If you’re here because you’ve clicked a QR code in one of our recipe books, welcome!
This blog is all about food safety. And while it might not sound as glamorous as roaring the gas ring into life to sizzle up one of our delicious recipes, practising good food safety is not-so-silly sausages.
From where you keep your food in the fridge to how you prep it, here are our simple tips and tricks, plus some surprising ones you might not know about.
Food Safety 101: avoiding cross-contamination
The most common example of cross-contamination is when bacteria (like E.coli or salmonella) or other microorganisms transfer from one object to another. For example when raw food, including meats, poultry, fish, game and shellfish comes into contact with:
- other ready to eat food (think leftovers, ready to eat meals, sauces, open bags of supermarket salads, uncovered cooked meats etc)
- cooking utensils
- cutlery
- your hands
- kitchen surfaces (including plates).
By ‘coming into contact’ we basically mean when raw food touches or drips onto it.
Example:
It’s chicken for tea. You’ve opened the packet, chopped it and it’s sizzling in the pan. You give your knife a quick wipe, flip the chopping board over and reach for the tomatoes for the salad. What harm can it do, right? This is how bacteria can spread which can cause food poisoning.
Here’s a quick food safety refresher on how to avoid it.
1. Healthy hygiene tips for preparing food
- Always use different utensils, plates, and chopping boards for raw and cooked food – we use colour-coded ones in our kitchen (like red for the meat and green for the veggies). It’s simple but it works!
- Get washing – give all your knives and utensils, plates, countertops and chopping boards a really good clean in hot soapy water after every task and before beginning the next one – basically wash anything that comes into contact with the food
- NEVER wash raw meat – bacteria can quickly transfer onto a nearby surface
- Keep your hands clean – always wash your hands after you touch any raw food and before you handle any other food. (Pssst – we don’t just mean anti-bac gel!)
2. How to store food properly
- Beeswax covers, cling film and kitchen foil are all your friend – ALWAYS cover raw or opens packets of raw food, including meat
- Prevent spillages by storing raw food in appropriate containers (we use a dish with a lip, just in case someone has butterfingers)
3. Get washing
4. Where to store your food
Working from the highest shelf to the lowest:
- Pop snacks and covered leftovers on the highest shelf in your fridge
- Next, goes any pre-cooked food including cooked meats, fresh sauces, fresh pastas and our Ready to Go chilled range
- Any covered raw meats, poultry, fish and shellfish should ALWAYS go on the bottom shelf of your fridge (if your fridge has drawers,we’re talking about the shelf before those)
- Salad drawers – separate your fruits from your veggies because they like it that way
- We don’t need to tell you what goes in your fridge doors.
And that’s it. It’s not rocket science but in this case, a little bit of prep goes a long, long way.
Source: https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/avoiding-cross-contamination