Cooking at home more often? Remember these tips to help ensure food safety

Spending more time at home has enabled some people to explore cooking and experiment with recipes. Whether one is a newbie cook or a long-time home chef, here are tips one can follow to help ensure food safety while making new dishes.

Wash hands before preparing food
Aside from carefully washing any fresh produce or meat product bought from the market, another way to ensure food safety is to practice proper handwashing before preparing ingredients for cooking. Make sure to thoroughly wash hands for more than 20 seconds using soap and clean water.

Disinfect cooking surfaces and utensils
Keeping kitchen surfaces clean can also help prevent food from being contaminated. It is best to use a disinfectant that is ideal for the kitchen.

Check the quality of ingredients
Those who tend to stock up on produce and meat products to lessen trips to the market should be careful to check the expiry date and quality of the perishable items they are buying to avoid using stale ingredients. To be sure, one can buy these products from trusted brands in groceries and meat shops.

Separate fresh produce from raw meat
Make sure that fresh produce doesn’t mix with raw meat during preparation to avoid cross-contamination, which happens when food is mishandled, allowing bacteria to transfer from one source to another.

Avoid double-dipping
Double-dipping can include dipping utensils or chips into a bowl of sauce or food after having put it in your mouth. This can pose some problems when it spreads the bacteria from your mouth into the food – especially when you’re sharing it with other people.

Thoroughly cook ingredients
Cooking food thoroughly and properly may kill most of the bacteria that may still be present in the ingredients.

Don’t add raw ingredients when heating food
While it might be tempting, it would be best to avoid adding uncooked meat to already-cooked meals or sauces as it can lead to cross-contamination and food poisoning.

Make preparing meals for the family even more worthwhile by ensuring they eat only the safest dishes. Follow these food safety tips and get quality meat products from trusted brands such as Robina Farms. Their quality meat and egg products are available at leading groceries and supermarkets nationwide.