Food safety – don't make a meal of it

Food safety don't make a meal of it

Food safety don't make a meal of it

The basics of food safety are simple and logical and once you've learnt what they are, it'll come naturally every time you shop and stock the fridge and every time you make a meal. Food safety falls into a number different areas of the kitchen, from food storage and preparation to cooking and leftovers.

The first thing to think about is the different shelves and drawers in your fridge and think of everything as being packaging free as this will make you think about what you would and wouldn't stack with what. Storage is the key to high standards of food safety and the one basic rule to remember is to store cooking meat, vegetables, cheese and open packets of anything above raw meat. The easiest thing to do is to always store your raw chicken, beef, pork or any other meat on the lowest possible shelf, away from cooked meats and other fresh foodstuffs. If you have a salad drawer make sure you use it as this will keep easily contaminated foodstuffs safe and fresh.

Once you're happy with the storage of your food, it's time to think about how you prepare it and again, the easiest way to stay safe is to stick to a routine. Colour coded and labelled boards are available so you can always use the same ones for raw meat, fresh vegetables, fish, red meats and bread so if there's ever a trace of any of these left on them after washing, the potential dangers will be seriously reduced. Cutting up ingredients for a salad on the same board or with the same knife as you've used to cut raw meat of any kind is an absolute no-no as the salad will not be put through a cooking process to kill the germs. Make sure you thoroughly wash all boards and utensils with hot water and washing up liquid and disinfect all surfaces immediately after use; doing this will prevent the spread of invisible germs and bacteria to other surfaces.

Cooking food properly is essential, especially when it comes to chicken and pork as these are the two meats that harbour the most harmful of germs. The basic thing to remember is to pre heat the oven, grill or frying pan to a hot temperature before you put the meat in, this way the germs are subjected to a temperature hot enough to kill them rather than warming them up slowly and providing them with the perfect environment in which to grow and multiply.

The only other major thing to remember is that if you're going to reheat meat you need to do it thoroughly and at a high temperature and it's not a good idea to reheat rice unless it was cooled immediately after it was cooked.

Bad food safety can lead to serious illness, from gastroenteritis (food poisoning) to salmonella and e-coli so make sure that whether you're using healthy recipes or you're following beef hot pot, you stay food safe.

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