Temperature control
Cooling is two steps, not one
The pot goes straight from the stove into the coolroom. Everyone has done it. It is also the single most common way a compliant-looking kitchen produces unsafe food.
Two stages, two clocks
Cooling is not one process with one limit. It has two stages, each with its own timeframe:
- From 60 °C down to 21 °C within two hours
- Then from 21 °C down to 5 °C within a further four hours
The first stage is the tighter one, because it covers the temperature range where bacterial growth is fastest.
Why a full pot fails
Heat leaves a container from the outside. A full stockpot in a coolroom chills its outer layer quickly while the centre stays warm for hours. Nothing about the outside of that pot — not the surface temperature, not how cool it feels — tells you what is happening in the middle.
A probe in the geometric centre usually tells a very different story to the one people expect. Kitchens that have never actually measured it are often surprised, which is exactly why measuring it once is worth doing.
What works instead
Shallow trays. Smaller batches. Dividing large volumes before cooling rather than after. Ice paddles or ice baths where the volume justifies them. Leaving space around containers so air can move.
What does not work is putting a hot, full, covered container into a coolroom and hoping. It also raises the temperature of everything else in there, which is a second problem.
Recording it
The two-hour mark is the one an assessor will ask about, because it is the stage most likely to fail. A cooling record should capture the start time and temperature, the time at 21 °C, and the time at 5 °C. If a stage is missed, the corrective action and what happened to the product belong on the same record.
What to do this week
Pick your largest regularly cooled item and time it properly with a probe in the centre. One measurement tells you whether your current method works or whether you have been assuming. Confirm the limits that apply to your business, and set your process from what you measured rather than from what seems reasonable.
The short version
60 °C to 21 °C within two hours, then 21 °C to 5 °C within four more. Cool in shallow batches, and record the time at each stage.
This is general information, not advice for your specific business. Check the requirements that apply to you against the current Food Standards Code and your own licence conditions.
The records for this
The free Food Safety Record Pack has fifteen everyday records including temperature, cooling, calibration and cleaning logs — with document control and a worked example on every sheet. No cost.
Read next
Ice slurry should read about 0 °C, boiling water about 100 °C. A probe out of tolerance puts every reading since the last check in doubt, so check monthly and write down what you found.
Read it ›A record needs a date, a reading and a name. Complete it at the time, not at the end of the shift, and always record what you did about an out-of-limit result.
Read it ›