Hot holding, cooling and reheating temperatures in the UK

The numbers at a glance

The rest of this guide explains each stage with the kind of food a pub or restaurant actually holds hot: soup, gravy, curry, chilli, pies, carvery joints and rice.

Cooking: the starting point

Hot holding only works if the food was cooked properly first. The FSA's standard advice is a core temperature of 70°C for 2 minutes. These combinations are treated as equivalent:

Most kitchens simply probe to 75°C because the reading is instant enough to be practical. In Scotland, CookSafe uses 75°C as its example critical limit. Probe the thickest part, and for whole poultry or joints, check juices run clear with no pink.

Hot holding at 63°C

Once cooked, food that isn't going straight out must be kept at 63°C or above (above 63°C in Scotland). This applies to bain-maries, soup kettles, hot cupboards on the pass, carvery units and heated display cabinets.

Three rules from the FSA's Safer Food, Better Business pack that trip people up:

• Preheat the equipment. Food going into a cold bain-marie spends its first half hour cooling, not holding.
• Hot holding is for holding. Don't use a bain-marie or hot cupboard to cook or reheat. Food must be steaming hot before it goes in.
• Deliveries count. If you send out takeaways, keep food hot until the driver or customer collects it. Insulated bags help.

The two-hour rule (England, Wales and NI)

If you can't keep food at 63°C on display, such as on a buffet table at a wake or a Sunday carvery where joints sit on the board, there's a once-only tolerance:

1. Food can be below 63°C for up to two hours.
2. When the two hours are up, either reheat it until steaming hot and put it back in hot holding, or chill it down as quickly as possible to 8°C or below.
3. If it's been out more than two hours, throw it away.
4. Don't mix fresh food in with food that's already on display, or the clock on the old food gets lost.

Scottish law has no equivalent tolerance period, so Scottish kitchens should keep hot food above 63°C throughout and plan buffets around that.

Example: a pub kitchen with a hot cupboard

A food-led pub runs lunch from 12 till 3. The hot cupboard on the pass holds pies, a tray of chips for the kids' menu and a jug of gravy. A sensible routine:

• Switch the hot cupboard on at 11:15 so it's up to temperature by noon.
• Probe the gravy and one pie when they go in, and log the hot cupboard reading at 12:00 and 2:00.
• Anything not used by close of lunch is chilled down for tomorrow (gravy) or binned (chips).
• If the hot cupboard reads 58°C at 2pm, probe the food, reheat what can be reheated, and record what happened.

Cooling: as quickly as possible

There's no single legal cooling time for caterers. Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires food that will be held or served chilled to be cooled as quickly as possible after cooking, and both the FSA and Food Standards Scotland repeat that. Your own food safety system should set a target and you should prove your method meets it.

The SFBB "chilling down hot food" method lists practical options:

• Divide food into smaller portions. A 10-litre pot of chilli is the slowest thing in any kitchen to cool.
• Cut joints of meat in half.
• Spread food out on a tray. Essential for rice, which needs extra care.
• Cover pans and move them somewhere colder, or stand them in cold water or ice.
• Stir regularly so the centre doesn't stay hot.
• Use a blast chiller if you cool large batches routinely.

Prove your cooling method once

SFBB's "Prove it" approach: when the food comes off the heat, probe the centre, then probe again at regular intervals with a clean probe, noting how fast it falls. Try a different method on the same dish and compare. You only need to do this once per method, but write down the result. That is the evidence an officer will ask for when they see a tray of short rib cooling on the side.

If food hasn't cooled down safely, SFBB says re-cook it if appropriate, or throw it away.

Reheating: steaming hot, and only once

The FSA's guidance for England, Wales and Northern Ireland: reheat until steaming hot all the way through, and reheat only once. Reheating means cooking again, not warming up, so probe the centre and use the cooking combinations above as your target. Preheat ovens and grills, stir microwaved food, and let it stand so the heat spreads evenly.

Scotland: 82°C

Scotland has a specific legal requirement. Under the Food Hygiene (Scotland) Regulations 2006, food that is reheated for immediate service or sale must reach at least 82°C. There's a defence where reaching 82°C would make the food deteriorate, and CookSafe suggests 70°C for 2 minutes as an alternative in those cases. Food Standards Scotland notes this rule has no equivalent elsewhere in the UK.

Probe thermometers: use them, clean them, check them

Every number in this guide relies on a probe that works.

• Clean and disinfect the probe before and after each use. Probe wipes are fine as long as they haven't dried out.
• Probe the centre or thickest part, not the edge.
• Check accuracy regularly, monthly if the manufacturer doesn't say. SFBB's test: iced water should read between -1°C and 1°C; boiling water between 99°C and 101°C. Outside that, replace it or return it for calibration.
• Look after it. Don't leave it in a hot oven or freezer, keep it in its case, and replace low batteries straight away.
• Record the check. CookSafe includes a monthly probe thermometer check record for exactly this reason.

Mistakes we see most often

• Reheating soup in the bain-marie instead of on the stove.
• Topping up a half-empty tray of curry with a fresh batch, so the old portion never leaves.
• Cooling a full stockpot overnight with the lid on.
• A probe that's never been checked, or that lives in a drawer with no wipes.
• Logging the hot cupboard dial but never probing the food in it.

Checklist for hot food

• Hot-hold equipment preheated before food goes in
• Food cooked to a safe core temperature before holding
• Hot-hold readings logged during service
• Two-hour limit tracked for anything displayed below 63°C (England, Wales, NI)
• Cooling method proved and written down
• Reheated once only, to steaming hot (82°C in Scotland)
• Probe cleaned every use and checked monthly

Logging hot-hold readings

In ShiftComplete, a hot cupboard or bain-marie is set up as a hot-hold point with its own minimum, such as 63°C. Staff log readings from a phone or the tablet on the pass, every entry is named and timestamped, and a reading below your minimum is flagged on the dashboard. Daily checks like "probe tested in iced water" or "cooling method followed" can go on a checklist with optional photo evidence. It helps you keep the records an EHO asks to see; the temperatures themselves are still your kitchen's responsibility.