Food Safety Tips for Cooking Thanksgiving and Other Holiday Meals

Not to brag, but I’m pretty good in the kitchen; I love a complex pastry project, ferment things with gusto (sorry), and am probably above average at emulsifying a sauce. But there is one scenario involving cooking for others that gets to my heart: getting sick.

I am a doctor with specialist medical training in infectious diseases and public health. If I cooked a meal that sent a bunch of my friends and loved ones running to the bathroom, I might never get out of the shame hole.

I thought I knew all I needed to know about food safety to avoid eternal public humiliation. Still, as I came to understand while researching this story, even know-it-alls like me have a lot to learn about hand washing, cleaning surfaces and food, storing leftovers, and reducing non-germ risks.

Thanksgiving, and holidays more broadly, are different from other times of the year. People are preparing more dishes for more people than they typically would, says Ben Chapman, a food safety expert who directs the agricultural and human sciences at North Carolina State University. The resulting chaos means less control in the kitchen – often leading to higher risk for both cooks and diners.

Here are the things you’ll need to break a sweat—and not—when you head out to your next big holiday dinner.

Proper hand washing and drying is essential

Wash your hands – a lot. Raw whole turkeys are most likely contaminated with bacteria that can make people sick, most commonly campylobacter and salmonella. The big risk of touching raw meat in the kitchen is that you move these bacteria to surfaces that other people will also touch a lot. That increases the chance that people will get unpleasant hands — and mouths — even if they didn’t directly handle the thawing turkey.

For that reason, Chapman recommends washing your hands more than you think you need to when preparing a meal for a lot of people. Clean your hands immediately after touching raw meat — and don’t forget that even one partially thawed turkey can carry bacteria.

Plain soap and water works fine – it doesn’t have to be antimicrobial soap to do the job, but you do need to rub the skin all over the hands to get them really clean, including the back of the hand, between the fingers and under the nails. But the real shocker here, at least for me, was when Chapman told me that alcohol-based hand sanitizers are actually better for most situations, even if you have watery turkey juice on your mitts. (One situation where sanitizer is worse than soap: after touching lots of really fatty meat, like sausage or pork. In these situations, use soap to make sure you cut through the fat to get all the bacteria mixed in.)

DO NOT skip drying them. It’s not just hand washing itself that’s important for removing bacteria from your fingers, says Chapman: Drying your hands after washing removes up to 90 percent of the bacteria on the skin’s surface, so don’t ignore this important step.

There’s no need to waste tons of paper towels drying off. Chapman suggests keeping different tea towels in different parts of the kitchen for different purposes, if at all possible. For example: You can keep a “dirty” towel in a kitchen corner to wipe hands after you have washed them, e.g. with a raw turkey. On a hook elsewhere in the kitchen, you can keep a “clean” towel that you use to wipe up sauce spills or other minor dirt.

Any system can easily break down when random people drift in and out of your kitchen while you’re cooking. It’s not a bad idea to just toss used tea towels straight into the sink after mopping up raw meat juice spills or wiping particularly rough hands. “I might go through 10 tea towels on Thanksgiving Day,” Chapman says.

Don’t worry about washing your products. Washing products removes physical debris, such as soil, sand and dirt. However, it rarely removes bacteria that make people sick. The reason: When produce is contaminated with pathogens, they often settle just below the surface, in tiny pores in the fruit or vegetable that protect it from being washed away.

“Fresh produce, unfortunately for us, is our No. 1 source of foodborne illness in the United States,” says Chapman. “And also unfortunately for us as consumers, when it gets to me, there’s very little I can do.”

Be especially careful if you have to wash your turkey. There is no food safety reason to wash your turkey, but many people like to do so anyway due to personal preference. Chapman prefers to wipe off dirt with a towel (which he then throws straight into the washing machine). But if you choose to wash your turkey, he suggests being extra picky about cleaning your sink afterwards.

“The sink is a cooking area,” says Chapman, as people often rinse lettuce or other vegetables in the sink, and water bouncing off a contaminated basin can spray pathogens onto food that is not later cooked.

So if you’re a poultry washer, just make sure to clean and disinfect the sink afterward, including the bottom, sides, and rim around the basin.

Disinfect your kitchen counters and other surfaces often. Because turkey is particularly high-risk for contamination with disease-causing bacteria, Chapman is “bleached forward” about cleaning his kitchen’s surfaces on Thanksgiving, and he prefers a prepackaged bleach spray (like those made by Clorox or Lysol) to get the job done. If you’re really worried about damaging clothes, “that’s part of the reason aprons exist,” he says. However, you can also use disinfectants that contain quaternary ammonium, which is in most non-bleach products disinfectant sprays. As a bonus, it’s also easier on stainless steel and utensils – and alcohol-based cleaners are pretty good too.

Just don’t mix different cleaners together or spray them on the same surface at the same time, as this can release toxic gases that can cause serious illness or even death. Whatever you choose, stick with it—at least for the day.

Cook your turkey (and what’s inside it) to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Turkey and everything inside should be heated to at least 165 degrees before serving to kill disease-causing bacteria. It is fine to cook stuffing on the inside as long as it reaches this temperature. Yes, doing this without showing a dry turkey requires some finesse; Chapman roasts his stuffed bird at a lower temperature of 325°C for a longer time and also uses foil strategically.

Keep your fridge cold enough. The right refrigerator temperature is cool enough to slow spoilage, but not so cold that it freezes milk, salad, and other foods with a high water content. Chapman sets his to 38 degrees, which he says keeps leftovers well for about a week. He suggests buying a cheap fridge thermometer to make sure yours has the perfect climate if it doesn’t have a built-in one you can calibrate.

DO NOT chill leftovers before chilling. The old rule of bringing leftovers to room temperature before putting them in the refrigerator dates back to the days of older refrigerators, when they occasionally allowed interior temperatures to rise above safe levels for food storage. Modern refrigerators don’t work that way, so feel free to put leftovers in the refrigerator while they’re still warm, says Chapman.

Do NOT reheat leftovers unless you want to. As long as the food was cooked to the appropriate temperature at the time of your party and wasn’t left on the counter for hours before cooling, there’s no need to reheat leftovers to a specific temperature.

Avoid toxins in your cookware and air

Choose non-stick cookware and kitchen utensils made of wood, silicone or stainless steel. The best bet for cookware is to use products made of glass, stainless or carbon steel, or cast iron. It’s because a lot of nonstick cookware are made with “forever chemicals,” short for per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), which have been linked to a number of cancers and other health conditions. Teflon is one of them, but there are other PFASs out there, and manufacturers aren’t always transparent about which of the wide variety of these chemicals are or aren’t in their products.

If you love nonstick cookware, a good bet is to use a pan with a ceramic coating. And if you end up using a nonstick pan coated with either Teflon or another PFAS, you can minimize the release of these chemicals by using only soft (eg, non-metal) utensils when cooking, avoid heating it while empty and wash them by hand using gentle detergents and sponges.

And for stirring what’s in your pan, it’s a better idea to use wood, silicone or stainless steel instead black plastic utensils. There is a chance – albeit a small one — these may be made from recycled electronic waste, so avoid them if you’re risk-averse.

Ventilate and filter your air while cooking – especially with gas. Gas stoves create a lot of pollutants, which is why they typically have to be fitted with hoods. Other types of cooking can also create pollutants – for example, cooking with nonstick pans, grilling and frying.

Unfortunately, hoods don’t always vent the air outside – sometimes they just recirculate it inside. So if you cook with gas, it’s a good idea to open a window and turn on a fan if you have these options, and a portable air purifier can also help.

A little knowledge can go a long way toward maximizing what makes hosting fun and minimizing the worry your party will lead to a lifetime of infamy. Go out and feed your people!