One important aspect of a HACCP program is accurate monitoring of food & beverage temperatures at all phases of processing. That’s accurate with a big “A.” If a critical limit for a recipe is 155°F for 15 seconds, temperature and time must be carefully monitored and controlled. If you are allowed into your area to control food product safety using time, rather than maintaining the product outside the danger zone, accurate initial temperatures and careful time management are critical. What if your thermometer is 10°F off (low, food safety issue; 10°F high, a potential quality issue)?

Let’s assume each operation has an accurate time keeping device—either a personal device (watch) or common area device (wall clock). Now let’s move on to the thermometer used to monitor food and beverage.

There are choices with thermometers, as with all equipment, smallwares, and other tools of our trade. Consider your last dishwasher purchase. Did you select it on price alone? Did you say “a dishwasher is a dishwasher” and “give me the lowest cost model you have Ms. Vendor”? I know you did not. Specifications were based on forecasted business, potential peak loads, racks per hour. You knew if you needed a booster heater to maintain the required water temperatures for cleaning and sanitizing. In short, you analyzed the operational conditions and made a selection based on real needs, with cost being only one variable.

What type of thermometer do you use to monitor and assist in maintaining control of food & beverage products? Taking temperatures and logging times with these temperatures are controls that help maintain product safety and quality. Why not use the same process for purchasing thermometers you did for a dishwasher?

Do you want to base food & beverage safety on an $8 tool that may not be accurate? Would you spend $25, $125, or even $3,000 to be sure it’s audits and training sessions, I have observed more bi-metallic stemmed thermometers (BMST) than any other kind. They have their place, but I personally would not bet the integrity and accuracy of my temperature monitoring systems on a BMST.

Consider the types of products monitored: slurries, solids, liquids, thick items, thin items. The BMST is not up to the job in most cases. Look at the average probe diameter on a BMST and related length of the sensing area. How can you accurately take the temperature of a thin product with a BMST? Based on the average BMST’s probe diameter and length of required penetration depth (look at the tip to dimple distance), most thin products cannot be monitored accurately with a BMST.

You have choices: BMST’s, thermistors, thermocouples, infrared, and wholeoperation wireless PC-based monitoring systems with alarm and alert functions. Each type has its place. The key is to select a unit that will provide the proper probe configuration for the type of product, environment, or surface needed to monitor a temperature. If “time is money,” a thinner probe attached to a t hermistor or thermocouple-based unit will let the user take temperatures faster and more accurately. Want to know if your griddles are in calibration? No problem if you have a surface probe for your thermocouple.

Norm Faiola, Ph.D., associate dean and associate professor, Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Management, Syracuse University. Email Dr. Faiola with questions or comments: nafaiola@syr.edu.