperatures:
- Whole chicken or turkey:165 degrees
- Chicken or turkey breasts (boneless): 165 degrees
- Ground chicken or turkey: 165 degrees
- Hamburgers, ground beef: 160 degrees
- Beef roasts or steaks: Medium rare 145 degrees; medium 160 degrees; well done 170 degrees
- Pork: 160 degrees
- Fish: 145 degrees
- Hot dogs: 165 degrees or steaming hot
Keep your food covered when you're not eating it to prevent insects from making a snack of your meal. Bugs pick up germs on their feet and bodies and then deposit those germs wherever they land. If you see an insect crawling on your food, throw that piece away. That bug's last stop might have been a pile of garbage -- or worse.
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