Food Safety in the Kitchen
WRITTEN BY HANNAH BAKOWSKI
As you learn to prepare and cook food, you pick up certain habits and ways of doing things that may seem normal and correct to you, but from a food safety perspective, might not be following the proper guidelines. Growing up, I learned that you should store perishables in the fridge and that meat, poultry and seafood should always be cooked thoroughly. While I knew the basics on how to properly handle and cook my food, I didn’t know everything. It wasn’t until I took a Food Safety class at Pace University that I learned there was more to food safety than just cooking your food until it wasn’t pink in the middle anymore.
Why Food Safety is Important. Of course, food safety is a much more serious matter when you go to a restaurant to eat than when you cook for your family. But, why is it so important that restaurants follow rules and regulations regarding food? Well, the short answer is that contaminants such as bacteria and virus can make people extremely sick1. Fortunately, not everyone will get sick from it, but the high-risk populations will. Officially, those considered to be high-risk are children, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals1. Pregnant women and their unborn child should also be cautious, since certain pathogens found in unsafe food can be detrimental to the health of the fetus and the mother. So without going into too great of detail, the important thing to note is that not properly taking care of your food throughout every process can make someone very sick. That is why food safety guidelines are important for not only restaurants to follow, but home cooks as well!
Grocery Shopping. Believe it or not, food safety starts in the grocery store! It’s important for the grocery store you shop at to follow food safety guidelines, but there are certain guidelines that you should be following too (I learned some of these today!). I don’t know how you shop, but when I walk into a grocery store, typically the produce section is right in front of me. I love looking at the beautiful array of fruits and vegetables that the grocery store has to offer, so I usually grab these items first. Well, this is the wrong way to shop. When you’re shopping for your groceries, you should grab your non-perishable items first2. This is because these items will be in your cart the longest and they don’t need to be kept cold. After shopping for your non-perishables, it is recommended to then grab your refrigerated and frozen items, stopping to grab your deli items last2. When you pick out your produce, be careful to check all of your items for mold, bruises, and rot! When you are loading your cart and bagging your groceries, try to keep cold items together so they help keep each other cold. When you’ve finished shopping, it’s important to get home and get your perishables in the refrigerator/freezer within 2 hours (1 hour if it’s 90℉ or hotter)2. If it’s a hot day or you know you won’t get your groceries home and put them away in time, bring along a cooler with ice packs to help keep your perishables cold.
If you get some or all of your produce at a farmer’s market, be sure to go early in the morning so that the produce you purchase isn’t sitting out in the sun all day!
Food Storage. When storing food at home, group items in temperatures that are similar to where you got them at the store. Non-perishable items can go in your pantry, however, some items can go in your refrigerator or freezer so they last longer (I like to store my bread in the freezer since I can’t eat it fast enough before it goes bad!). Your refrigerator items such as milk, eggs, cheese, etc. should go directly in your fridge (which should be 40℉ or cooler), and your frozen items should go into your freezer (0℉) unless you plan on defrosting them which in that case they should be placed in your refrigerator1. If you’re curious about how long you can store your items in the fridge and/or freezer, here is a list that outlines how long you should store uncooked, and cooked food3!
Food Preparation. As you may know from our Monday Night Cooking Classes, washing your hands is the first step you should take when preparing food (Make sure to wash them for at least 20 seconds! Singing Happy Birthday or the ABC’s is a great way to pass the time!). This helps to eliminate any germs and bacteria that you may have on your hands from touching surfaces, sneezing, coughing, and simply living your life1. If you have any fresh produce that isn’t prewashed, you should wash it too! You may think that it’s an unnecessary step, but if you’re like me when shopping for produce, I touch everything to feel the firmness to determine if it’s ripe as well as turning it over to look for any signs of damage such as bruising, mold, or rot. I’m sure many people do this so you don’t really know who has touched your produce or what they touched before that! One great way to wash your produce is to soak it in a vinegar-water bath using 1 cup of white, distilled vinegar to every 4 cups of water. You can soak your vegetables for 10-15 minutes to get off any dirt, pesticides, and bacteria and then rinse them under warm water and pat dry with a clean towel (Note: more absorbent produce such as celery and carrots tend to retain a vinegary taste so either give them an extra rinse after or just clean them with warm water)! Another important aspect of food preparation is how you defrost your frozen food such as meat, poultry, and seafood. Instead of defrosting these on the counter all day, they should be defrosted overnight in the refrigerator. If you’re in a pinch and forget to take the food out of the freezer the night before (I am guilty of doing this more often than not), you can defrost your food under cold, running water1. This prevents the growth of bacteria while your food defrosts!
Proper Cooking Temperatures. This is an important step when preparing your food, especially animal products! If you don’t cook your meat, poultry, or seafood to the correct internal temperature, you risk the chance of leaving harmful bacteria in the food you’re about to eat, which could be quite dangerous to the high-risk populations I mentioned earlier1. But don’t worry, to do this step correctly, all you need is a food thermometer! I’ve listed a general guideline for the correct internal temperatures for meat, poultry, and seafood, however, if you’d like a more in depth chart you can look here and if you’d like to know what temperature you should set your oven too and how long to cook the meat, poultry, or seafood, you can look here3!
After you’re done cooking and eating your meal, be sure to let the food cool before storing it in the fridge. Make sure you don’t leave it out on the counter overnight because this can allow bacteria to grow on your food! If you stick to these general guidelines, you should have no problem preparing a safe meal for your family, but if you have any further questions, please feel free to leave a comment below!