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Practice and exam technique

Practice questions: time and temperature

Compiled by the Sitonce editorial team from the FDA Food Code and the accredited providers listed belowUpdated 4 min readFacts verified 1 September 2026
The short answer

Eleven of the eighty questions come from time and temperature, and the numbers appear inside questions scored in other areas too. These five cover the patterns that generate the most wrong answers.

Answer each before reading the explanation. Recognizing the right answer once you see it is not the same skill as producing it.

Question 1

A cook takes a pan of chilli from the walk-in at 10:00 and places it on the steam table to warm for the lunch service at 12:00. Which statement is correct?

  1. Acceptable, because the chilli will reach 135°F before service
  2. Acceptable, because it was properly refrigerated first
  3. Not acceptable, because hot holding equipment may not be used to reheat
  4. Not acceptable, because chilli must be reheated to 155°F
Answer: C. Hot holding equipment maintains temperature; it does not raise it. Food reheated for hot holding must reach 165°F within 2 hours, which a steam table cannot reliably achieve. Option D uses a real number in the wrong place - 155°F is a cooking temperature for ground meat, not a reheating temperature.
Question 2

A large pot of soup is at 80°F two hours after cooling began. What should the manager do?

  1. Continue cooling, since six hours are allowed in total
  2. Move it to the freezer to finish cooling faster
  3. Reheat it to 165°F and begin cooling again, or discard it
  4. Divide it into shallow pans and continue
Answer: C. The first cooling stage requires the food to reach 70°F within 2 hours. At 80°F it has failed that stage, and the six-hour total does not rescue it. Options A and D both treat the six hours as one continuous window, which is the most common error on this rule.
Question 3

Which item is being held at a temperature the Food Code permits?

  1. Cooked rice on a steam table at 130°F
  2. A beef roast held at 130°F
  3. Sliced turkey in a cooler at 45°F
  4. Cut melon on a display at 45°F
Answer: B. 130°F is a genuine Food Code allowance for certain roasts under the time-and-temperature table. The same number applied to rice is wrong, because plant food held hot needs 135°F. 45°F is also real, for shell eggs as ambient air, and wrong for ready-to-eat cold holding, which is 41°F.
Question 4

A blade-tenderized sirloin is ordered medium rare. What is the minimum internal cooking temperature?

  1. 145°F for 15 seconds
  2. 155°F for 17 seconds
  3. 165°F for less than 1 second
  4. 130°F for 112 minutes
Answer: B. Mechanical tenderizing drives surface bacteria into the interior, so the meat is treated like ground meat at 155°F despite looking like a whole cut. Candidates answer 145°F from the shape of the meat, which is exactly what the question is testing.
Question 5

Chicken salad is prepared on the 3rd of the month using chicken cooked on the 1st. When must it be discarded?

  1. The 7th
  2. The 8th
  3. The 9th
  4. The 10th
Answer: A. The combined food carries the earliest date of its ingredients, so the clock started with the chicken on the 1st. Counting the day of preparation as day one gives the 7th. Option B is the day-zero counting error; C and D restart the clock at the salad, which making a new dish does not do.

What these five have in common

Every wrong option is a real Food Code number in the wrong place. That is how this exam is built.

Which is why learning numbers as a bare list leaves you with no basis to choose. Learn each with the food and the reason attached, and the distractors become visible.

Common questions

Why are the wrong answers real numbers?

Because the exam is testing whether you know which situation each number belongs to. 130°F and 45°F are both genuine provisions in narrow contexts and wrong answers everywhere else.

What is the most common cooling mistake?

Treating six hours as one continuous window. The first stage requires 70°F within two hours, and food that misses it is reheated and cooled again, or discarded.

Why is blade-tenderized steak 155°F?

Because the needles or blades carry surface bacteria into the interior, removing the sterile center that lets a whole cut be cooked to 145°F.

How do you count date marking days?

The day of preparation is day one, so food prepared on the 1st is discarded at the end of the 7th. A combined food carries the earliest date of its ingredients.

Can a steam table be used to reheat?

No. Hot holding equipment maintains temperature rather than raising it. Reheating for hot holding requires 165°F within two hours, on a stove, in an oven or in a microwave.

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