Food safety in your house

Proper food hygiene is very important while preparing food and the following tips are particularly important to avoid contamination for your family and yourself:

Cleaning:

Wash your hands with soap and warm water for 20 seconds before and after you handle food. Dry them with a dedicated hand towel.
Remove your jewelry before you handle food.
Clean the area you’re working in and the utensils you’re using with hot soapy water. Clean up any food spills straight away.
Change your tea towels and dishcloths regularly.

Storing food:

Check labels for advice on how to store food.
Keep your fridge at 5°C (40°F) or below, and your freezer colder than –18°C to prevent bacteria from multiplying.
Keep raw meat, poultry and seafood separate from other foods in airtight containers at the bottom of the fridge.
Poultry and fish should be cooked or frozen within 2 days, other meats within 3-5 days.

Defrost frozen foods in the fridge. Put them on a plate or in a container as they defrost so they don't drip onto other foods.
Don't store opened tins of food in the fridge.
Allow leftovers to cool to room temperature (for no more than two hours) before you put them in the fridge.
Eat your leftovers within two days – or a day for rice.

Did you know?

Keeping separate chopping boards for raw and cooked foods can help preventing food cross-contamination.

Preparing food:

Don’t eat any foods that have passed their use-by date, even if they look fine. You can eat food after its best-before date because this refers to the quality of food rather than the safety.
Take chilled foods out of the fridge at the last minute before you eat.
Use separate chopping boards and utensils to prepare raw meat or fish, and clean them well with soap and warm water after each use.

Cooking food:

Cooking at temperatures over 70°C for at least two minutes will kill any bacteria in food.
Follow the instructions for cooking time and temperature. This includes preheating your oven.
Make sure food is piping hot.
Cook meat all the way through. Aside from rare steaks, or lamb and beef joints, meat shouldn’t be pink in the middle.
Cook shellfish until the shell opens and the flesh looks opaque and flakes easily if you prod it with a fork.
Always reheat pre-cooked food thoroughly so it’s steaming hot all the way through.
Only reheat pre-cooked food once.
If you're cooking food in a microwave, stir it well during heating to ensure that it’s evenly cooked all the way through.

When thawing:

Cold water thaws food faster. Place meat in a leak-proof bag and submerge in cold water. Replace the water every 30 minutes and cook the meat immediately after thawing.
When thawing in a microwave, foods must be cooked immediately afterwards.

Serving Food:

Hot food should be kept at 60ºC or more.
Cold food should be kept at 4.4ºC or cooler.

Dealing with leftovers:

Cooked leftovers must be refrigerated.
Use cooked leftovers within 2 days.
Reheat leftovers to a minimum of 70ºC.