Cooking in your kitchen requires a great deal of sanitation if you are going to ensure that it stays healthy and safe for you to prepare food in. Preparing food in an unsafe environment can lead to food poisoning, disease, and worse.
To ensure that your meals are going to be safely prepared, you need to be very vigilant when it comes to preventing bacteria from surviving on the surfaces of your kitchen, and your food. Protecting your family begins with proving good, clean, healthy meals for them to eat.
In order to reduce the amount of bacteria and germs in the kitchen and in food, determine how to make the kitchen a safer and cleaner place to prepare and eat meals. Today is the perfect day to put your new practices into effect.
Personal hygiene is the first step to keeping your food safe. It is important to practice frequent hand washing while working in the kitchen.
Germs and bacteria live on most surfaces that are touched throughout the day, and washing your hands frequently throughout the meal preparation will help you to keep control of bacteria. Any time you touch raw food, make sure that you do not touch anything else until you wash your hands thoroughly.
This also means keeping all of your dishes and utensils properly cleaned as well, including all surfaces. To wash hands thoroughly and effectively, use soap and warm water.
Rub hands together vigorously for at least twenty seconds, making sure to clean lower arms and underneath fingernails as well. If you have long hair, you need to keep it held back at all times so that strands do not fall into your food.
Dirt is attracted to hair, and if hair finds its way into the food, it can transfer the dirt and cause illness to occur. If you are sick, avoid any contact with food preparation or surfaces completely.
Even if proper hand washing techniques are followed and there is no direct coughing or sneezing into the food, breathing alone can transfer germs or illness. If someone in your family is sick, do not allow them to have any contact with your food.
Next, make sure that you wash all food preparation items thoroughly. Clean all surfaces and utensils with warm soapy water before using them to prepare another type of food-different bacteria can transfer easily, and this should be avoided.
Do not simply rise the things that you use-you need to make sure that you wash them with warm, soapy water to fully kill all the germs. If you are using a cutting board, make sure that you do not cut vegetables on the same one that you use to cut raw meat.
When it comes to your surfaces, you will want to clean them very frequently. Use paper towels or disinfecting wipes whenever possible, and dispose of them afterward.
Using cloth towels can only promote the spreading of bacteria. Never use your hand towels to wash surfaces if you use them to dry your hands.
Make sure that you keep your refrigerator and cupboards clean from crumbs and bacteria at all times. They can accumulate quite a bit of scum in a short amount of time, so keeping up with their cleaning is very important.
Whether you are working with fresh foods or your food storage that has been frozen or canned, you need to make sure that you cook very carefully with them. Thaw frozen foods in the refrigerator rather than at room temperature, where bacteria multiples more quickly.
Once you have thawed something, you need to make sure that you cook it right away, and very thoroughly. Use a thermometer to make sure that your meat is done and ready to eat.
If you have leftovers, make sure that you store them very carefully. Always make sure that the storage temperature never rises higher than forty degrees Fahrenheit.
Store your items loosely, so that air is allowed to circulate around them to keep them properly cooled. Reheat food in the quickest method possible, and to the highest temperature appropriate for the food.
If you are very careful to follow all of these rules, you can be sure that avoid food poisoning, and other unnecessary illnesses. Make sure that your kitchen is up to sanitation standards today!
Author Resource:-
Tom Selwick has worked the past 21 years in the food storage industry. He suggests buyingfreeze dried food storage from a quality company so you know your food will last.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.massagebyben.com/articles/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites 