Why Catering Kitchens Use HACCP

A busy catering kitchen makes hundreds of decisions a day that affect whether food is safe. Is the chicken cooked through? Has the stew cooled fast enough? Has the hot counter dropped too low? Was the dip made with sesame? A head chef cannot check every plate. What a well-run kitchen can do is decide in advance which few steps really control the dangers, set clear limits at those steps, check them, and act when a check fails.

That is the idea behind HACCP, which stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point. It is a structured way to find the hazards in your food operation, decide which steps are critical to control them, and manage those steps with limits, checks, actions and records.

What you will be able to do

• Apply the preliminary steps and the seven HACCP principles of the Codex Alimentarius to a catering operation.
• Build and confirm flow diagrams for cook-serve, cook-chill, cook-freeze, hot holding and cold buffet processes.
• Carry out a hazard analysis, judge which hazards are significant, and choose control measures.
• Decide which steps are critical control points, set critical limits, and write monitoring and corrective action procedures.
• Tell validation from verification, keep useful records, review the system after change, and audit it.

The case that runs through the course

You will build one HACCP system step by step. The kitchen is invented. Quorvale Logistics runs a remote site camp for about 400 workers on a pipeline project. Its camp kitchen serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, a hot meal for the night shift, and packed lunches for crews who work far from the camp.

The menu includes chicken biryani held on a hot counter, a beef stew cooked the day before and chilled for the night shift, lentil soup, grilled fish, a cold buffet with salads, boiled eggs, a yoghurt dip and hummus, and chicken sandwiches for the packed lunches. All meat is halal and comes from approved suppliers. The head chef, Farid, leads the HACCP team.