How is food safety kept in the kitchen?

Food safety in the kitchen is kept not by a single rule but by a chain of five links. TÜBER, Türkiye’s national dietary guideline, names those five principles: cleanliness, separating cooked foods from raw foods, proper cooking, storing foods at proper temperatures, and using safe raw materials and water.

Below we look at what each of those links corresponds to at home, which temperatures and times are defined, what washing solves and what it does not, and where the chain breaks.

Why the chain has five links

The guideline also lists the main causes of foodborne illness: insufficient cooking, improper time-temperature practices, contamination of equipment, contamination of storage and preparation areas, raw foods of animal origin, and contact between ready-to-eat foods and raw foods.

Every item on that list corresponds to one of the five principles. When one link is skipped the others do not take its place; when a well-cooked dish is put into a dirty container, what the cooking gained is given back.

Where cleanliness starts

The definition of the first link is broad: personal hygiene, the cleaning and disinfection of the utensils used, and the cleaning of all areas where food is prepared. The reason is written down too: pathogens are carried to foods by way of clothing, utensils and hands.

In practice two sentences are decisive. After raw foods are touched, hands are washed according to hygienic handwashing principles; all surfaces and utensils that come into contact with meat and fish, above all raw chicken, are washed with plenty of hot water and detergent after every use.

Why raw and cooked are separated

The second principle asks for raw meat, poultry and seafood to be separated from cooked products and from foods eaten raw such as salad, and for the knives and cutting boards used in preparing raw foods to be kept separate.

Among the main causes of foodborne illness, the knife, the cutting board and the drying cloth are named directly. Where the separation is critical is in chopping an ingredient that will see no heat after the board.

In a kitchen working with one board the order makes up for it; we covered the details in this tip.

The danger zone

The reason behind the storage principle is given in a single sentence: if foods are kept at room temperature, microorganisms multiply rapidly; below 5 °C and above 60 °C their growth slows or stops.

That range produces two limits at home. Cooked dishes are not left at room temperature, on the counter or on the stove for more than two hours; potentially hazardous foods such as meat, milk and eggs stay out of the fridge for at most two hours during preparation.

Cooking temperature is measured

The guideline defines temperature and time together for meats: 45 minutes at 60 °C, 10 minutes at 65 °C, 2 minutes at 70 °C, 15 seconds at 72 °C, 6 seconds at 80 °C.

For raw poultry and red meat, for large cuts and for foods made with minced meat, the center temperature is required to be at least 72 °C and to be held at that temperature for at least 15 seconds. Effective cooking inactivates the bacteria that cause foodborne illness.

What is measured is not the surface but the center; in cooking or reheating, care is taken that the temperature is the same at every point of the food.

What washing solves

All fresh fruit and vegetables are washed thoroughly in plenty of water. A prohibition is written down just as plainly, though: bleach is never used for the purpose of cleaning foods.

Where washing does not solve things is on the meat side. While the guideline asks for surfaces that come into contact with raw meat to be washed, it does not recommend washing the meat itself as a method of cleaning; safety there is provided by the cooking temperature.

Cooling and reheating

The speed of cooling is defined: the temperature of cooked dishes should be brought down from 60 °C to 37 °C in at most two hours, and from 37 °C to 4 °C in at most four hours. Large portions are cooled quickly by being moved into shallow trays no more than 10 cm deep.

The same measure applies to reheating. Especially at large gatherings, dishes being reheated over and over and left at room temperature for a long time is named as a known cause of foodborne illness.

Where the chain breaks at home

The proportion the guideline gives is the reason for this section: 20-40 percent of foodborne illnesses come from food prepared at home. So this is not only a matter for large kitchens.

There are two points often skipped. Washing-up sponges are disinfected at least once a week by being washed in boiling water with detergent or left in bleach; rinsed utensils are dried in an upturned rack without using a cloth.

In short: build the five links together, keep raw and cooked apart, pass quickly through the range between 5 °C and 60 °C, take the center temperature to 72 °C and speed up the cooling. We covered the effect of the method on the plate in the cooking guide and the inside of the fridge in the kitchen order guide.