WASHINGTON — Time outside is a treasure during the summer season and cooking outdoors can be rewarding, festive, delicious and a way to avoid heating up the house. Plus, there’s no denying that great just-off-the-fire taste with those familiar grill marks. However, many keys to safe and healthy grilling are often overlooked.
Related Gallery
“If you really char your food … that charred part of the food has things in it that are not good for you, including chemicals such as heterocyclic amines which are known to be cancer-causing,” Squires said. “But there are simple steps you can take to reduce these health risks.”
Squires recommended that simply marinating your meats can make a difference. She said to take a few minutes to marinate your meat, “and make sure that marinating process happens in the fridge so that your meat stays at a safe temperature and that seems to significantly reduce these cancer-causing substances,” she said.
Squires also said outdoor chefs can also easily venture into unsafe cooking practices.
“You’re caught up in the moment, you’re outside, you’re with friends, you might be having a glass of wine or a beer and you might not think about what you’re doing,” she said.
Cross-contamination can happen easily if you bring food to the grill on a platter and put the cooked food back on the same platter — or your vegetables can come into contact with raw meat.
“We’re all looking for more ways to incorporate more fruits and vegetables and being grilled gives them a wonderful, wonderful flavor. Just be sure to wash the outside of them, chop them in advance and make sure they don’t come into contact with any raw meat juice.”
Squires said one of the things so many people forget is to use a meat thermometer, because it can be difficult to tell if meat on the grill is cooked without overcooking it.
Additionally, she said grillers and their guests have to be careful about small pieces of wooden skewers or toothpicks that can break off in grilled food and be inadvertently swallowed. These can easily cause problems for bodies internally and can result in expensive surgeries. Squires recommended keeping tabs on how many skewers or toothpicks are used on the grill, and be sure to alert your guests so they can be watching for them too, just in case.
