Food Safety

Food safety is one of the most important aspects of kitchen safety. In order to prevent food poisoning as well as any number of food bourne illnesses, some easy to follow steps and procedures should be followed.

Make sure food is always cooked through.

When considering food safety, think about the various forms of food storage options available to you. Airtight containers are always the best option. Bacteria, the little beasts that cause food-related illnesses, need oxygen, moisture and moderate heat to survive and multiply. If you store food in airtight containers and refrigerate or freeze your food, you reduce the risk of illness and increase your food safety.

When cooking, it is a good idea to prepare all your produce first. Chop up the ingredients and set them aside. Once you have cleaned the cutting board, you can then go to work on the meats. It is a good food safety practice to wash and sanitize your cutting board and everything that touches the food between tasks, especially if you are working with chicken. Cross contamination occurs when the bacteria from one food produce comes in contact with bacteria from another food. It is vital that all of your tools that come into contact with chicken or any meat be cleaned thoroughly before being used again.

Enough emphasis cannot be placed on proper cooking temperatures. If you are cooking vegetables, you can cook them until they look good and then serve them. No danger there. But if you are cooking meat, fish or poultry, the proper cooking temperatures have to be reached to ensure food safety.

The first thing you should do is purchase an instant read thermometer. Many options are available to the consumer, ranging from a $7.00 classic dial face style to the high end $75.00 computerized digital read out style and all manner of combinations and options in-between. You may even want to go with the laser thermometer option that somehow reads the temperature of your food (or pots, pans, oven, cooking partner, dog) by shooting a laser beam at it and determining the temperature. Neat? Yes. Necessary? No. The seven-dollar version, which is widely available, can be calibrated and usually withstand multiple droppings. If you do, however, drop your thermometer, make sure you recalibrate it. Keep the food thermometer clean and store it in the little blue plastic sleeve that it comes with and it should last you for years.

Once you have your thermometer, you can test the temperature of your food. Here is a list of food temperatures that you should keep handy:

Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. Clean everything that you use and dry with a clean cloth or a paper towel. Food safety doesn’t end with the food. Counters and cutting surfaces have to be cleaned. Always use clean dishes and utensils to serve food, not those you used to prepare the food. If you grill food, serve it on a clean plate, not on the one that held the raw meat, poultry or fish.

The temperature danger zone is between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the zone where bacteria are happiest. If you leave your food at this temperature for over two hours, it becomes dangerous to eat. The best option is to cool the food off as quickly as you can. For liquids, this could mean putting it in a shallow container and letting it cool off or putting the container into an ice bath. Solid foods tend to cool off rapidly on their own. Once you get the food cooled sufficiently, close to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, you can wrap it and put it in the refrigerator.

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