10 Essential Kitchen Safety Tips

Chances are, whether you’re a professional chef or a home cook, you really enjoy your time in the kitchen. It’s a place to test your culinary mettle, and perhaps it’s the space you escape to in order to experiment with recipes, to relax as you prep and chop, to maybe even get some alone time.

However, before you can be that top-notch professional or a happy home cook, you need to take safety into consideration.

The proper systems and precautions can make the difference between time spent focused on the food and time spent handling an emergency. Read on to find 10 essential kitchen safety tips.

The Importance of Kitchen Safety

Kitchen safety essentially comes down to avoiding two things: injury and illness.

On the injury front, the proper precautions can reduce the chances of burns, cuts, slips, and falls. You’ll want to set up your kitchen and maneuver within it in a manner that sets you up for a good experience. The occasional accident might still happen—a nick of the finger when chopping veggies, for example—but precautions can help those be minor, not major.

Preventing illness is another safety tip that should always be top of mind in any kitchen. Professional chefs and home chefs alike should set up systems to remain vigilant about bacteria and viruses. Foodborne illnesses can occur from exposure to e. Coli, listeria, norovirus, salmonella, botulism, and more.

As you consider how to set up your space, some useful tools to start with can include a refrigerator thermometer, knife sheath, non-slip mat, food thermometer, color-coded utensils and tools, and kitchen gloves.

And finally, a safe kitchen is a more efficient kitchen. It has systems and processes, everything has its place, and less time is wasted finding ingredients or tools.

Here are 10 essential safety tips you can use at your restaurant and at home:

1. Ensure Staff is Properly Trained

The first rule in kitchen safety is to set up systems.

And when you hire employees, train them in your systems. Take the time to set up processes and then make sure you have written policies and procedures and that they’ve been given to employees as well as posted where necessary.

When we talk about systems, we often conjure up the image of a pilot, who ticks items off of the same checklist every flight. You can do the same with your kitchen staff, imparting habits and implementing standard operating procedures to handle safety and allow creativity to flow.

In a professional setting, also make sure employees are up to speed on federal, state, and local laws and regulations and that they have proper food safety certifications. This varies by area and type of establishment.

It can also be helpful to educate your employees about why you’ve set up certain systems and rules within the kitchen. People tend to be more motivated to keep up with safety standards when they understand what’s at stake rather than blindly following rules “just because.”

At home, you can institute similar methods to make sure everyone in the household understands the rules of the kitchen. This could mean things like always washing hands before cooking, understanding how to handle a knife, and knowing when food has gone bad.

2. Wash Your Hands

You should wash your hands before and after handling food. This is especially vital after handling raw food and when changing tasks.

Proper technique includes lathering up and washing the back and front of hands and between fingers; scrub for at least 20 seconds, then dry with a clean towel.

Foodborne illness often results from person-to-person contact, and frequent hand-washing is one way to minimize the chances of spreading those germs.

Same goes for hand-washing at home. You might be a little more lax because you’re only serving yourself or family, not customers, but you still want to be especially careful when switching tasks and handling raw food.

3. Use Dedicated Cutting Boards

One tried-and-true kitchen system involves using separate cutting boards—the USDA recommends one board for meat, poultry, and seafood, and another for fresh produce. One easy way to keep track, in a restaurant or at home, is to use color-coded boards.

As a rule of thumb, keep raw food separate from ready-to-eat foods, and keep uncooked food separate from cooked food.

Wash cutting boards with hot, soapy water after each use; nonporous boards can go in the dishwasher.

4. Properly Store Refrigerated Goods

The FDA recommends that you keep your refrigerator at 40 degrees F or below to minimize bacterial growth; freezers should be at 0 degrees F. A refrigerator thermometer can help you maintain proper temperatures.

The FDA also recommends allowing for space between items so cold air can circulate around them; wiping up spills right away to prevent bacterial growth, particularly Listeria; keeping things covered; and cleaning out the fridge frequently.

5. Clean and Sanitize all Food Contact Surfaces

Counter tops, cutting boards, utensils, pots, pans and employee hands are all food contact surfaces that must be cleaned and sanitized before and after they touch food items. Hot, soapy water usually does the job at home, but commercial food spaces often take a third step to sanitize tools and surfaces. Conduct daily cleaning tasks as well as regular deep cleaning.

Remember a two-step process: cleaning and sanitizing. Cleaning means to remove dirt and crumbs and prep a surface for sanitizing; sanitizing entails using chemicals to kill bacteria. Check your local and state rules and regulations to abide by your health codes for cleaning and sanitizing your restaurant.

At home, it’s good practice to follow similar procedures: clean surfaces, tools, and utensils before and after they touch food items. Your home kitchen can benefit from a deep clean on a regular basis as well. You might not need to do it monthly, but adjust according to how often you use your kitchen.

6. Cook Foods to Appropriate Temperatures

In order to kill any bacteria present, foods must be cooked to a minimum internal temperature and sustain that temperature for at least 15 seconds. Use a food thermometer to measure the temperature, and remember to clean the thermometer before using it elsewhere.

The USDA has a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart you can refer to. Some examples:

Beef, pork, veal and lamb steaks, chops, roasts: 145 °F (62.8 °C) and allow to rest for at least 3 minutes
Ground poultry: 165 °F
Fish and shellfish: 145 °F (62.8 °C)
Leftovers: 165 °F (73.9 °C)

Remember that the thickest part of a cut of meat will cook more slowly than the thinnest part, so insert your thermometer wherever the meat is thickest to ensure you don’t have any pockets of undercooked food.

7. Perform Self Inspections

Walking through your establishment once or twice a month will help you identify any potential food safety concerns. You can download a self health inspection form or ask your inspector for some of their forms so you know exactly what areas pose the greatest risk.

At home, keep an eye out for how the kitchen is laid out to assess how to make it efficient as well as safe. Make sure heavy items are easy to reach and move (and not at risk of falling), that sharp items don’t pose a risk to yourself, children, or pets, and that raw foods are properly stored and kept separate from others.

8. Check All Incoming Food Shipments

Food can be contaminated anywhere along the supply chain, so it is important that food service operators purchase foods from approved sources and know when to accept or reject fresh meat, poultry, and seafood.

For the home chef, be picky when doing your grocery shopping; check for freshness as well as any pests or packages that have been mishandled or accidentally opened.

9. Keep a Fire Extinguisher Nearby

All kitchens, whether commercial or home, should have a fire extinguisher nearby. A Class B extinguisher is meant for flammable liquids and gases, while a Class A extinguisher is meant for things like paper, wood, and trash.

Fire safety is of utmost importance. According to the National Fire Protection Association, cooking was the leading cause of reported home fires and home fire injuries between 2017 and 2021; it was also the second leading cause of home fire deaths.

The best fire safety tip: stay alert. The NFPA said unattended cooking was the leading factor contributing to fires and deaths.

Know how to react to different types of fires. For example, water will make grease fires worse. If a fire is small enough, douse it with baking soda or cover a pan with a metal lid or cookie sheet (using an oven mitt) to smother the flames. Don’t use flour, which can be flammable. For fires in a microwave or oven, keep the door closed and turn off the appliance. Fires like that will often burn themselves off when starved of oxygen.

If a fire is large and/or growing quickly, or involves (is being fed by) something difficult to extinguish, call the fire department and evacuate to safety.

10. Use Good Ventilation and Lighting

In a restaurant, check your laws and regulations for the type of ventilation necessary for your establishment. In general, you’ll want good exhaust hoods, good HVAC systems, and filters.

At home, do what your needs and your budget allow so you can keep on top of fumes and odors. In addition to that, grease particles can also make a mess of walls, paint, ceilings, and other surfaces.

The importance of good lighting is fairly obvious: you need to be able to see what you’re doing. Restaurants should abide by their state’s laws for proper lighting in the kitchen. At home, consider good overhead lighting as well as under-cabinet lights that can provide task lighting when you’re chopping, for example, or to keep an eye on the stovetop.

Safety Myths and Misconceptions

You can’t be too careful. However, it is worth mentioning that kitchen safety does include some misconceptions. Here are a handful:

Myth: Don’t put hot food in the refrigerator.
Reality: Hot food can indeed go in the fridge. In fact, it’s better to divide that food into containers and store it than to leave it out for too long (more than two hours).
Myth: The more bleach, the cleaner my countertops.
Reality: There’s no advantage to using more bleach, according to the Partnership for Food Safety Education. A solution of one tablespoon of unscented bleach in one gallon of water is plenty to sanitize countertops.
Myth: Cross contamination doesn’t happen in the refrigerator.
Reality: Keep your fresh fruits and vegetables separate from raw meat, poultry, and eggs, because some bacteria, like Listeria monocytogenes, can grow at low temps.

Stay Safe and Have Fun In The Kitchen

Kitchen safety might not be as fun to think about as menu planning or creating a new dish, but when done properly, it can help you better focus on the things you enjoy.

To discover more ways to expand your skills in the kitchen, explore our online cooking classes like Basic Knife Skills, Buying Meat & Home Butchery, or Make-Ahead Essentials. Or, if you want to pursue a culinary education, consider a degree or diploma in culinary arts. Escoffier offers both on-campus and online options, making it easier for you to find a way to fit school into your life.

Want to know more about maximizing your skills in the kitchen? Try these articles next:

How to Plan a Cohesive Multi-Course Meal
Cooking Oil Smoke Points and Why They Matter
A Beginner’s Guide to Canning & Preserving Food At Home

This article was originally published on January 22, 2014 and has been updated.

The post 10 Essential Kitchen Safety Tips appeared first on Escoffier Online.