Whether you have a career in food preparation, entertain privately, or just cook for your family, food handling has some science to it that you should know. What with hearing a story in the news every other day about yet another Salmonella or E. Coli outbreak, we could all stand to hear a refresher course in the sanitary preparing of food.

Handling food
Wash and dry hands thoroughly before handling food. Always use clean kitchen utensils for handling foods. Keep raw and cooked food apart at all times. Apply this especially to raw meat, fish, and poultry. Keep these away from cooked foods and ready-to-eat foods. Wash and dry hands, utensils, cutting boards, knives, and flat surfaces thoroughly after preparing raw meat, fish, poultry and other raw foods and before contact with other food. Ideally you should use separate cutting boards for raw and cooked foods. Never put cooked food onto a plate which has previously held these raw foods until it has been washed. Do not use the same utensil to stir or serve a cooked meal that was used to prepare the raw ingredients.