Refrigerator Temperature Log Form: Fill & Download for Free

Steak that was in the process of cooking. Let me explain…About 5 years ago, I got into modernist cooking, in particular low-temperature cooking (sometimes known as sous-vide). For those who aren’t familiar, this is a type of cooking where food is vacuum-bagged, and immersed in water held at a very accurate temperature for a comparatively long time, which allows the food to cook to an exact doneness (great for fish, steak and eggs) and without overcooking or losing too much juiciness.However, this was 5 years ago, there weren’t any low-cost consumer-grade immersion circulators on the market like there are now (you can get one now for $100–200, back then the only ones on the market were commercial/prosumer ones upwards of $1k).So I decided to build one, and document the process in a blog (peltierfridge). All I needed was vessel that could hold water at a very precise temperature, big enough to hold the thing I needed to cook, and modify it with a new control system to allow accurate temperature control. I settled on a mini-fridge - the kind of cheap plastic fridges that are popular with students for keeping cool a few sodas, milk, or beer.The thing about these fridges is that they’re based around a thermoelectric module rather than a conventional compressor, and so could be switched between cooling and heating duty, meaning these fridge could run as a hot-box. In fact, because of thermodynamics, these fridges work better as a heater than as an actual fridge.So I drilled a hole for a temperature probe, sealed up all the internal seams with silicone sealant, wired in a microcontroller, and an opto-isolated transistor that could switch the TEC. For good measure I added an LCD display to show the temperatures (because why not).The final thing looked like this.It even had a little USB port over which I could set the target temperature, log data, and tune the PID gains via a graphical interface (interface built on Qt, and communicating over raw-HID via the ROM-based HID functions in the Cortex-M3 micro).Results for fridge-cooked steak were pretty good (note: meat has to be seared in an additional step):So yeah, I cook meat in my fridge. I’m not sure many other people have 6 litres of hot water and a bag of cooking meat in their fridge.(These days I have an Anova circulator that’s faster and easier to clean, so I don’t use the fridge any more)

Yes. I have gone along on such inspections. Temperatures are checked on refrigerators, freezers, dry good storage areas are checked, expiration dates, the temperature of the water in the dishwasher, how clean dishes are stored etc. When possible a meal service is often observed, as well as, depending on the funding source, portion sizes and nutrition content will also be assessed, and even menus, to ensure sufficient protein, vegetables, etc.I’ve had to do my own spot checks too, for expiration dates, nutritional variety, etc. and when there are findings, I.e. missing temperature logs, bags of dry good stored too close to the floor, garbage can missing a lid, it’s collaborative process to fix it and bring the facility back into compliance ASAP.

Every day we would take a temperature log of all fridges and freezers. The probes would also be tested on a regular basis to make sure they were able to report freezing and boiling.Electricity powers a lot of things: Lights, aircon, computers, bar pumps, extractors, music and all of the kitchen kit.If the power gets cut off then the extractors are out. This means that the gas stove and ovens need switching off. After that, the gas tap is isolated. All fridges and freezers are closed and maybe even locked.Emergency fire lighting is instantly on as soon as you get the power out. If this happens in the middle of service then it’s the customers you need to look after. As long as you have light then they can still enjoy what they are eating and drinking. Dining by candlelight is OK. Most of them tend to be pretty good natured when this kind of thing happens. The chances are that if your power is out, so is their’s at home. They will often opt to stay and dine and call a cab home. Cashing up can be a pain but usually that can be writing down contact details and dealing with it.Most power cuts are very short. If power returns in less than half an hour then you can reverse your shut down procedure. After half and hour, people have eaten and there is nothing coming out of the kitchen. Apart from the fire lighting the intruder alarm system has a backup battery. So lock and turn the alarm back on.Should this happen when the restaurant is closed then you have a good 12+ hours of safe temperature, as long as the doors are tight.Ideally you want a battery back up for your computer systems. If they have logging features then you can see how long the power is out for. In the event that this means you are wasting food the log can be provided to the insurance company as support for your claim.