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Food Temperature Danger Zone

I’ve been to at least 25 picnics where shiny bluebottle flies squatted on fried chicken left out in the sun for at least 4 hours. Then we’d all take some home, and call in sick the next day. Here’s the skinny on temperatures: the inside of your freezer should be 0 degrees Fahrenheit. The inside of your refrigerator should be less than 40 degrees F—top, bottom and door (all different—I checked). The Danger Zone, where even Jedi knights fear to tread, is between 41 and 135 degrees F. You can keep hot food in a warmer at 140 degrees for two hours, then you have to reheat it up to 165 degrees to kill all the nasties. In fact, no food should be in the Zone for more than a couple hours before icing down to 41 degrees. Wonder why you got turista from that popsicle in Mexico? It’s because heat kills a lot of the bad guys, but cold just slows them down. Of course, there are evil bacteria that nothing can kill, like salmonella, which sounds like a jazz-singing fish, but is undetectable until you get very, very sick. Fortunately, thanks to squeaky clean processing procedures, it’s not the worry it once was.