Which Food Item is Being Stored Safely

Knowing where in the fridge to store your food is a question that many people wish they knew the answer to. Refrigerating your food correctly is of import to ensure that your food remains safe to consume and stop harmful leaner spreading for raw to ready-to-eat foods.

But what goes where?

How to Store Food in a Fridge:

(Please note that the diagram below was created for the purposes of a domestic fridge, with the bottom shelf being a vegetable drawer).

Top and middle shelf

Ready-to-eat foods, such as dairy products, gear up meals and packaged foods, leftovers, cooked meats and prepared salads. These should all exist covered or kept in sealed containers to prevent contamination. Fix-to-eat foods are stored at the summit of the fridge, away from raw foods and so that harmful bacteria cannot transfer from the raw nutrient to the cooked food.

Lesser shelf

Raw meat, poultry and fish in sealed containers to finish them touching or dripping onto other foods. Raw meats should ever be stored at the bottom of your fridge to preclude cantankerous-contamination. Ensure that each item is wrapped or in a sealed container so that it doesn’t come into contact with other foods.

Salad drawer

Fruit, vegetables and salad vegetables that have been washed prior to storage. Make certain that your fruit, vegetables and salad are wrapped in paper or plastic with air holes to keep them protected from any contamination. For salads and herbs, endeavor wrapping them in a damp paper towel before storing to forbid them from drying out and to proceed them fresher for longer.

Have you seen our latest report examining regional standards of nutrient hygiene across the UK? Check out our interactive map and detect how hygienic your hometown actually is in Nutrient Hygiene: Know the Score.

Food Hygiene Tips for Your Refrigerator

Remember that your fridge should exist fix at a temperature between 0-5°c so that the charge per unit of food spoilage is slowed and harmful bacteria cannot multiply. At this temperature, your food will be kept safe to eat.

Too remember to keep an eye on use-by dates. Any nutrient that has passed its use-by date should not be eaten every bit harmful bacteria has had run a risk to grow and make the food unsafe to health. Foods past their best-earlier dates can be eaten as this is only a mark of quality, not safety.

Thinking of selling your bootleg produce? Look no further than our Starting a Nutrient Business From Home guide.

General Rules of Refrigeration

• Make sure that the refrigerator is never overloaded. Whilst cramming that last piece of food into the fridge may seem a good idea at the time, you are in danger of blocking the cooling unit that will arctic your food. In that location is also a danger that the refrigerator door could not be properly shut, leaving you food that is unfit to eat the following morning! Air needs to be able to circulate around the food.
• New stock should always exist placed behind old stock. Yes, the rules in a commercial kitchen should use at dwelling also. Ensure you swallow the food in the fridge based on the use by date in guild to prevent food wastage which ultimately hits your wallet!
• Open cans should never be stored in the fridge as this may result in chemical contamination, especially acidic food such as fruit and tomatoes. If yous wish to put canned food in the fridge, ensure that you put the food into a container that is suitable for chilling first.
• If your refrigerator temperatures are too loftier, it may be the consequence of overloading, the blocking of cooling units, or the thermostat being ready too high. If your fridge does non take a thermometer built in, we recommend that you purchase a fridge thermometer to monitor the temperature. Remember that the correct temperature is- 0-5°c.

Responsible for a commercial refrigerator? Our Level 3 Food Safety Form is a comprehensive overview of everything required to manage food hygiene in your business.

Further Nutrient Hygiene Resource

• How to Defrost Food Safely
• How Long Can You Store Frozen Nutrient For?
• Can I Cook This From Frozen?
• Food Hygiene and Safety Certificates