« There is no good cooking if it is not made from the beginning out of love for those for whom it is intended ».
Paul Bocuse.
Hello, young Padawan
Today, your faithful servant, wearing her French pastry chef hat, is going to talk to you about kitchen hygiene in private homes because I see things!
Kitchen hygiene at the professional level isn’t just practical; it’s essential and even vital. Indeed, customers of pastry shops, caterers, or restaurants, for example, aren’t all in tip-top shape. There are young children, elderly people in precarious health, middle-aged people experiencing serious health problems, and people with allergies and intolerances—in short, a thousand and one reasons to take the utmost care with our kitchen hygiene professionally.
When you cook for yourself, your wife, and your kid, at worst, all three of you get sick, but if you’re a chef in a restaurant and there’s a problem, for example, in a medium-sized restaurant in a large city, you can quickly infect 150 people in a single service. Hell. Hygiene among professionals, in addition to being a matter of ethics, professionalism, honesty, and I would even say honor, is above all a matter of health safety, knowing that, to return to my first point, some people contaminated with salmonella can indeed die from it.
But just because we personally deal with small families of three or four doesn’t mean we can do anything and take all risks. However, I see things: basics that aren’t learned, basics that aren’t applied, and families literally in danger.
So, let’s review the few main basics that can lead to the most trouble together. No more playing Russian roulette with your fridge, dishcloth, or old eggs; it’s time for the kitchen hygiene guide for dummies, or beginners who don’t want to make their whole family sick.
The ABCs of kitchen hygiene, for dummies.
Here is a short, non-exhaustive list of the most basic kitchen hygiene essentials for beginners or those who want to check their kitchen hygiene.
Handwashing. Wash your hands thoroughly (with a nail brush) before and also during cooking. For example, wash your hands after breaking eggs or generally after touching any raw animal protein (meat, fish, shellfish). When cooking, as soon as you touch a food that could contaminate another food, it’s time to wash your hands.
Dishcloths and hand towels. I’ve seen things here too. If you don’t cook, live alone, and only heat food and wash dishes, changing your dishcloths, microfiber cloths, and hand towels twice a week is sufficient. On the other hand, if you enjoy spending time in the kitchen preparing delicious meals for the whole family, change your dishcloths and towels once a day or for a large family after every cooking session.
In short, if you don’t cook much during the week, you can relax with the dishcloth; if you use them frequently, change them after every big cooking session. Wash at 60°C (140°F) without fabric softener (because you don’t want endocrine disruptors in your food, I suppose, ed).
Are my eggs still good? First of all, if you’re wondering, they’re old, so boiled or fried eggs are out of the question. If they pass the test, we’ll try an omelet or scrambled eggs or use them in cakes or pancakes.
To find out if an egg is still good to eat, immerse them in a large glass of water, one by one. If the egg dipped in the glass stays at the bottom, it’s considered fresh; if it rises halfway, it’s just right, but still good. If it rises much higher than halfway up the glass or even to the very top, it’s trash. Indeed, the egg has a small membrane that fills with air as it ages; the older it is, the more the egg will float.
Meat and fish. When barbecuing, don’t take animal proteins out of the refrigerator for an hour before cooking (!!!).
The best-before date or the instructions of your fishmonger or butcher should be followed to the letter, but beyond that, your nose and eyes are your best friends. If there is a suspicious odor or an unappealing color, it’s trash. Salmonella is no joke.
Cutting board. Don’t cut vegetables after slicing raw meat or fish. Wash the board between uses; otherwise, you’ll contaminate your salad or tomatoes. The same goes for anything like onions, garlic, etc., which aren’t considered clean. This way, avoid excessive contamination.
If you’re unsure which material to choose for your cutting board, know that glass breaks and damages your blades, that every time you use your plastic board, you ingest micro-particles, and that wood is rot-proof if the board is properly washed and allowed to air dry before storing it, which isn’t the case for fungus and bacteria growth on plastic boards. Finally, when your wooden board has too many blade marks, simply sand it. Mine dates back to 1999 and is still spotless. What do you mean, you weren’t born yet?!
So, if you choose a wooden cutting board, remember to oil it regularly with a natural oil designed for this purpose (like uulki, ed), or a few drops of olive oil, and reapply more often.
One last tip: to prevent your cutting board from moving around, place a cloth underneath it. You’ll see, it won’t move as much, resulting in fewer cuts.
I sometimes see this, especially in some religions: If you wash your chicken thighs in the sink, you wash the sink with a disinfectant solution immediately afterward. Basically, anything that touches raw animal protein, especially poultry, is not brought into contact with it afterward; it’s washed immediately. Salmonella, guys, can be deadly in children, the elderly, and fragile people in general.
The refrigerator. Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean bacteria stop growing. Unlike its sibling, the freezer, bacteria continue to grow between 0 and 3°C, but more slowly. It’s therefore recommended to wash it twice a month for small families, or every other week, and take the opportunity to throw out expired food, if necessary. For large families, with more opening and closing, meaning less temperature maintenance, and more food storage, meaning more risk of contamination, we’ll say that up to six people, once a week, and for those above that, we switch to professional cleaning, i.e., every day. The advantage is that if there are 10 of you at home, there are probably 4 or 5 people old enough to take on the task, so you rotate the chore, and thus, you return to the standards of small families. The logic makes sense. The freezer? You give it a once-over when it’s dirty or as soon as there’s frost. Only large families need to worry about cleaning it once a month; others will be happy with a quarterly cleaning, or even biannually if it’s rarely used.
The stovetop and the oven. Who cares. When it’s dirty, you scrub it. Just no nuclear products like oven cleaner or whatever, which will release toxins into your lungs and into your food the next time you cook. Next up.
Wash your sink, every day if you use it once a day for cooking and washing dishes, 2-3 times a week if you use it less.
How? Mix natural dishwashing liquid (the simplest, non-chemical one, found in a health food store, for example, ed) to degrease and white vinegar to disinfect. I put my white vinegar in a spray bottle with a few pieces of lemon peel, which I spray before wiping down with my sponge and dishwashing liquid. Scrub well and let it sit for 1 to 2 minutes before rinsing. Don’t forget the drains, drain baskets, and the draining board.
The trash. When you take out the trash, you wash the container. That’s it. So, for small families, once a week with a disinfectant solution is enough, and for larger families, more often, as usual. We focus on the touched areas, such as handles, the lid, areas where food may have come into contact, etc.
The dishwasher. This isn’t an autoclave. It’s a DISHWASHER. The dishwasher doesn’t disinfect, and it also keeps the last rinse water from the end of its cycle to start the next cycle’s soaking. This means that if you put your toilet brush in it (I told you, I see things!, ed), the last rinse water from your salmonella, staph, fecal residue, and other fun things will be used to soak your following plates, cutlery, or even baby bottles. Are you still accusing your colleague Bryan of giving you his gastroenteritis? Really?
The dishwasher, in normal use for a small family, about twice a week, needs to be washed once a month. Rinse the filters and scrub with a small brush, clean the seals and edges with my system of white vinegar, dish soap, and elbow grease.
The work surface: If not used, clean it just once a week or after each cooking session. How? With a spray bottle of 2/3 water, 1/3 white vinegar, a few lemon peels to make it smell good, a microfiber cloth, and some elbow grease. Please don’t put the shopping bag that’s been on the floor or the parcel that’s been we don’t know where on the work surface, or clean it up right afterward.
Finally, and here, I demand everyone’s attention: don’t cook anything you can’t identify.
This sentence may seem crazy at first, but it’s indeed to the news section I’m referring to. The number of people who have died from poisoning by herbs, flowers, or mushrooms is in the thousands.
So, unless you pretend to be you’re the serial killer in the latest Stephen King novel, please don’t cook, not for yourself, and especially not for others (!!), which you’re not 100% sure of. Doubt, no doubt. It happened again this summer in my area, so no jokes.
One last thing, even though it seems obvious, could save a few lives:
-NEVER mix vinegar and bleach. A cleaning lady died three weeks ago in the Paris region, in France.
-NEVER heat bleach, or add a hot liquid like water, rinse with hot water, or use it on a hot surface. Heated bleach releases a dangerous gas, which can even be fatal in closed rooms.
So, I repeat: BLEACH is used alone, COLD, and rinsed with COLD water without any other product. And air it out!
So, in summary, no uncontrolled harvesting, regular cleaning of our tools, careful handling of dishcloths, special attention to raw produce through hygiene and maintaining the cold chain, discipline with the sink, fridge, and trash, and don’t put anything in the dishwasher that doesn’t comply with the Geneva Conventions. With all this, you’re almost guaranteed never to catch the tourista, gastroenteritis, diarrhea, or worse, pass it on to those you love, because that’s what matters the most.
In terms of time, for a small family of four people at most, we’re down to a few minutes per week. A regularly cleaned trash can takes less than three minutes to clean. A refrigerator takes a maximum of 10 minutes, including washing the bins. A sink takes 2-3 minutes, including a small microfiber cloth to remove drips. So, let’s not say we’re climbing mountains, training for a triathlon, or cleaning the Augean stables. The real waste of time is cleaning something you never clean, because there’s work to be done.
Household chores mean taking care of your home and taking care of your living space means taking care of yourself. If you’re feeling unwell, cleaning helps you feel better, regain self-confidence, and feel good about yourself, both physically and mentally. No one can feel good in a mess. When you finish your little cleaning, it’s like after a workout; you feel proud of yourself.
Finally, as for physical health, coughs, asthma, and other respiratory problems are very often the result of a poorly cleaned or poorly ventilated home. Either too much dust or too many harsh household products make us sick, and I’ll end up with that.
All you need for your home, besides elbow grease, is a disinfectant and anti-limescale solution like white vinegar, and a degreasing solution like a good organic dish soap.
Perhaps a magic stone or abrasive paste that you can rub your sponge on to clean any stubborn limescale areas, and the ultimate luxury, a homemade spray bottle made with demineralized water and essential oils of your choice to smell good, to be shaken before use. And that’s it.
Anything with strong odors or colors, especially products shown on TV, should be avoided at all costs. They’re full of endocrine disruptors and questionable chemicals, which can cause cancer, especially hormonal cancers, and are also pollutants.
That’s it for this brief recap of the basics. If it can be useful to even one person, then, by golly, I won’t have wasted my time. All that’s left is to wish you a wonderful and great weekend, and we’ll see you next Thursday for new adventures.
XO🦠
