Crystal Good publishes practical kitchen reference guides. This page explains how those guides are written, checked and kept current, so you can judge how much weight to give them.
What we publish
Almost everything on this site answers a specific question someone asks mid-task: how long to cook a particular cut at a particular temperature, whether something can be frozen, how long leftovers keep, or how two ingredients differ in practice. Each guide opens with a direct answer, then explains the reasoning so you can adapt it when your equipment or ingredients differ from ours.
Who writes them
Guides are assigned by subject to the writer who works in that area rather than spread at random:
- Woody Rodriquez — meat, poultry and seafood. Nine years in steakhouse and barbecue kitchens.
- Mona Holden — baking, food storage and kitchen measurements. Trained as a pastry cook.
- Eda Moreno — coffee and other drinks. Former barista and cafe manager.
- Alberto Ferguson — founder. Kitchen equipment and buying comparisons, and final review of every guide before publication.
How we arrive at times and temperatures
Cooking times are given for domestic ovens and equipment unless a guide says otherwise. Where food safety is involved we follow the internal temperatures published by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, and we say so in the guide. Time is a guide; internal temperature is the test. Ovens vary by a surprising margin, and a thermometer settles the question that a clock cannot.
Sources
Where a guide relies on a published figure — a safe internal temperature, a nutrition number, a caffeine content — we link to the body that published it rather than to another blog. We do not cite “experts” without naming them.
Corrections and updates
Guides are revised when the underlying guidance changes, when a product or menu item changes, or when a reader tells us something is wrong. The published and updated dates shown on each guide reflect real edits; we do not refresh dates to make old content look new.
If you find an error, tell us through the contact page and we will correct it and note the change.
How we make money
Crystal Good carries advertising. Advertisers have no involvement in what we publish, no sight of guides before they go live, and no influence over which products we recommend or compare favourably. Where a guide compares products, the ranking reflects our own assessment.
Use of AI
We use software to help with research, drafting and editing. Every guide is reviewed and edited by the named author before publication, and the author is accountable for its accuracy. We do not publish unreviewed machine output.
What this site is not
Crystal Good is a cooking reference, not medical or dietary advice. If you have a food allergy, a medical condition or specific dietary requirements, speak to a qualified professional.
Where our numbers come from
Every cooking time, internal temperature and measurement conversion we publish is taken from published United States government data, not from other recipe sites. Our standing reference set is:
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service — Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart
- FoodSafety.gov — Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures and the Cold Food Storage Chart
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration — Safe Food Handling
- USDA FoodData Central and MyPlate
- NIST — SI Units, for measurement conversions
- University extension programs, including Penn State Extension and the National Center for Home Food Preservation
Each article links out to the specific references it relies on, in a Sources section at the end of the page. If a figure on this site disagrees with the USDA chart, the USDA chart is correct and we want to hear about it.
How these articles are produced
We want to be straightforward about this: articles on Crystal Good are drafted with the help of AI language models, and then checked automatically before they are published. We think readers deserve to know that, and we would rather say it plainly than leave it unsaid.
What the automated check covers, on every article, before publishing:
- Safe temperatures are verified against the USDA table. If an article states an internal temperature below the safe minimum for that food — for example, chicken under 165 °F or ground beef under 160 °F — the article is blocked and not published.
- Figures must trace to the reference data. Numbers that do not appear in the source tables we work from are rejected.
- Every article must cite at least six external references from the list above, and link to the relevant in-depth guide on this site.
- Structure and readability — a direct answer near the top, a data table, illustrations with captions, and a questions-and-answers section.
An article that fails any of the safety checks is not published, and no amount of rewriting will push it through until the figure is corrected.
This process is designed to catch the thing that matters most on a site like this: a wrong number that could make someone undercook food. It is not a substitute for a professional food-safety authority. When the stakes are high, use the USDA and FDA pages linked above directly.
Corrections
If you find a figure on this site that does not match the current USDA or FDA guidance, tell us through the contact page and we will correct it. We would rather fix a number than defend it.