The food handler should guard against "hot spots" in cooling units by:

The food handler should take the temperature of the food in multiple locations in order to guard against hot spots. Hot spots occur when a platter of food is cooling all at the same time. There are spots in the food that will cool at a faster rate (hot spots) and other spots that take longer to cool. To guard against this, the food handler should take the temperature of the food at the edges and in the center.