Safety

The advice below is general advice, and is not suitable nor comprehensive for all situations. Do your own research for your specific situation when preparing food.

• Keep raw animal products like meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs away from other foods. Avoid cross-contamination by using separate cutting boards and utensils for these items.
• The most important tool for safely cooking meat is an instant-read thermometer. Meat safety is a function of time and temperature (which can also be impacted by thickness). Above 130°F, pathogens begin to die off - the greater the temperature the faster they die, and at a certain temperature they die instantly. Also, different kinds of meat are generally more dangerous. If you’re cooking sous vide, be sure to check a time and temperature table. For more traditional cooking, the USDA keeps a temperature guide for different kinds of meat.
• It’s fairly common for fish to have parasites. If you’re not going to cook your fish to a safe temperature, getting frozen fish can help minimize risk, as industrial freezing commonly kills the parasites.
• Make sure you “devein” shrimp, or buy shrimp which have been already been deveined. (The “vein” is actually the digestive tract.)
• Do not store fresh herbs or garlic (or any fresh plant) in oil. Under the right conditions Clostridium botulinum (and related) bacteria produce the botulism toxin. If you have some oil-infused leftovers, it may be possible to neutralize the toxin by cooking it for a particular time and duration, however, we will leave this research as an exercise to the reader. Store-bought oil infusions go through a process that makes them safe.
• The FDA generally recommends that food not be left at room temperature for over 2 hours (or 1 hour if it is hotter than 90°F).
• Generally speaking, do not wash fresh produce until you are ready to consume it, this will help it last longer.
• Different kinds of produce like to be stored in different ways - some don’t even like to be refrigerated! When buying a new kind of produce, or when buying in bulk, do a little research on storage.
• Respect your knives. Two things lead to the most injuries; complacency and over-exertion. Always pay attention to your knife work, and always stay in control. The more pressure you have to exert the less in control you are. Keeping your knives sharp may actually be safer. Research the correct way to hold a knife and food being cut to minimize risk to your fingers. Also, consider investing in some cut-resistant gloves.
• Don’t handle hot items with wet or damp towels. The water will conduct the heat better, and can also convert to steam which will also transfer the heat to your hand faster.
• Don’t mix cleaning chemicals, as this can create toxic fumes. For example, ammonia and bleach produce deadly chloramine gas.