Top 5 Kitchen Safety Tips

Being aware of the top 5 safety and sanitation tips for the kitchen is important. When working in a professional kitchen or while cooking in your home kitchen for your online culinary classes, take these tips into consideration every time. In no particular order here are Chef Fernando’s top 5 kitchen safety tips.

1. Be sure all staff and managers are properly trained – shift managers, general managers and staff must have proper food safety knowledge because the health inspector will ask questions, and a restaurant can be fined for showing inadequate knowledge of safe food handling practices. There are several options available to have staff certified in food safety.

2. Wash your hands – One of the main culprits of foodborne illnesses is person-to-person contact resulting from dirty employee hands. Restaurant employees must regularly and thoroughly wash their hands in order to protect customers and the restaurant from a food poisoning outbreak.

3. Wash all produce – Fresh produce is not always cooked before serving, so washing by hand is the only way to remove any bacteria that may be on the surface.

4. Properly store refrigerated goods – Refrigerators must maintain a temperature at or below 40 degrees F to minimize bacterial growth. Also, refrigerated foods can only be stored for a certain amount of time before they start to go bad.

5. Cook foods to appropriate temperatures – In order to kill any bacteria present, foods must be cooked to a minimum internal temperature and sustain that temperature for at least 15 seconds.