How to vacuum pack and sous vide cook safely like Crem Kitchen
About the Business
Crem Kitchen offers clean simple and healthy dishes from around the world in a relaxing and intimate dining experience. The restaurant is situated in Raphael’s Park in Romford, it is spear headed by Meghan Arora who brings her wealth of experience and professional training as a chef to bring home-cooked modern restaurant food to her local community.
Crem Kitchen
The Challenge
Crem Kitchen had already achieved their 5 star rating. However after their latest EHO visit they were advised that as they were vacuum packing, doing sous vide cooking and serving Ready to Eat raw fish they needed to revise and update their food safety documentation.
These processes are higher risk as bacteria may grow or contaminate the food if they are not produced or stored safely.
Food must be vacuum packed properly to prevent harmful bacteria growing at chilled temperatures in the food. Also the shelf life must be set following the Food Standard Agency guidance.
Sous vide food is vacuum packed then cooked at lower temperatures for a longer time in a water bath. The guidance from the Food Standards Agency must be followed on time and temperature combinations to ensure harmful bacteria is destroyed during cooking.
Raw fish that is ready to eat such as sashimi or salmon tartare must be handled carefully to prevent cross contamination occurring.
Megha was referred to Food Safety Logic consultants from our Training Partner. She was seeking expert advice on creating new HACCP plans to identify the risks and controls in the high risk activities she and her team were doing to create their fabulous dishes.
FHRS Rating Level 5
The Benefits
Food Safety Logic consultants are all Environmental Health Officers, and have the expert knowledge to create bespoke HACCP plans for the food businesses they work with. All plans are based on the 7 HACCP principles and include flow charts, hazard analysis, critical control points and limits and the corrective action to follow if something goes wrong.
They have practical experience of giving advice to food businesses in their role as regulators and know what is required to not only comply legally but also what is good food safety practice.
Helen Groves, Principal Food Safety Consultant
The Solution
Our food safety consultant put together the new HACCP plans based on the processes Crem Kitchen are currently doing, but also for new products that will follow the same process should Megha wish to further develop her menu in the future. For example the raw fish HACCP is for salmon tartare but could also be used for other raw fish such as tuna.
Standard Operating Procedures were also developed for the high risk processes to give staff a set of instructions to follow. We recommended that Megha add her own photos, so she can use the new procedures as a useful training tool for current and new staff to ensure they are followed every time.
Bespoke monitoring templates were then created to ensure that any food that is vacuum packed or cooked by the sous vide method is documented including the shelf life.
The Result
“Helen at Food Safety Logic is well versed in her field and helped us evolve towards a more sustainable structure.
Food Hygiene is critical to any food business and is part of our ethos. Helen understands that and works with her customers to meet a higher standards.”
Megha and Crem Kitchen now have comprehensive procedures in place to ensure that high risk food that is prepared and cooked by vacuum packing, sous vide cooking or served as a raw ready to eat product is fully documented and monitored.
Crem Kitchen is continuing to thrive and flourish and Food Safety Logic looks forward to building on this relationship in the future.
