Home Food Safety Tips

Food safety can be fast and simple. Food safety is vitally essential to maintaining good health.
Safe steps in food handling, cooking, and storage are essential to stop foodborne illness. You can't see, smell, or taste harmful bacteria that may cause illness. In each step of food preparation, follow the four steps of the Food Safe Families campaign to keep food safe:

• Clean — Wash hands and surfaces often.
• Separate — don’t cross-contaminate.
• Cook — Cook to the right temperature.
• Chill — refrigerate promptly.

Food is safely cooked when it reaches a high enough internal temperature to kill the harmful bacteria that cause illness & health problem.

Refrigerate or freeze meat, poultry, eggs, food and different foodstuff inside two hours of cookery or buying. Refrigerate inside one hour if the temperature outside is higher than 90ºF.

Refrigerate leftovers among 2 hours of preparation. Leaving food out too long may be a safety hazard. Make sure the icebox isn't too packed however has lots of air circulating round the food.

Don't eat food that’s been left out of the refrigerator for over four hours – particularly poultry, meat, seafood, poached rice and poached food.

Preparation

• Make a habit to wash hands with warm water and soap for few seconds before and when handling food.          
• Don't cross-contaminate. Keep raw meat, poultry, fish, and their juices away from other food. After cutting raw meats, wash cutting board, utensils, and countertops with hot, soapy water.
• Don't cross-contaminate. Keep meat, poultry, fish, and their juices aloof from different food. Once cutting raw meats, wash board, utensils, and countertops with hot, soapy water. Clean and Sanitize All Food Contact Surfaces.
• Marinate meat and poultry in a covered dish in the refrigerator.

Cooking
Cook all raw beef, pork, lamb and veal steaks, chops, and roasts to a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F (62.8 ºC) as measured with a food thermometer before removing meat from the heat source. For safety and quality, allow meat to rest for at least three minutes before carving or consuming. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook meat to higher temperatures.

Cook food to its proper temperature to ensure that any bacteria is killed off. Leftovers should be cooked to 165 degrees and kept above 140 degrees during serving.