Thursday, April 7, 2011

Fresh Seafood Storage

By Grover Venson


Seafood Storage is important to any Restaurant. When using in a recipe later that calls for fresh seafood, you will know how important it is. Fresh seafood if going to be used immediately that day is stored in the coldest part of your refrigerator or meat keeper, which would be on the lowest shelf.

Some of the fish that comes in such as your typical seafood needs to do what's referred to as breath. The one thing you don't to do is suffocate them by placing them in any kind closed container. So place each kind of live fish or shellfish in bowls and place a clean area then make sure their damp with some water. You will need to check on them right before you prepare them but then not any time before the next 1 to 2 hours. Lobsters shouldn't move when you touch them and yes this includes oysters, clams and mussels as well. If anything has a funny our foul smell coming from it, toss it out. Once you have done this, move the portion of seafood that you are cooking and place it in a different clean bowl to avoid bad cross contamination.

Seafood handling is easy some say but it depends on your level of intelligence. If you get in frozen seafood there will luckily be cooking instructions on the packaging so you won't have to do too much thinking. In addition, don't make thawing your food in room temperature a common practice.

Seafood should be allowed to thaw in the fridge for 24 hours, but if you have a dish that has been used more than the average day you can speed defrost a portion of seafood by placing it in a re-closeable plastic bag and placing in a pan and running cold water over it until it thaws out. After handling each seafood type while preparing make sure you wash your hands under hot soapy water to prevent cross contamination before picking up the next seafood.

If and when your next move is to place your seafood on its cooking medium, you need to have it on ice for the few minutes prior. If you ever neglect your food and simply set it out on a plate to thaw out, it will definitely thaw out but in the process it will dry out too. This is obvious reason for needing ice on it.

Marinades add flavor to any seafood so do this while they are still refrigerated. When done marinating using a dish, never reuse the marinade for another dish as that is cross contamination.

When you are cooking fish, each type has a cooking allowance that is approved by the U.S. Drug and Food Administration (FDA). There will be a food handlers chart that is obtained by each restaurant that offers seafood so they consumers know they are in compliance. Follow this closely never deter from it.

With this type of food cross contamination plays a very active roll in people getting sick from undercooked or improperly cooked shellfish. There is no need to go on and on about how important avoiding cross contamination is so for the purpose of this article we will leave it at that.

There are countless locations out there that offer seafood at relatively cheap prices. Applebee's in one actually and they even offer free Applebee's coupons on many of their menu items. You can actually go online, get there phone number and call to see if they have any coupons available. You won't know unless you call. All in all, seafood is something that just about everyone really loves. It is crucial that it's cooked right or people can literally die.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment