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Hot Weather Cooking and Food Safety
1) The hotter it is outside, the faster food will cook
on your grill. If you are long-term cooking, you may want to cook your
food at a lower temperature setting.
2) Because food will cook faster, it’s important to use a high-quality
meat thermometer or instant reading thermometer to monitor internal
meat temperatures. This will help prevent over cooking your meat and
drying it out.
3) Even in hot weather, you still want to cook with the lid to your
Traeger grill CLOSED.
4) In hot weather, make sure you defrost meat IN THE REFRIGERATOR! Food
borne bacteria rapidly multiply in hot weather and can easily cause
food to spoil, ruining your cookout.
5) The Food Safety Rule of Thumb is: "Keep hot foods hot-above
140 degrees F- and cold foods cold-below 37 degrees F.
6) Cooked food and salads should not be left out in the heat for more
than an hour. BETTER YET---fill a deep tray or casserole dish with ice
and keep salads-particularly potato or mayonnaise based salads on ice.
7) Never use the same cutting board for cooked meat that you used to
prepare raw meat, unless you’ve thoroughly washed it in hot, soapy
water before using again. The same thing holds true with knives and
cooking utensils.
8) You can keep foods hot by wrapping them in foil and then placing
them in an insulated cooler. Stuff wadded-up newspaper around the foil
wrapped food. This will keep your food hot for a good three to four
hours.
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