Cooking, reheating and hot holding

What you are being asked to do

The Food Standards Agency expects food that needs a full cook to reach a time and temperature combination that kills harmful bacteria, and to be reheated until it is steaming hot all the way through. Safer Food, Better Business turns that into checks a small kitchen can actually do: probe the centre, write the reading down, and know what to do when the number is short. Your job on shift is those checks, not a rewrite of the pack.

Follow your own safe method if it is stricter than the figures below, or if it names a dish your kitchen cooks in a particular way. A poster in this module does not outrank a temperature your manager has set for a combi programme, a burger, or a roast. Businesses in Scotland should follow CookSafe and Food Standards Scotland as well as the working temperatures in their own pack. Where this page gives an England, Wales and Northern Ireland figure, the Scottish pack wins for a Scottish kitchen, especially on reheating. In Northern Ireland, follow Safe Catering where that is the pack you work to.

Cooking sits next to the other safe methods. Food that is cooked and then left warm undoes the cook. Cooling is the chilling module. A dirty probe, or tongs that have touched raw chicken and then the cooked pieces, puts bacteria straight back onto food that will not be cooked again. That separation is the cross-contamination module.

The temperatures you work to

Standard advice from the Food Standards Agency is to cook food to a core temperature of 70°C for two minutes, or an equivalent combination. The combinations they publish are 60°C for 45 minutes, 65°C for 10 minutes, 70°C for 2 minutes, 75°C for 30 seconds, and 80°C for 6 seconds. You do not pick the lowest one because the kitchen is behind. You use the combination written in your safe method, and you can show you held it.

• 75°C in the thickest part. This is the working check most caterers use, because a probe that reads 75°C has reached the short, hot end of the list (75°C for 30 seconds) without you standing over a joint with a stopwatch. If your pack says 75°C, that is the number you write down.
• 70°C for two minutes. Equivalent to 75°C, but only if the centre stays at 70°C for the full two minutes. A flash reading of 70°C as you pull the tray is not that hold. If you use this combination, the time has to be real.
• Steaming hot all the way through. The reheating standard. In many English, Welsh and Northern Ireland packs the probe check for that is again 75°C. In Scotland, reheated food is expected to reach 82°C. Do not import the English figure into a Scottish kitchen.
• 63°C or above. Hot holding. Bain-maries, hot cupboards and heat lamps keep food hot. They do not finish a cook. Food goes in already at temperature.
• 8°C to 63°C. The band where bacteria multiply fastest. Cooking, hot holding and chilling are how you move food out of it. Every minute a high-risk food spends in that band without a reason is time you did not need to give them.

These figures kill the bacteria that cause most food poisoning from undercooked food, including Salmonella and Campylobacter, when the cook is thorough and the food is not contaminated again afterwards. They are not a guarantee if the centre never got there, or if the food is cooled slowly and reheated badly later. Spores of Bacillus cereus in rice can survive a normal cook. The control for those is what you do with the rice after it comes off the heat, which is why cooked rice is not left in the pot on the back of the stove.

What has to be cooked through

Bacteria on a whole muscle of meat sit on the outside. Mincing, rolling, stuffing, or pushing a skewer through the meat carries that outside into the middle. The middle then has to get hot enough to kill them. The same is true when the animal or the product already carries bacteria through the tissue, not only on the skin.

• Poultry. Chicken, turkey, duck and any product made from them are cooked through. No pink meat, and the juices run clear. That includes wings, thighs, minced chicken burgers, and a crown or ballotine. A golden skin proves the outside. It does not prove the bone side.
• Pork. Cook through every time: joints, chops, sausages, and anything minced or rolled. Unlike beef or lamb steak, pork is not served pink. Juices should run clear, and a probe in the thickest part should meet your cooking target.
• Minced and reformed meat. Burgers, sausages, kebabs, meatballs, meatloaf, and any mix that has been through a mincer. The customer asking for it rare does not move the bacteria.
• Rolled and stuffed joints. A rolled shoulder has the outside in the centre. Probe the centre of the roll, not the end grain that has been sitting in the hot air.
• Offal, especially liver. Liver is cooked all the way through. Campylobacter can be inside the liver, not only on the surface, so a pink middle is not the same decision as a pink steak. Kidneys and other offal follow the same thorough cook unless your pack has a specific method you have been shown.
• Skewers and doner-style spits. Anything the skewer has dragged surface bacteria into. On a doner or shawarma, the cooked layer is the outside. Slices must be thin enough to be thoroughly cooked. A thick slice with a pink, cool centre is not served.
• Eggs in dishes for vulnerable people, unless you are using eggs from a scheme the Food Standards Agency accepts for that use. The detail is in the eggs section below. Do not decide this at the pass from memory of a headline.

Frozen vegetables such as sweetcorn are not automatically a garnish. The Food Standards Agency warns that some frozen vegetables need a thorough cook because they can carry bacteria. Follow the packet. Do not thaw a bag of sweetcorn on the side and scatter it over a ready-to-eat salad unless the label says it is ready to eat.

What can be served pink, and what cannot

A whole cut of beef or lamb — a steak, a chop, a joint that has not been rolled — can be seared on the outside and served pink in the middle, because the inside of the muscle was not exposed to contamination. The outside still has to be properly cooked. "Rare" is not "cold in the centre with a raw face". If the cut has been rolled, tied with the outside turned in, spiked all the way through, or minced, it is no longer that product. It is cooked through.

Burgers are the decision that catches people. A steak and a burger can sit on the same grill and need opposite cooks. Mincing spreads surface bacteria through every bite. The default in a catering kitchen is to cook burgers, including beef burgers, to the thorough-cooking standard. Some businesses have a written safe method for serving a named beef burger less than thoroughly cooked, with controls on the meat, the mince, and the cook. You do not offer that because a customer asks, and you do not copy it from another site. If your manager has not trained you on that exact method, the burger is cooked to 75°C in the centre, or the equivalent in your pack. Poultry, pork, and anything mixed with them are cooked through even if a beef method exists.

Steak tartare, carpaccio, and other dishes served raw are not a pink-steak decision either. They exist only where the business has a safe method for that dish. If it is not on your menu with a method you have been shown, you do not make it as a favour.

How to probe so the number means something

Use a clean probe thermometer. Wipe it with a probe wipe before you start, and again between foods, especially between anything raw and anything cooked or ready to eat. A probe that has just been in a raw burger and is then pushed into a cooked one puts bacteria into food that has finished its cook. That is cross-contamination with a thermometer, and it is a common way an otherwise careful cook undoes the check.

• Thickest part, away from bone, fat and the tin. Bone and the metal of a tray conduct heat and give a high reading while the meat next to them is still under. Fat can read low. The tip of the probe has to sit in the centre of the food, not in the air gap of a cavity and not touching the grid.
• Wait until the number stops moving. Write that settled reading, not the first flicker.
• Check more than one item when the tray is mixed: the largest piece, and one from the coldest part of the oven if you know where that is. A wing at the front does not speak for a thigh at the back.
• Stir liquids, soups, stews and sauces, then probe the centre. The edge of a deep pot can be boiling while the middle is only warm. A reading from the surface of an unstirred sauce is not the cook.
• Large joints. Probe the centre. Resting a joint lets the temperature even out. It is not a substitute for the centre having reached the target. If you probe before the rest and it is short, put it back. Do not call the rest the cook.

If the probe is damaged, the lead is split, or the reading is nonsense — 40°C in a pan you can see is boiling, or 120°C in a fridge — stop using it and tell the person who owns the checks. A spare probe, or a decision not to serve until you have a working one, is the safe method. Guessing "it looks done" because the only thermometer is in a drawer with a flat battery is how undercooked food leaves the kitchen.

Managers usually check probes in melting ice (around 0°C) and in boiling water (around 100°C). You may be asked to do that check, or to fetch the probe that passed it. If you have never been shown, ask before you sign a column of temperatures. A probe that is out by several degrees makes every tick on the sheet unreliable.

Reheating

Reheating means cooking again, not warming until the customer will accept it. The food has to be steaming hot all the way through. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the practical probe check in most Safer Food, Better Business packs is 75°C. Stir food so there is no cold pocket, especially rice, stews, and anything in a deep tray.

Reheat only once. Food that has been cooked, cooled, reheated and not sold is finished. You do not cool it again for a third service. Each trip through the warm band gives surviving bacteria and spores another chance to multiply, and some toxins are not destroyed by the next reheat. If half a tray of curry sells at lunch, the rest of that reheated tray is binned or eaten as part of that same service under your house rule. It does not go back in the fridge for the evening.

In Scotland the legal reheating temperature is 82°C. CookSafe tells you to reheat to not less than 82°C, and to use a different combination — such as 70°C for two minutes — only where your own pack says the higher temperature would spoil that dish. Reheat the finished dish only once there as well. Do not copy an English 75°C working figure into a Scottish kitchen that has not written that exception down.

Microwaves heat unevenly. Stir or turn the food part way through, then leave it to stand for the time your method gives so the heat evens out, and probe in more than one place. A steaming edge and a cold centre is not a reheat. Covering the food helps it heat by steam. It does not replace the probe.

A regeneration programme on a combi oven is only as good as the last time someone probed the food that came out of it. Run the programme you were shown, then check the centre of the largest portion. If the oven was overloaded, or the food went in still frozen because the thaw was started too late, the programme will not save it. Thaw in the fridge, as the chilling module describes, unless the pack says the product is cooked from frozen — and then follow that pack, not a shorter time you prefer.

Food that is taken from the fridge and served cold, such as a slice of ham or a prepared salad, is not "reheated". It is ready-to-eat, and the controls are the dates, the fridge, and keeping it away from raw food. Do not give it a token minute in the microwave "to take the chill off" and then hold it warm on the pass. That is the worst of both methods.

Hot holding

Food held hot for service stays at 63°C or above. That applies to a bain-marie, a hot cupboard, a heated well on a carvery, and food under lamps if it is sitting there for service rather than being plated and handed straight out. Measure the food, not the air in the cupboard and not the water in the bain-marie. Water at 70°C can still leave a shallow tray of sauce below 63°C if the tray was filled with food that was only warm.

Put food in already hot. A bain-marie is not an oven. Ladle, rice, or a joint that goes in at 50°C will sit in the danger band for the whole of service, and the display will look busy and legitimate while it does. If the probe says the food is short, take it back to a proper heat source, bring it up, and then return it. Do not turn the lamp up and hope.

If hot-held food falls below 63°C, write the time. You can keep it below 63°C for up to two hours. Serve it inside that window, or reheat it until it is steaming hot and put it back above 63°C. Safer Food, Better Business treats that spell below 63°C as once only: after the reheat you do not get another two hours below 63°C, and a new person on shift does not reset the clock. If the two hours are already up, cool the food as quickly as possible to 8°C or below, using your chilling method, or throw it away. If you cannot show when it fell below 63°C, you do not invent a start time. You tell the manager and you throw the food away.

Stir held sauces and stews so the surface does not cool while the bottom sits hot, and so you are not probing the one hot corner. Keep lids on where the equipment is designed for them. Topping up a hot tray with a cold portion from the fridge pulls the whole tray down. Heat the new portion first, then add it.

Leftover doner and spit-roast meat at the end of service is a hot-holding decision, not a storage habit. Do not leave the cone on the spit to cool overnight and shave it cold in the morning. Follow the safe method: either it is still within a written hot-hold and is used, or it is cooled quickly in a way the chilling method allows, or it is thrown away. A spit that has been off for an unknown time is the "no start time" case. The meat goes.

Batches, rice, and food you only part-cook

Big volumes lie. A hotel pan of chilli, a stockpot of soup, and a tray of lasagne can be violently hot at the edges and undercooked in the middle, or the reverse once you start cooling. Probe the centre after you have stirred anything that can be stirred. Split a deep pot into shallow trays if you need the centre to catch up near the end of the cook, rather than serving the top layer and leaving the middle for "later".

Cooked rice, pasta, pulses and stews need a plan for the minutes after the hob goes off. A normal boil does not destroy Bacillus cereus spores in rice. If the rice then sits warm, those spores grow and can produce a toxin that a later reheat will not reliably destroy. Serve rice immediately, hold it at 63°C or above with a real probe check, or cool it quickly the way your chilling method describes and refrigerate it. "It is still on the stove from the lunch menu" is not a method.

Part-cooking is a full method or it is a hazard. Browning chicken in the morning and finishing it at service is only safe if the first stage is followed by rapid cooling, fridge storage, and a final cook that still hits the thorough-cooking temperature in the centre. Holding the half-cooked tray in a warm oven "so it is ready" keeps it in the band where bacteria grow, after you have only killed some of them. If your pack does not describe a part-cook for that dish, cook it through in one go.

Frying oil and a shared fryer are a cooking question and an allergen question. A gluten-free item dropped into oil that has just cooked battered fish is not a "cook" that removes gluten. If you are asked for an allergen-safe dish, follow the allergen method and the allergen module, including a separate fryer or a pan if that is what your kitchen uses. Do not promise the temperature has dealt with it.

Eggs and people who are more at risk

Dishes with raw or lightly cooked egg — a runny yolk, homemade mayonnaise, mousse, tiramisu, some dressings — are a specific risk for anyone who is pregnant, very young, elderly, or already unwell. The Food Standards Agency's advice is that eggs from the British Lion scheme, or the Laid in Britain scheme, can be used raw or lightly cooked even for those groups, because of the controls on the hens. Eggs that are not from one of those schemes should be cooked until both the white and the yolk are solid if the food is for someone in those groups.

On shift, that means you can point at the mark on the egg, or you cook it through. You do not scrape yesterday's unmarked eggs into a sauce for a care-home delivery or a children's menu because the Lion eggs have run out. Tell the person who places the order. A recipe card that says "Lion eggs only" is a cook's instruction, not a suggestion. Washed, cracked, or dirty eggs are a rejection, not a "use them in a well-cooked dish" workaround, unless your manager has looked at them and told you the cook that applies. Shells and egg boxes stay off the ready-to-eat board. They are a cross-contamination problem as well as a cooking one.

When the reading is short, and what you write down

If the centre has not reached the target, keep cooking. Check again in the thickest part. Write both readings, or the fail and the pass, in the way your sheet is laid out. Do not send the dish and "note it later". Do not move undercooked food into hot holding to finish. Do not serve the outer portions and quietly put the cold centre back. If a second check is still short and the equipment is not recovering — oven cold, burners out, microwave that is not heating — stop that product, tell the manager, and do not serve it. Hungry service is not a corrective action.

The record is the food, the temperature, the time, and who checked. A column of identical 75s written at the end of the week from memory is not a cooking check. If you cooked for longer and rechecked, the sheet should show that you found a problem and fixed it. Officers trust a page with a low reading and a second reading more than a page that never varies. If you threw food away, write that too: what it was, why, and roughly how much. The diary line and the cooking sheet should agree.

Visual checks still matter where a probe cannot reach, and as a back-up your eyes already do: poultry juices clear, no pink in mince, soup simmering after it has been stirred. They do not replace the probe on a joint, a tray, or a reheated rice dish. "The timer rang" is not a check if the oven was opened six times during the cook or the tray was double-loaded.

Worked example

A hotel breakfast and lunch kitchen is in changeover at 11:40. Three cooking decisions land together. None of them is fixed by the oven timer.

First, a tray of chicken thighs for a pie filling reads 68°C in the thickest thigh, next to the bone, after the programme that usually lands at 75°C. The oven was opened for a toast order halfway through. The cook puts the tray back, gives it another eight minutes, and probes two thighs, including one from the middle of the tray. Both read 76°C. The sheet shows 68°C, then 76°C, with the time of the second check. The first reading is not rubbed out. The pie filling is only filled once those thighs have stayed hot. It is not held in a warm cupboard to "come up".

Second, a customer asks for a beef burger "as rare as you can". The kitchen's pack cooks all burgers through. There is no separate less-than-thoroughly-cooked method on the wall, and the mince arrived as a catering pack, not as a named whole muscle minced on site under a procedure. The burger is cooked to 75°C in the centre. The person on the pass tells the customer it is served cooked through. They do not split the difference with a warm pink middle. A steak on the same grill is seared and served pink, because it is a whole cut and the menu allows it. The tongs that turned the raw burger are not used on the steak salad garnish. They go to the wash, and the cooked food is touched with clean tongs.

Third, the lunch bain-marie of rice and dal was probed at 11:00 at 74°C. At 12:20 the rice reads 58°C because the gastronorm was topped up from a cold tub. The cook writes 12:20 and 58°C, takes the rice off, reheats it on the hob until it is steaming and probes at 75°C, then returns it to a unit that is already up to temperature. They do not add a second two-hour allowance. The cold top-up is what caused the drop, so the next portion is heated before it is added. The dal that stayed at 67°C is left in holding and checked again later in service. It is not "close enough" to excuse the rice.

The diary line is three sentences: chicken pie mix recooked from 68°C to 76°C; burgers cooked through, no rare service; rice fell to 58°C at 12:20, reheated once to 75°C, cold top-ups stopped. That is a record an officer can match to the probe sheet and the bain-marie.

What a manager or environmental health officer checks

Officers look at the food on the heat and then ask the person using the probe to explain the number. They are not only collecting the folder at the end.

• What temperature should this dish be, and what did it read last? A tick with no number does not answer.
• Show me how you probe this joint, this sauce, or this reheated rice. They may watch the wipe, the place you insert the probe, and whether you avoid the bone.
• Is the probe one you trust? If it will not read boiling water near 100°C, or melting ice near 0°C, the sheet underneath it is in doubt.
• Point at the burger, the liver, the rolled joint, and the steak. Which of these are allowed to be pink here, and who decided?
• The hot hold: what does the food read, not the water and not the dial? If it is under 63°C, when did it drop, and which of the once-only options are you in?
• Reheating: how many times has this tray been up? Where is the cold spot check on microwave or combi food?
• If something failed this week, what was cooked longer, what was thrown away, and where is that written?

A manager should be able to walk the same route without notice: a working probe with wipes, a sheet that contains the odd failure and the correction, hot-held food that is actually hot, and staff who can say why a burger and a steak are not the same cook. Open the cooking pages of Safer Food, Better Business and compare them with the trays in front of you. Those pages only count if the centre of the food agrees with them this service.

You may be asked what you would do if the only probe was missing during a Sunday roast. The expected answer is to stop and get a working probe, or to hold service of the high-risk joints until you can check them, and to tell the manager. "We always do forty minutes and the juices looked fine" is the answer that fails when the oven was overloaded.

Check your understanding

Doing this as part of your job?

If your workplace uses Localyn, ask your manager for your personal training link — completing modules through it records the training in the store's food safety evidence automatically. Managers: issue links from the Training page in your dashboard.