Chicken Farmers of Canada
If you have a family, then you probably have a busy kitchen and you know how hard it is to keep workspaces clean and free of bacteria. It’s a constant chore keeping up with sticky little fingers that get everywhere. Here are a few tips for keeping your kitchen bacteria-free.
If you use a cutting board, ask yourself these questions: How old is it? When was the last time you disinfected it with bleach? Do you use a separate cutting board for meat as you do for fruits and veggies? It’s not enough to wash cutting boards with hot soapy water – they need to be periodically disinfected. Cutting boards, especially wooden ones, are porous and create ideal environments for bacteria to grow.
Get It Straight – It’s Safe to Separate
Assuming you do have two separate cutting boards – one for meat products and one for fruits and veggies — here are some tips for handling poultry, meat and seafood. When you’re at the grocery store, take advantage of the bags they supply at the meat section and make sure you keep poultry, meat and seafood packages separated in your shopping cart, grocery bags and refrigerator. You don’t want to risk juices leaking out and contaminating the other products.
When you’re storing these raw roods in the fridge at home, place them in sealed containers or plastic bags on the bottom shelves. If you’re marinating, discard any leftover. Do not use it on cooked foods without boiling it first. You could also prepare extra marinade for basting cooked food. Make sure to wash and sanitize your brush or use separate brushes when marinating raw and cooked foods.
If you are preparing a dish that calls for several ingredients like chicken, shrimp and pork, then you should treat these meats as separate. Each time you use the cutting board, sanitize it before introducing a different kind of raw food and never place cooked food back on the same plate or cutting board that previously held raw food. When you handle these raw foods incorrectly, you create an inviting environment for cross-contamination.
Tomorrow: Keep it hot, hot, hot!
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