Kitchen Temperature Log Sheets for Food Service
8 Temps per Shift Food Temperature Log
Food service hot and cold temperature log sheets are tedious yet essential in rounding out your culinary program. Temperature logs teach your crew the importance of food safety and act as a reminder of what the food danger zone is. It keeps them accountable to not only executing great food, but also maintaining food that is safe for the public.
After all the work a chef puts into creating recipes and training the crew, the few moments it takes to record food temperatures is an essential habit which can 1) Help make sure that your food is at temp so foodborne illness is not a problem. 2) Act as verification to the health department that you are not the source of a problem if someone does become sick (assuming your records are accurate and proper standards are followed). If you have good records, the health department will look more favorably upon you.
Not having temp logs, or having inaccurate or unverified temp logs, can become a legal liability.
In this article you will find 3 variations of kitchen food temperature log sheets. The first version (8 Temps/Shift) is designed to be taken every hour over an eight hour shift and is broken up for each day of the week (Mon – Sun). If you have multiple shifts you would just print multiple logs, one for each shift.
The second version (2 Temps/Shift) is for either short shifts, or restaurants with established professional cooks who have advanced food safety awareness training. It is designed to take temperatures twice during a shift. This might be used in a restaurant that’s only open 4 to 5 hours for breakfast, lunch or dinner with temps being taken early in the shift and halfway through the shift.
2 Temps per Shift Temperature Sheet
The last version (3 Temps/Shift) is designed to take three temperatures during a shift, which again would apply to either a short shift, or a very well-trained crew with high food safety standards and awareness.
All of these temperature log sheets can be used to take either hot food temperatures or cold food temperatures on the same sheet, or you can separate them into hot stations and cold stations.
Team members should be properly trained on how to calibrate their thermometer, how to accurately take temperatures, how to clean and sanitize the probe before taking another temperature, and how to avoid cross-contamination with the probe.
Best practices also include calibrating thermometers on a regular basis to be sure that your temperature taking is accurate. And it is best to use either a digital thermometer or a thermocouple to get the most accurate temperatures. Never rely on equipment-based thermometers such as the ones on the door of a cooler or the door of an alto shaam…physically spiking the food with a probe is the recommended procedure.
3 Temps per Shift Food Temperature Log
Check with your local health department to see how long they recommend keeping your food temperature logs for.
Lastly, a supervisor or manager should sign off on each shift’s temperature logs, verifying that there were no critical temperatures and that the staff actually took the temperatures!
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