PREVRA Food Temperature Chart: Every Critical Temperature Your Kitchen Needs to Know
The master temperature reference for UK food businesses: cooking, hot holding, cooling, reheating, freezing, and fridge storage — all on one chart. Required by HACCP for every commercial kitchen.
Why temperature control is the foundation of everything else in food safety
Temperature is the single most powerful lever in food safety. Keep food below 5°C or above 63°C and pathogens cannot multiply. The danger zone between 5°C and 63°C is where bacteria double every 20 minutes under ideal conditions. A single bacterium can become over 2 million in 7 hours. This is not theoretical — it is the mechanism behind virtually every case of food poisoning traced to temperature abuse.
Your HACCP plan revolves around temperature: critical control points for cooking, cooling, and storage are all temperature-based. If you cannot demonstrate control at these points, your HACCP plan has no teeth and your EHO will rightly mark you down. This chart consolidates every temperature limit your team needs — from delivery acceptance to service.
One common blind spot: cooling hot food. The FSA requires food to be cooled from 63°C to below 8°C within 90 minutes (or in Scotland, to below 5°C). Leaving a stockpot to cool overnight in the kitchen is a critical breach — yet it happens in kitchens across the UK every shift.
Using the food temperature chart across your entire kitchen operation
Post copies at every cooking station, the pass, the prep area, and the cold room. Different sections use different parts of the chart: chefs reference cooking and hot holding temperatures, prep staff check cooling and storage limits, and the kitchen porter verifies delivery acceptance temperatures.
Train every new starter on this chart during induction. Test staff during shifts: ask "what temperature should that be held at?" The answer should be instant, not something they need to look up every time. The chart reinforces training; it does not replace it.
Pair this chart with daily temperature logs for every fridge, freezer, hot cabinet, and cooking batch. Digital SFBB lets your team log temperatures from any device with automatic danger zone alerts, corrected in real time. For related content, see our specific charts: Chicken Temperature Chart, Beef Temperature Chart, and Fish Temperature Chart.
The temperature control errors that EHOs see most often
Hot holding below 63°C is the most frequent violation. Bain-maries and hot cabinets drift — check them hourly, not once per shift. If the temperature drops into the danger zone, log it, reheat immediately to above 70°C, or discard.
Loading warm food into a fridge is another common error. It raises the temperature of everything else in the unit, potentially pushing the entire fridge into the danger zone. Cool food to below 8°C before refrigerating — use blast chillers, ice paddles, or shallow trays to accelerate cooling.
Probe thermometer misuse counts too. Not sanitising probes between readings cross-contaminates. Not calibrating probes weekly means your readings may be wrong by 2°C or more. A probe that has not been calibrated this week is a guess, not a measurement.
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