Food safety

❄️ Cooling hot food down safely

The danger zone works both ways. How fast cooked food needs to get cold — and how to prove it.

This is general guidance. Food-safety rules can change — always verify the current requirements with your national food-safety authority ↗. The operator remains responsible for compliance; we accept no liability for this information.

Official limits · EU baseline

Cooling cooked food→ ≤ 10 °C, fast (≈2–6 h)

EU law mandates HACCP + an unbroken cold chain but leaves the exact figures to national rules — confirm your country's number.

EU 852/2004 — no single numeric table; set via HACCPSource ↗

Cooking makes food safe; cooling it too slowly makes it unsafe again. Bacteria that survive or recontaminate multiply fastest in the warm "danger zone", so cooked food you intend to store must pass through that range quickly.

A common working target

65 → 10°Cwithin ~2 hours

then ≤ 5°Cin the fridge

A widely used guideline is to bring food from about 65°C down to 10°C within roughly two hours, then move it into chilled storage. A blast chiller makes this easy and gives you a clean record; shallow trays and smaller portions help if you don’t have one.

Log the start and end of a cooling step as a check with a numeric reading, so the two-hour window is documented rather than assumed.

Typical EU/DK guidance; the FDA two-stage cooling rule differs (135→70°F in 2h, then →41°F in 4h).

This guide reflects general EU / Danish practice — always check the current rules for your own country and business type.