Food safety tips for your 4th of July cookout

Some of the food Lee County resident Christopher Lundy was cooking with Oakfield resident... — Some of the food Lee County resident Christopher Lundy was cooking with Oakfield resident Minister Joseph Hoskins at the Parks at Chehaw on Labor Day

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - From fireworks to cookouts, the pandemic is changing how we celebrate the Fourth of July this year.

If you plan to social distance and grill out, here are some tips to keep your food safe, and stomach full:

Keep meat, poultry, and seafood refrigerated until you’re ready to grill. When transporting, keep below 40°F in an insulated cooler. make sure to avoid cross contamination.
Any raw meat or seafood needs to be stored at 40 degrees or colder, and it needs to be wrapped up tightly. This will keep any juice from contaminating food you’ve already cooked, or anything you’d eat raw…like fruits and vegetables.
When it comes time to do the cooking, make sure to grab your meat thermometer. It’s important for meat to reach the correct internal temperature for at least three minutes to kill all bacteria.
Make sure to pack up your left overs right away. If you leave any cooked food sitting outside for more than an hour in 90 degree weather, you’ll get sick if you eat it again. And if you’ve checked the Wave 3 weather app lately, you know this weekend will be even hotter than that. So make sure to pack up your food, and bring it inside.
If you start to feel sick after you eat, maybe an upset stomach, cramps, vomiting, or a fever, those are all signs of food poisoning. People 65 years or older, anyone under 5 years old, and pregnant women are all at a higher risk of getting food poisoning.

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