Important tips for preparing food safely

In order to prepare food safely and ensure proper cooking, some steps must be followed to avoid food contamination. These include washing hands, cleaning and disinfecting contaminated utensils, surfaces, and cleaning cloths before using them again, allocating separate cutting boards for raw foods (such as meat) and other boards for ready-to-eat foods such as salads and fruits, and preventing raw foods from coming into contact with ready-to-eat foods, such as raw meat coming into contact with green salads during preparation.

It is also necessary to replace the oil or fat used in the frying process when its apparent properties change (color/increased viscosity/odor), taking care that the cooking temperature should not be less than 75 degrees Celsius and making sure that signs of cooking appear on the food, as well as the absence of traces of blood when cutting meat, chicken or fish after cooking, with the importance of stirring liquid foods periodically during cooking to ensure that their temperature is uniform and to observe the rate of air bubbles coming out of them because a decrease in the rate of their coming out indicates that they are not fully cooked.

frozen meat

Leaving frozen meat out in the open air or soaking it in water to thaw it helps to activate harmful microbes that contaminate the meat. Therefore, meat should be thawed in the refrigerator, microwave, or with fresh cold water, always paying attention to washing hands before and after touching uncooked meat, cleaning, washing, disinfecting, and drying appliances before each use, and avoiding using the same spoon during cooking to taste food several times without cleaning it after each use.

Source: Saudi Food and Drug Authority