How to safely use tongs when grilling?

Question

Last night I made chicken for a group of people on the grill. I used tongs to put the meat on the grill, flip, and move it around.

What would be a physical process I can follow to make sure I'm doing this in a food-safe way? I used a different set of tongs after putting the meat on and flipping once, but wasn't sure if there was an "algorithm" I could use to ensure food safety.

I suppose there are three types of grill actions I do:

1. Initially putting raw meat onto grill
2. The first flip
3. Continuing to flip/rotate meat, move to hotter parts of grill, etc.

What is the food safest, how many tongs do I need, and what would the process look like? I was worried that every time I touched partially-cooked meat that I'd contaminate the tongs.

There are a few related questions, which talk about concepts, but not necessarily a step-by-step:

How can I ensure food safety if my cooking utensils have touched raw meat?

How do cooking utensils remain safe for use?

Answer 1

Similar to one of the answers to a question you linked, I usually solve the problem by utilizing two sets of tongs. My process:

1. Use tong (A) to transfer raw meat to the grill
2. Use tong (A) to flip the meat
3. Use tong (B) to remove the meat from the grill

I use tong (A) instead of (B) in step 2 on the premise that the meat is still heating up, so despite recontaminating it, by the time step 3 rolls around it should be safe again.

To do this, you do need 2 sets of tongs, as well as minimizing the number of times you futz with the meat while it’s on the grill, or you won’t give it time to kill of anything on the surface.

Another answer has the great suggestion of using differently-colored tongs to maintain mental separation of which set is which. I personally don’t do this because i just keep the “not-raw” set w/ all the cooked meat and the “raw” set w/ the raw meat, but i can definitely see that system helping for some.