Okay I need to get serious here for a minute and remind everyone about food safety. It’s critical to your well being to follow some simple rules when preparing these easy, and good for you meals at home. Basic hand-washing goes a long way in keeping germs at bay and so does having a little bleach water around when you are prepping for your meal times.
Remember to keep a moist paper towel under your cutting boards when in use. This prevents the board from slipping and you losing control and possibly cutting yourself. On that note, always use a sharp knife! A sharp knife is a safe knife. It requires less effort to use and is more precise and therefore safer to use. Should this sharp knife slip and fall, never, ever…let me re-iterate…NEVER EVER reach out to grasp it as it falls! Let it fall! Trying to catch a falling knife is asking for a trip to the E.R.
Always assume a pot handle or skillet, etc, is hot if cooking with more than one person. Approach everything with a towel in hand, or pot holder.
When washing greens prior to use, sanitize and rinse your kitchen sink with a little bleach water to ensure that all bacteria are killed. Fill the sink a little more than half way to ensure that dirt particles will fall to the bottom when washing leafy greens.
Use separate cutting boards for meats and fish and veggies! If you’ve only got the one prep the veggies first. Have your Mis En Place ready- or as in culinary school one of my instructors taught us “mess in place”. This means slice, dice, chop, puree, grind, etc., and have set aside prior to beginning. Then you can prepare your meats and wipe the surrounding area with bleach water and your knife afterwards.
This goes for your utensils! If you are preparing raw items and use something to stir, toss it in the sink as dirty and forget about it for anything else until it is washed! Watch your tongs when grilling. Do not grasp raw meat and then remove cooked meat with the same tongs, unless you have bleach water on hand to immerse the utensils in and wipe them off. Best to just have a few items on hand to use.
Cross contamination is the easiest to get wrong and the easiest to remedy. AS mentioned above, don’t re-use a cutting board for raw foods that you have prepared raw meats on. Wash your hands after handling raw meats and poultry. Wash your hands after touching your clothes, face, hair or trash can! It seems obvious but so many people forget they are doing these innocent things and then immediately go on to touch foods and transmit bacteria. Keep cold foods cold. Keep hot foods hot.
What does this mean? Well cold foods are ’safe’ at 41 degrees or below when holding before serving. Hot foods are ’safe’ at 140 degrees and above. In between is a festival of breeding for bacteria! the danger zone for food borne illnesses is between 41 degrees and 140 degrees, so stay out of these temperature ranges. You only have 4 hours from the time you are preparing an item to the time it will begin to breed bacteria exponentially if it is in the danger zone! So….NO you cannot save Hollandaise sauce! Generally after an item is prepared and seved you’ve got 2 more hours before you had better stick it in the fridge or toss it!
How to do this? Have your ‘Mis-en-place’ to reduce opening and closing the refrigerator door. When holding meats for long periods have the oven set to warm. Only remove the amount of an item you will need for immediate use, such as potato salad for a Barbecue. Better to replenish the buffet several times than have people throwing up later that night!
Always cook your proteins to the proper temperatures. Have a thermometer on hand, and calibrated, to quickly check the internal temperatures of items. A good rule of thumb is:
Poultry, stuffed meats, and stuffed pastas should be brought to 165 degrees F., measured at the thickest part of the flesh if not stuffed or measured in the middle of the stuffing. Ground beef, game, and pork should be cooked to 155 degrees F. or until no pink is visible in the meat or juice. Pork, ham, sausage, and bacon should measure 155 degrees F. at the thickest part and away from any bones. Beef roasts should be cooked to 145 degree F. at the thickest part and away from any bones.
Reheat foods to 165 degrees F. within two hours. That is an internal temperature, so if using a microwave oven to reheat, stir frequently and test the temperature in the center of the item. Do not mix reused food with fresh portions. Keep food only two days before reheating, and reheat only once.
*In my experience if you are using pork sourced from a reliable and personally known source it is very safe to cook to 140-145.
*Steaks are to be cooked to your desired doneness, but generally around 130 and above is fine.
Storing items in your refrigerator is equally important. Store raw proteins on the very bottom, tightly wrapped to prevent meat juices from dripping. If you stored it above, let’s say a prepared salad…well am I reminding you of a bad Thanksgiving vomit fest of years by-gone? Yeah, that is a main culprit! Generally poultry and ground beef are worst, keep them on the very bottom and beef and game above that, then fish. Fish ideally should be kept over a bed of ice that can freely drain into a container just under it so that it can be several degrees colder than your surrounding items. A zip-lock baggie or ice above and below is also sufficient to keep fish fresh. Eggs are fine in the carton as long as they are not touching or near raw produce meant to be used in it’s natural state. Salmonella is no joke. If you’ve made a large pot of soup or stock, etc, you have about 2 hours to cool it down to an internal temperature of 70 degrees before storing it in the refrigerator. To facilitate the cooling of hot items in large pots, immerse them in water bath in the sink. Place the stopper in the drain, and the hot pot carefully. Pour ice up to the sides of the pot in the sink and carefully, so as not to dilute your precious stock, fill with water to half way up the sides, if possible. Stir frequently until the temperature is reduced. I find that once my stock is cooled, I like the large sized freezer baggies for storage as they will seal tightly, and I can stack them flat in my freezer!
My livelihood depends on my being steps ahead of the Health Department if I want to keep paying my bills. Add to that the stress of on the job management of staff, an unpredictable factor in food cost for a restaurant, and you’ve got a recipe for vigilance. I am here to pass my knowledge on to you, so that your Pain Free Diet can really be that. Trust me I can go on and on about this topic but these are the general facts and guidelines and the link I have provided will direct you to useful websites which will further inform you.
Here is a great website that you can access to further inform yourself about food safety.
I have read customer reviews on the Amazon.com website and I understand the frustrations of not only not being a professional chef (I mean I can remember when I wasn’t well-versed) and not really shopping that much because you like to eat out more often. Now you don’t. Now you’re wondering where to start. Now you are at home, having read the guidelines and are staring at your kitchen, maybe opening a pot or pan given to you at your wedding. Contemplating the moment you must actually begin cooking for yourself. . . where do I start?
