Food safety at home
Wash your hands before preparing food. — Filepic

When we talk about safety, we think about proper restaurants and food businesses.

But there are some safety practices which we should adhere to as well when we’re cooking at home.

It’s easy enough to have the same bacteria that affects commercial kitchens to be lurking in your home kitchen.

All it takes is one contaminated piece of food to set off health issues.

Here are some safety rules which we should follow at home in our own kitchen:

1. Wash your hands

Sounds really basic but you will be surprised how often we take our home environment for granted. Germs can easily spread from the kitchen counter to the rest of the food or even items in your fridge. Before you start cooking − taking things out of the fridge, prepping the meat and cleaning vegetables − wash your hands.

And this could mean washing your hands several times along the way when you touch different things, to prevent cross-contamination.

If you stop in between to read a phone message or check a recipe on your tablet, make sure you wash your hands before and after too.

Use different utensils for raw food when eating hotpot. — Filepic

2. Don’t use same utensils for raw and cooked food

This is especially common when you’re having a barbecue or hotpot. Quite often, you end up using the same tongs or chopsticks for the raw and cooked stuff without thinking. Or, you forget and place the cooked food on an empty plate that was used for the uncooked items. This will surely result in cross-contamination – prepare separate sets of utensils and containers for raw and cooked food.

Defrost frozen meat properly. — Filepic

3. Defrosting frozen meat

Quite often, we take out what we want to cook for the day from the freezer and leave it to thaw on the kitchen counter, and think nothing of it. Raw meats, fish and poultry should be defrosted correctly to prevent bacteria from spreading. Given our tropical temperatures, harmful bacteria grow easily and leaving it out for hours is a recipe for disaster. Take it down from the freezer and leave it in the fridge the night before, or defrost in the microwave oven, that is if you’re cooking it immediately after. If it’s only partially thawed, it’s OK to let it thaw in the cooking process rather than leaving it outside. And you shouldn’t defrost meat in a bowl of water either, as that’s no better than leaving it out on the counter.

Let hot food cool down first before keeping in the fridge. — Filepic

4. Don’t keep hot food in the fridge

It’s not a savvy thing to do as it takes more energy to cool down the hot item. Even if you say you don’t care about energy wastage, bear in mind that bacteria can grow in the closed container due to the difference between temperatures (before it cools down fully) which creates an environment ideal for the spread of pathogens. If you’re rushing to clean the kitchen, just leave the food item to cool down properly outside on the table first.

Wash your cutting boards after each use. — Filepic

5. Segregate your cutting boards

Some people use separate cutting boards for vegetables and raw meat, and rightly so. Otherwise, if you’re cutting raw meat like mincing beef or chopping chicken, imagine the residue getting into your salads or cut fruits! If you only have one board that you use for everything, make sure you wash it properly with soap and water before using it for vegetables. As much as possible, wash the board or any other utensils that come in contact with raw meat.

Cooking raw meat in the microwave might result in unevenly cooked food. — Filepic

6. Cooking in the microwave oven

Most of us probably use the microwave oven for heating up leftovers, or at most, cook rice. But some people do cook actual dishes as it cuts down cooking time. But when you do this, you need to be careful as there is a chance of under-cooking the meat, or it ends up being unevenly cooked. Microwave ovens are designed to operate at different temperatures for different usages, and actual cooking needs a higher wattage to ensure the harmful bacteria is killed in the process. Find out more in the manual provided with your microwave oven to understand how it works and learn how to cook properly with it.
When we talk about safety, we think about proper restaurants and food businesses.