Barbecue - Food Hygiene

Ensure you always wash your hands before starting the cooking, and wash salads and vegetables thoroughly. Ensure all your barbecue accessories, tongs, skewers and forks etc, are spotlessly clean. Remember that heat encourages the growth of bacteria, so a hot grill and salads left out on a sunny table both have the same risk factor, the runaway proliferation of nasty diseases that people fork into themselves and then spend several days trying to get rid of!

Use separate utensils for raw and cooked food and make doubly sure you defrost frozen meat and poultry fully before cooking, keep raw and cooked food separate, and never put cooked food on a plate or surface that has been used for raw meat. Not only does this prevent bacteria spreading from raw food to nice warm cooked food where they can multiply, well defrosted meat cooks more evenly and has more flavour than meat that is still part-frozen or overly chilled when it hits the grill.

Cover all barbecue food to protect it from insects and dust, and keep meat, salads and other perishable foods in the fridge until you are ready to use them.

Clean your barbecue grill and accessories thoroughly after use with a good barbecue cleaner.

To ensure food is well cooked:

Wait until the charcoal is glowing red, with a powdery grey surface, before you start to cook

Turn the food regularly, and move it around the barbecue area, to cook it evenly.

Check that the centre of the food is piping hot with a meat thermometer.

Barbecue cleaning photograph by J Wynia, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

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