4 Essential hygiene and food safety precautions to take in your kitchen

Proper hygiene in your kitchen is essential to ensure safer food consumption in terms of contamination by microorganisms.  In this sense, we recommend 4 essential precautions to adopt and/or maintain, in order to guarantee good hygiene and food safety practices during the handling, preparation and cooking of food.

 
1st Maintain cleanliness

 
Hands and kitchen utensils can be a vehicle for microorganisms. In this sense, it is important:

Wash your hands very well before starting to prepare food, as well as frequently during the process, particularly between handling raw and cooked foods;
 

To properly wash your hands you must:

 Wet your hands with running water;
Rub your hands together with soap;
Rinse your hands with running water;
Dry your hands with a clean, dry towel.

Keep utensils (knives, cutting boards), equipment (kitchen robots, for example) and surfaces (tables, countertops) used in preparing food sanitized;
Avoid sharing food, drinks and objects between people during their preparation, cooking and consumption;
Whenever possible, discard the external packaging of food products and store them in homemade containers, taking care to maintain the expiration dates.

2nd Separate raw food from cooked food

Raw meat and fish can contain disease-causing microorganisms that can be transferred to cooked foods or foods to be consumed raw (e.g. raw vegetables) during preparation or storage. In order to minimize this risk, the following recommendations must be taken into account:

Ensure the separation of raw meat and fish from other foods;
Use different equipment and utensils, such as knives and cutting boards, for raw and cooked foods;
When stored, store food in closed packaging or containers.
 

3rd Wash and cook food well

Two ways to minimize the microbial load in food are:

Wash fruits and vegetables very well, especially if they are to be consumed raw;
Cook food very well, especially meat, fish and eggs. Click Here for Food Safety Course
 

Cooking food can kill almost all disease-causing microorganisms. Foods such as meat, fish and eggs must be well cooked, as they may contain disease-causing microorganisms. In meat, it must be ensured that the exudate liquid is clear in color and not reddish; Both fish and eggs must be cooked very well and liquid-based foods, such as soup and stews, must boil for at least 1 minute.

4 Keep food at safe temperatures

Microorganisms multiply more quickly at room temperature and, at temperatures below 5ºC, their multiplication may be delayed. To keep food safe, cooked food should not remain at room temperature for more than 2 hours, and should be quickly refrigerated just like perishable foods.

So far, and according to information provided by the European Food Safety Authority and the World Health Organization, there is no evidence that coronavirus is transmitted through the consumption of raw or cooked foods.

However, it is recommended to maintain and reinforce hygiene and food safety measures in your kitchen.