- Even self -confident domestic chefs may make mistakes in food safety without realizing them.
- Germs can spread quickly – wash your hands often, clean and renovate surfaces and store food correctly.
- Remains and cooked food must be properly warmed, cooled and stored in order to stay safe and healthy.
As a food author, I know myself for a kitchen. I hold my pantry well filled, I have organized dinner parties and public holidays, I have developed my own recipes and I understand the basics of food safety. But even though I have never done myself – or someone else -, I know that I also made my share of mistakes.
Food security is all about science – and a complicated science. All rules are due to the fact that pathogens and bad bacteria are kept away from their food. But it is far more nuanced than that, and it is possible that you make a few mistakes without realizing it. I turned to two experts –Meredith CarothersA specialist in food safety at the USDA, and Patrick GuzzleVice President for Food Science at the National Restaurant Association – to entertain some of the most surprising (but most common!) Errors who are likely to make home chefs.
1. Don’t wash your hands after touching your phone
Washing your hands is always the first step in a recipe, even if it is usually not included in the instructions. However, most domestic chefs do not know that they have to repeat their hand washing after touching certain objects or treating certain foods such as raw meat or poultry. “Our hands touch so many things that can lead to a cross contamination,” says Carother. “Think about how often we touch our smartphones to follow a recipe and then touch food that we prepare.” Your phone is most likely the biggest culprit in your kitchen – a study has even found that your phone has ten times as many bacteria as a toilet seat. (Another object that you definitely want to wash your hands after touching!) If you wash your hands, do this for 20 seconds with soap and clean, flowing water.
2. Cleaning surfaces, but not with disinfection
While most domestic chefs know that knives, cutting boards and meters should be cleaned after they have come into contact with raw meat or poultry, they most likely do not recognize that washing these objects with soap and water alone (or with a multi-purpose cleaning spray) are not sufficient to disinfect them and remove them from pathogens to avoid cross-contamination, says Guzza. After having washed these objects to remove dirt and fat, he suggests distracting them with a Klorox disinfectant wiping or spraying them in combination with room temperature water with a solution of a tablespoon. “Let’s in no way try to suggest, hey, take a few bleach and let it off on your meal,” he says. “Only a small amount of bleach with room temperature water will be very effective.” If your dishwasher has a dry cycle or a disinfection cycle, this can also make the trick-simply ensure that the items you have renovating are dishwasher-safe.
3 .. Return residue or casseroles to the correct temperature
When I grill burgers or cooking giving dinner, I always have an immediate meat thermometer on hand. If I make the remnants of microwaves easier last night or my Tuesday evening with a freezer? Not so much. It turns out that, like meat, poultry and fish, their remains and casserole should be cooked to a certain temperature: 165 degrees. And while the dry pasta is perfectly safe at room temperature, cooked grains, pasta and beans are not. “As soon as they are cooked, they must either be kept hot or they have to be chilled and kept cold,” explains Guzzle. “The cooking process defeats the food a little. It brings this strength into a shape that can support a quick (bacterial) growth.” This is because cooked grains and beans have a higher water activity (or the ratio of water vapor to the food itself) than dried, and higher water activity is more beneficial for bacterial growth.
4. After expiry data, but do not check for corruption
I grew up in a house in which the expiry data was treated like a proposal, not like a rule. My husband? He takes it as a gospel. It turns out that my family’s relaxed approach is actually the right one. “The dating of the food product can be difficult to understand, and many consumers either keep their food for longer than we recommend for storing household warehouses, or they throw food away before it really has to be,” says Carother. Whether your food is called “use of” or “best by” “is not an indicator of the safety of the product – unless the baby formula is the baby formula. These are quality appointments that were determined by the manufacturer in accordance with the USDA guidelines and that business and consumers should help with the top freshness with the use of products. If it is over on this date, you have correctly saved the article and it is not a spoilage, the food should still be safe to eat. Spoiled foods have a smell, taste or texture – significant due to spoiled bacteria – that they should throw them.
5. Leave food for too long while it cools down
If you are only prepared with meals for the week or can put a few leftovers away, it can be tempting to let them sit on the counter until they cool down before put them in the fridge. This is tempting fate, says Guzzle, since the food should not stay at room temperature for more than two hours. “I recommend making it easy and put it in the fridge as soon as possible,” he says. “If you bring you under temperature control as soon as possible, food safety will always help.” If you keep the food loosely, cool air can flow faster and cool down – and while storing warm objects in the refrigerator can heat the refrigerator one or two sizes, Guzzle says that most of the cooling steps are designed to counteract the food to keep the food below 40 degrees. In order to cool the food even faster, he recommends storing it in small individual services instead of in a large serving plate, a bowl or a tray.
Our expert
Hold your hands, the work area and the tools clean and renovated, the first steps for compliance with guidelines for food safety. You also want to ensure that the food is stored properly and cooked at the right temperature. Always wash your hands after touching potentially contaminated surfaces or objects (such as your phone or raw meat), and disinfect counters, cutting boards and knives after working with raw meat or poultry. Hold grains, beans and pasta out of the danger zone and cool the remains quickly as possible after cooking.
