Kitchen Safety.

Sanitation and safety in the kitchen is super important, especially when you’re cooking for other people. No use in helping someone if you’re going to give them food poisoning or get a staph infection, it kind of defeats the purpose. In todays post we’re going to go over a few pointers to keep in mind while preparing your sandwiches.

Kitchen Safety Tips:

1. It may seem obvious, but always wash your hands before handling any type of food products. Nobody wants this to happen: Bad Stuff.

2. Don’t handle food when you are sick.

3. Cover cuts, burns, sores, and abrasions with a tight, dry, antiseptic bandage.

4. If you have longer hair, make sure to tie it back.

5. Keep cold or frozen foods out of the refrigerator or freezer for as short a time as possible.

6. Cover food during preparation.

7. If you’re handling any type of meat, make sure to clean and disinfect the surfaces that you’re working on before and after use. This goes not only for countertops and cutting boards, but also for your hands and any tools you use (i.e. knives, bowls, etc.).

8. Keep tools specific. For example, use one knife to cut your meat and another knife to cut vegetables.

9. You’re more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife than a sharp one. It only costs $3.00 to get those old dull knives sharpened. Northwestern Cutlery is a great Chicago knife and cooking shop.

10. Properly using a knife can make cooking so much easier. If you’re interested, here is a blog with some different knife skills and techniques.

11. Probably the most important thing to remember is to keep your food out of the TEMPERATURE DANGER ZONE! Temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit (4 and 60 degrees Celsius) are where most germs thrive. When you prepare food, keep it out of the Temperature Danger Zone as much as possible. Note that the Temperature Danger Zone includes room temperature. Whenever a potentially hazardous food (fish, beef, poultry, eggs, dairy products, shellfish, pork, some beans) has been in the Temperature Danger Zone for four hours or more, it should be thrown out.

Here is the link of a very helpful sanitation thread that may help you with anything that we may have left out. But if you feel like we’ve missed anything, please, we encourage you to post it and share it with everyone. These are, hands down, some of the most important things to keep in mind, so take care and Good luck!

-Love Sandwich