Customer Care and Help

While it may appear on the surface that two-stage cooling contradicts the "4-hour rule" you need to look closely at the two-stage cooling method to get the full story. In the past, restaurants had four hours, straight through, to cool food to 41°F or lower. Now the FDA recommends cooling food in two stages -- from 135°F to 70°F in two hours then from 70°F to 41°F or lower in an additional four hours for a total cooling time of six hours. However, this does not mean you have six hours straight through. It is important to realize that if the food does not reach 70°F in two hours, you cannot continue to cool the food; the food must be reheated to 165°F for 15 seconds within two hours before another attempt at cooling can be made.

To cool food quickly from 135°F to 70°F, a quick chill method (such as an ice bath or ice paddles) must be used. Because you are able to cool food at a rate of over 67 degrees an hour, it is reasonable to say that if you continue to use the same method, it will not take the entire four hours you have left to cool the food to 41°F or lower.

It is important to mention the method behind all this madness. We know that foodborne microorganisms grow rapidly in the temperature range from 41 - 135°F, known as the temperature danger zone, but there is also a range of temperatures within the temperature danger zone, from 70°F to 125°F where foodborne microorganisms grow particularly quickly. What two-stage cooling does is move food through this range as quickly as possible (under two hours, in fact) to minimize the time it spends in this dangerous range.

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