How not to poison your loved ones during your big holiday feast

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

I’m a doctor with specialty medical training in infectious diseases and public health. If I prepared a meal that sent a crowd of my friends and loved ones running for the bathroom, I might never emerge from the shame hole.

I thought I knew everything 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 handwashing, cleaning surfaces and food, storing leftovers, and reducing non-germ risks.

Thanksgiving, and the 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 leads the Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University. The resulting chaos means less control in the kitchen — which often leads to higher risk for both cooks and eaters. 

Here’s the stuff you need to sweat — and don’t — as you take on your next big holiday dinner.

Proper handwashing and drying is essential

DO wash your hands – a lot. Raw whole turkeys are highly likely to be contaminated with germs that can make people sick, most commonly campylobacter and salmonella. The big risk of touching raw meat in the kitchen is that you’ll move those germs to surfaces that other people will also be touching a lot. That raises the chance people will get nasties on their hands — and in their 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 a partially thawed turkey can transmit germs. 

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 backs of hands, between fingers, and under the nails. But the real shocker here, at least to me, was when Chapman told me 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 inferior to soap: after touching lots of really fatty meat, like sausage or pork. In those situations, use soap to make sure you’re cutting through the grease to get at all the germs mixed in.)

DON’T skip drying ’em. It’s not just the actual handwashing that’s important for removing germs from your fingers, Chapman says: Drying 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 dish towels in different parts of the kitchen for different purposes, if at all possible. For example: You could keep one “dirty” towel in a kitchen corner for drying off hands you’ve washed them after say, holding a raw turkey. On a hook elsewhere in the kitchen, you could keep a “clean” towel you use for wiping up sauce spills or other less germy messes. 

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 chuck used dish towels directly in the wash after mopping up spills of raw meat juices or drying off particularly gross hands. “I might go through 10 dish towels on Thanksgiving Day,” Chapman says.

Clean this, not that

DON’T worry about washing your produce. Washing produce removes physical debris, like soil, sand, and dirt. However, it rarely removes germs that make people sick. The reason: When produce is contaminated with pathogens, they often attach just under the surface, within 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 US,” Chapman says. “And also unfortunately for us as consumers, by the time it gets to me, there’s very little I can do.”

DO take special care if you’re going to wash your turkey. There’s no food safety reason to wash your turkey, but a lot of people like to anyway because of personal preference. Chapman prefers wiping debris off with a hand towel (which he then throws straight into the washing machine). However, if you opt to wash your turkey, he suggests being especially fastidious about cleaning your sink afterward.

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

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

DO frequently sanitize your kitchen counters and other surfaces. Because turkey is particularly high-risk for contamination with disease-causing germs, Chapman is “bleach forward” about sanitizing his kitchen’s surfaces on Thanksgiving, and he favors a pre-packaged bleach spray (like the ones made by Clorox or Lysol) for getting the job done. If you’re really worried about damaging clothes, “that’s part of the reason why aprons exist,” he says. However, you can also use sanitizers that contain quaternary ammonium, which is in most non-bleach disinfectant sprays. As a bonus, it’s also easier on stainless steel and utensils — and alcohol-based cleaners are also quite good. 

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

Check your temperatures

DO cook your turkey (and whatever’s inside it) to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Turkey and everything inside it should be heated to at least 165 degrees before serving to kill any disease-causing germs. It’s fine to cook stuffing on the inside as long as it reaches this temperature. Yes, doing this without turning out a dry turkey requires some finessing; Chapman roasts his stuffed bird at a lower temperature of 325 for a longer time and also strategically deploys foil. 

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

DON’T bother cooling leftovers before refrigeration. The old rule about bringing leftovers to room temperature before putting them in the fridge is from a time 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 fridge while they’re still warm, Chapman says. 

DON’T bother reheating leftovers, unless you want to. So long as food was cooked to the appropriate temperature at the time of your feast and was not left out on the counter for hours before refrigeration, there’s no need to reheat leftovers to any particular temperature.

Avoid toxins in your cookware and your air

DO choose non-nonstick cookware and wood, silicone, or stainless steel cooking utensils. The best bet for cookware is to use products made of glass, stainless or carbon steel, or cast iron. That’s because a lot of nonstick cookware is made with “forever chemicals,” the shorthand term for per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) that have been linked with a range of cancers and other health conditions. Teflon is one of them, but there are other PFASes out there, and manufacturers aren’t always transparent about which of the broad panoply 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 either with Teflon or another PFAS, you can minimize the release of these chemicals by using only soft (e.g. non-metal) utensils when cooking, avoid heating it while empty, and wash them by hand using gentle cleansers and sponges.

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

DO ventilate and filter your air while cooking — especially with gas. Gas stoves create a lot of pollutants, which is why they typically must be installed with range hoods. Other kinds of cooking can also create pollutants — for example, cooking with nonstick pans, grilling, and frying. 

Unfortunately, range hoods don’t always vent the air outdoors — sometimes, they just recirculate it inside. So if you’re cooking with gas, it’s a great idea to open a window and turn on a fan if you have those 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 feast will lead to a lifetime of dishonor. Go forth and feed your people!