2Food safety and the clean kitchen

Food that makes people ill is not rare. In the United States an estimated 48 million people get sick from something they ate every year. About 128,000 of them end up in the hospital, and about 3,000 die.

Much of the illness that can be traced to one kitchen leads back to a restaurant. In 2019 health officials across the country reported 877 foodborne outbreaks, with 11,870 people ill. Where a single place of preparation was known, two outbreaks in every three came from food made in a restaurant, most often a sit-down restaurant. Even so, outbreaks are only the part that gets counted: most foodborne illness is never linked to an outbreak at all.

Home kitchens are part of the picture too. In a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, researchers watched people cook in a test kitchen:

• They failed to wash their hands properly 97 percent of the time. Most did not wash for the full 20 seconds, and many did not dry their hands on a clean towel.
• Only 34 percent used a thermometer to check that their burgers were done, and nearly half of those still did not cook the burgers to a safe temperature.
• Bacteria from raw poultry reached the spice containers 48 percent of the time, the refrigerator handle 11 percent of the time, and the salad 5 percent of the time.

Every plate a cook sends out has to be safe to eat. Food that makes a guest ill can come from germs, from careless handling, or from an ingredient the guest is allergic to. The good news is that most of these problems can be stopped by a few habits:

• keeping food at the right temperature
• keeping raw and ready food apart
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• washing hands
• cleaning the kitchen on a plan

Food safety rules differ from place to place, and a cook follows the ones that apply where they work. A review of the subject is no substitute for a recognized food safety course.

2.1 Why food makes people ill

Four common mistakes

Many people hold wrong ideas about food poisoning. Four facts correct the most common ones:

• Food that carries enough germs to make you sick can still look, smell and taste fine.
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• Food that is very fresh can still make people ill if it is handled badly.
• A clean kitchen can still serve unsafe food.
• Food can cause illness even after it has been cooked correctly.
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Three causes

Illness from food has three broad causes: something harmful gets into the food (a contaminant), the food is handled the wrong way, or a guest has a food allergy.

Contaminants come in three kinds:

• Chemical — for example cleaning products or pesticides.
• Physical — objects such as a hair, a bandage or a piece of glass.
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• Biological — living germs, carried in by a sick worker, a dirty work surface or unsafe water. These cause far more illness than the other two kinds.

Microbes and pathogens

• Bacteria live in many foods and in the human body. Only some kinds cause illness. Salmonella, Listeria, Campylobacter and E. coli are bacteria that do, so foods that may carry them need careful handling and proper cooking.
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• Viruses do not grow in food, but food can carry them. Usually a food handler passes the virus on through poor hygiene or bad handling. Hepatitis A and norovirus are two examples.
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• Parasites are carried by people and animals, inside or on the body. They make people ill when infected food is not cooked hot enough, or not frozen cold enough, to kill them. Trichinella in pork and some game, and roundworms in raw fish, are examples.
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• Protozoa are single-celled animals found in water. Giardia lamblia can live in rivers, lakes, streams and shallow wells. Salad greens washed in that water and served raw can pass it on.
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• Fungi grow on decaying matter. Many are harmless, but the mold on spoiled food can be harmful, and cutting or scraping off the part you can see does not remove it.
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Fast illness and slow illness

People often blame a short, sudden sickness on "the 24-hour flu". There is no such illness; many of these cases are really caused by food.

• Food intoxication happens when bacteria grow in the food and leave behind a poison, called a toxin. The poison is eaten with the food, so the guest reacts quickly. Staphylococcus works this way.
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• Food infection happens when live pathogens are eaten and then multiply inside the gut. Because they must grow first, the illness comes on more slowly. Salmonella works this way.
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Handling mistakes

The top ten handling mistakes that cause most illness from food are:

• Improper cooling
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• Advance preparation
• Infected person
• Inadequate reheating for hot holding
• Improper hot holding
• Contaminated raw food or ingredient
• Unsafe source
• Use of leftovers
• Cross-contamination
• Inadequate cooking

Allergies

A food allergy affects only certain people, but it can kill. Preventing a reaction means knowing and communicating every ingredient in a dish, including ingredients inside bought-in, ready-made products, and using separate tools, pans and surfaces.

Case Study - A guest said they were allergic to MSG and ordered chicken strips with sweet and sour sauce. The server said the kitchen did not add MSG to its food. The sauce, though, was bought ready-made, and MSG was on its label. The guest's lips tingled and they broke out in hives. A server who knew every ingredient in the dish could have prevented it.

2.2 The rules and who sets them

Food handler certification

The operator of a food service business must hold a recognized food handler certificate. When the operator is away, at least one worker on site must hold one.

The rule asks for only one certified person per shift. Even so, many employers expect every food handler to hold the certificate, and the industry treats it as good practice.

The first-level food handler course can be taken in a classroom, online, or by correspondence. To pass, you complete a course with an approved trainer and then sit an exam of 50 multiple-choice questions, needing at least 70%. Successful candidates are entered in a public health database and receive a certificate.

A new first-level certificate lasts five years. To renew it, you take a refresher course and score 80% on its exam. Supervisors can take a second-level course, which covers how to manage food safety and food safety systems.

HACCP: a system used worldwide

HACCP aims to prevent problems, not just to catch them at the end. It looks for biological, chemical and physical hazards at every stage of production, rather than only testing the finished food. The Codex Alimentarius Commission, the United Nations body that sets international food safety standards, recommends it. Most countries use it, and it has been in use since the 1960s.

The seven principles

Every country that uses HACCP follows the same seven principles. Each one below has the cooking step as its example.

• Hazard analysis. List every hazard that could make the food unsafe, and how each could be controlled. At the cooking step, one hazard is that germs survive because the food was not cooked long enough or hot enough.
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• Find the critical control points. A critical control point is a step where action can prevent, remove or reduce a hazard to a safe level. Cooking is one, because something must be done there to kill germs.
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• Set critical limits. A critical limit is the line between safe and unsafe at a control point. For cooking, it is a set time and temperature.
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• Monitor. Check closely and often that each control point stays within its limit. For cooking, that may mean taking the food's internal temperature with a probe thermometer.
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• Corrective action. Decide in advance what to do when a check fails. If food has not reached its temperature, cook it longer. If it cannot reach that temperature, hold it back and destroy it. Fixing the problem during production works far better than testing at the end.
• Verify. Use tests, samples and other checks, on top of monitoring, to confirm the system works as written. Testing and calibrating thermometers is one example: set the probe in boiling water; a correct thermometer shows 100°C (212°F), and one that shows anything else must be adjusted.
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• Keep records. Write down the results of monitoring and verification and what was done about any problem. A cook in charge of a cooking control point might fill in a log with the date, start and finish times, temperature and their signature, and note any problem in a separate deviation log. Official food inspectors check these records.
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2.3 Preventing illness: hands, heat and cross-contact

What bacteria need: FATTOM

Bacteria can only grow when conditions suit them. If the kitchen controls those conditions, bacteria already in raw food cannot multiply to a harmful level. The six conditions spell the memory word FATTOM.

FATTOM and its six conditions.

Potentially hazardous foods

A food that offers bacteria these conditions is called a potentially hazardous food (PHF). PHFs are perishable: left at room temperature, they spoil. They either let pathogens grow or survive, or may already carry them.

As a general guide, these foods count as PHFs:

• foods from an animal — meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, milk or eggs — or anything containing one of these;
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• plant foods that have been cooked or heat-treated;
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• raw sprouts, such as bean, alfalfa or radish sprouts;
• cooked starches, such as rice or pasta;
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• soya proteins, such as tofu or soya milk.

Some pairs show how handling changes the risk:

• Uncooked rice is not a PHF, but cooked rice is.
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• Raw onions are not, but fried onions are.
• Fresh garlic is not, but fresh garlic kept in oil is.
• A dry soup mix is not, until water is added.
• An unopened can is not (unless its label says to keep it refrigerated), but an opened one is.

Bread, flour, cooking oil, powdered eggs and beef jerky are non-PHFs; tofu, gravy, coffee creamer and pastries filled with meat, cheese or cream are PHFs.

The danger zone

Key temperatures and the danger zone.

Minimum temperatures

There are commonly accepted minimum time and temperature controls for PHFs. Other time and temperature controls can be used if scientific data show it gives safe food.

Guests may at times request food preparation that deviate from common controls. Guests who order a runny egg yolk, raw marinated fish or raw shellfish such as oysters should know that only full cooking makes these safe.

Heat: cooling, holding and reheating

The ten handling mistakes do not cause equal harm. Ranked by the share of foodborne illness each causes:

• Improper cooling: 30%
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• Advance preparation: 15%
• An infected person: 12%
• Poor reheating: 10%
• Improper hot holding: 8%
• Contaminated raw food: 4%
• An unsafe source: 3%
• Leftovers: 2%
• Cross-contamination: 2%
• Inadequate cooking: 1%

All other causes together account for the remaining 3%.

Cooling. Cooking does not kill everything. Some bacteria form spores, a tough resting form that survives heat. As cooked food cools through the danger zone, the spores wake and multiply. So cooked food has two deadlines. It must fall to 20°C (70°F) from 60°C (140°F) within two hours. It must then fall on to 4°C (40°F) within the next four hours.

A walk-in cooler alone will not cool a large roast, a whole bird or a big pot of soup in time; a pot of 4 L (1 gal.) or more can take a day or longer. Ways to speed it up:

• Spread food in shallow pans, with the food 5 cm (2 in.) deep at most. Never stack the pans, so cold air reaches each one.
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• Leave food loosely covered or uncovered while it cools; a tight lid traps heat.
• Cut big roasts or whole birds into smaller, thinner pieces before panning them.
• Stir the food in a container sitting in ice water, or use cooling wands (also called cooling sticks).
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• Choose stainless steel or aluminum containers, which pass heat well; plastic does not.
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• Use ice as an ingredient in soups or stews, and split a large batch of custard into single servings.
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• Cool in a walk-in with wire shelves and good air flow; household-style and reach-in fridges cool food poorly.

Advance preparation. Food made long before service often spends too long in the danger zone: it sits at room temperature, is not heated or cooled properly, or goes in and out of the zone again and again. To prevent it:

• Cook as close to service as you can, for use the same day.
• Cool food properly before you cover it tightly.
• Label food kept in the cooler more than 24 hours with the date made and a "serve by" date.
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• Throw out most PHFs after three days.

Reheating for hot holding. Food that is cooked, cooled, then reheated crosses the danger zone twice, and a hot-holding unit keeps it near the edge of that zone. To reheat safely:

• Do not reheat in the hot-holding unit; it is not built for that.
• Bring the food to 74°C (165°F) and hold that heat for at least 15 seconds before it goes into the unit.
• On a stove or in an oven, reach that point within two hours, with a thermometer to hand.
• In a microwave, which heats unevenly, stir or turn the food at least once, reach 74°C (165°F), then let it stand covered for two minutes.
• Do not take crackling sounds as proof the food is hot; use a thermometer.

Hot holding. Keep held food at 60°C (140°F) or above.

• Check the unit every day with a thermometer.
• Heat it to at least 60°C before loading it.
• Put in only food that is already at 74°C (165°F).
• Never switch a unit off after service and leave the food in it to cool. The food then sits in the super danger zone, 20–49°C (70–120°F), where pathogens grow very fast. Take food out after service and cool it at once.
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Leftovers. Leftovers cause outbreaks because their time in the danger zone adds up during cooling, reheating and portioning.

• Reheat leftovers once only, and discard any that have already been reheated.
• Do not mix them with fresh food.
• Cool them uncovered and apart from raw foods, then cover them tightly.

Cooking. Cooking food properly kills every pathogen apart from spores, or brings their numbers down to a level that will not cause illness. Cooks under-cook by accident, for example by cooking meat that is still frozen, or giving a stuffed bird the same time as an empty one.

• Check the internal temperature rather than trusting the clock.
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• Test large items in several places.
• Allow extra time for partly frozen food, which can hide cold spots.
• Cook grilled or fried meat until the juices run clear and fish until it flakes easily, and shape hamburgers thin.

Hands: the infected worker

Many people carry pathogens in the gut, nose, mouth or on the hands without feeling ill. People who do have symptoms — diarrhea, fever, vomiting, jaundice, a sore throat with fever, or an infected hand — are much more likely to spread them. Some, such as Salmonella, E. coli and Campylobacter, can make guests very ill in small numbers. Ready-to-eat food is the greatest risk, because no cooking follows to kill what a hand puts on it.

• Wash your hands well after any task that could soil them: using the toilet, eating, smoking, blowing your nose or handling raw meat.
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• Cover any infected cut, burn or sore on a hand or arm with a waterproof bandage and then a glove or finger cot (a small rubber sleeve for one finger) before touching food or utensils.
• Gloves do not replace handwashing. Change a glove or cot when it is dirty or torn, and at the end of each day.
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• A worker with signs of infection must not handle food or utensils and should be sent home.
• Where you can, handle food, especially ready-to-eat food, with utensils or gloves rather than bare hands.
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Cross-contamination and allergens

Cross-contamination means something harmful moves by accident into a food that did not have it — for example germs from raw meat reaching sliced deli meat, or nuts getting into a tomato sauce that should have none. Expect raw meat, poultry and seafood to carry pathogens.

• Keep separate boards, knives, cloths, sinks and work areas for raw and ready-to-eat food. If you must share them, wash with detergent and sanitize with bleach between uses.
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• Store ready-to-eat food on shelves above raw food, and dry food above wet food.
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• Prepare ready-to-eat items first thing in the day, before any raw food.
• Wash your hands after touching raw food, before you do anything else.
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• Keep wiping cloths in fresh bleach solution between uses: 30 mL (1 oz.) of bleach to 4 L (1 gal.) of water.
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• Handle cooked and ready-to-eat food with clean utensils, not your hands.
• When a guest reports an allergy, follow every one of these steps and prepare their food with separate or freshly sanitized tools.
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Raw foods and suppliers

Some foods are often served raw even though raw they have always carried risk:

• oysters in the shell
• raw egg in dishes such as Caesar salad or eggnog
• rare hamburger
• sushi and sashimi
• steak tartare (raw chopped beef)
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These foods have caused many outbreaks, and smell, taste and look will not reveal germs. To lower the risk:

• Buy from approved suppliers, ideally ones with their own food safety plans.
• Use pasteurized products, such as pasteurized liquid egg, where you can.
• Never serve such foods to people at high risk: older people, young children, people in poor health, and people in hospitals or care homes.
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An approved source is a supplier checked by a government food inspector. Cheap food from an unreliable seller may carry high levels of pathogens, may have been taken illegally, and may not have been stored or moved safely. Shellfish from closed harvesting areas are a particular danger. If you are unsure whether a supplier is approved, ask your local environmental health officer.

2.4 Receiving, storing and rotating food

Receiving a delivery

Receiving is the first step in the path food takes through a kitchen, and a HACCP plan treats it as one of its control points. Never assume a delivery is fit to use. The key to receiving is accuracy; a rushed or careless check is worth nothing.

• Keep the receiving area bright, tidy and on the daily cleaning list.
• Book deliveries for times when there is room to inspect them properly.
• Keep scales, thermometers, gloves and containers close at hand.
• Record the temperature of the truck's fridge and freezer. If it is out of range, refuse the delivery, since there is no way to know how long the food has been too warm.

Each type of food is checked in its own way.

• Dry goods: count the pieces against the invoice. Look closely inside damaged cartons, especially for leaks from jars and bottles, since credit for broken glass is hard to get later. Check any carton that looks opened or repacked. If you have doubts about quantity, quality or damage, do not sign until you or a supervisor has settled it with the shipper.
• Cans: count them and look for the two common faults. A swollen or bulging can means the food has spoiled. A deep dent may have split a seam and let germs in. Send both back. If a whole case is bad, tell the local health authority.
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• Dairy: check the best-before date on every container; the date should fall a week or more past the day of delivery. Count the items and check for leaks.
• Produce: count, weigh and open closed boxes to judge ripeness and freshness. If the order is wrong or poor, the supplier should collect it and give a credit.
• Meat, poultry and seafood: count and weigh. Look for leaking vacuum packs, and match the grade and cut to the invoice and order. Open cases of frozen goods to look for freezer burn, torn wrapping or signs of thawing.

In short, the amount received should agree with both the invoice and the purchase order, the quality should meet the agreed specification (including the brand, when one was asked for), and the invoice prices should match the order.

Why storage matters

Good storage lets a business buy in bulk at better prices, cuts the time and cost of ordering, and makes menu planning easier because the cooks know what is on hand. Storage also costs money for space and security, so many kitchens now keep smaller stocks and pay suppliers a little more to deliver often.

Dry storage

• Keep it cool and dry, ideally 10–15°C (50–59°F), so food does not spoil and cans do not swell.
• Seal openings in walls, floor and ceiling so rodents and other pests cannot get in, and make the room easy to clean.
• Light it well, and leave aisles wide enough for carts so staff do not hurt themselves lifting.
• Keep shelves at least 15 cm (6 in.) off the floor, and never store food on the floor.
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• Lock the storeroom. Stock is money, and costly items such as wine and liquor may need a locked area inside it.

The room is best placed near the receiving door and the kitchen.

Refrigerated storage

• Read every fridge's thermometer daily.
• Have a repair company service the fridges regularly. If one stops, first check that it is still plugged in and the breaker has not tripped.
• Clean fridges on a set schedule; shallow, well-vented shelves make this quick.
• Give each item a set place, use first-in, first-out, and keep doors open no longer than needed.
• Avoid putting hot food in the fridge unless you must. Because people judge "must" differently, a kitchen may need written guidelines.

Dairy keeps at 2–4°C (36–39°F). Its fat picks up strong smells, so cover it and keep it in its own area, ideally its own fridge rather than the vegetable cooler. Order it close to when it will be used, daily if possible, and rotate it when new stock arrives.

Produce mostly keeps at 2–4°C (36–39°F), with exceptions such as potatoes and bananas that need warmer storage.

• Bananas go black in the fridge and keep best at 10–15°C (50–59°F), which is also where unripe fruit will ripen.
• Buy soft fruit as needed.
• Take out rotting pieces, because one can spoil a whole case.
• Hardy vegetables such as cabbage and carrots last weeks; lettuce does not.
• Moisture softens vegetables and starts rot.

Meat, poultry and seafood are the hardest and most costly items to store.

• Hang whole carcasses unwrapped at 1–3°C in a walk-in, with absorbent paper below for drips.
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• Keep cut meats covered on plastic or stainless trays at 2–4°C (36–39°F).
• Use boned meat within three days and individual cuts within two, best on the day they are cut.
• Pack fresh poultry in ice in the fridge.
• Pack fresh seafood in ice between −1°C and 2°C and use it quickly.
• Keep all raw items on the lowest shelves.
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Frozen storage

Store frozen food at −18°C (0°F) or colder. If the freezer warms above that, food can lose color and vitamins, and chilling it again does not undo the damage.

• Well-wrapped frozen fruit, vegetables, fish and meat keep a long time.
• Poorly wrapped food gets freezer burn: it dries out, loses texture and flavor, and shows white or gray dry patches. Meat is especially prone.
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• Freezing fresh produce in-house takes time, may cost too much, and the fruit must be prepared correctly first.

Rotation: first in, first out

FIFO, short for first in, first out, means the oldest stock is used before the newest. In a dry store, shelves set in the middle of the room and loaded from both sides make this easy: new stock slides in from the back and pushes old stock forward. Rotation matters greatly with frozen food, but chest freezers make it hard, and cooks are tempted to grab the newest item from the top.

Storage is meant above all to stop food spoiling. Three agents spoil food: molds, yeasts and bacteria.

• Molds show as blue-green, hair-like growth, often on bread, fruit and cheese kept warm, dark and slightly damp.
• Yeasts are always in the air. Given food, air and warmth, they turn the sugar in fruit into alcohol and carbon dioxide, which makes fruit and vegetables ferment and rot. The same process makes wine and beer and makes bread rise. Yeast shows itself as slime.
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• Bacteria usually start the decay first but are the hardest to spot; often you notice them only when the food smells bad.
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Watch for changes in color, smell and taste:

• Fruit softens, darkens and rots.
• Vegetables wilt and then turn slimy.
• Butter, cheese and other dairy darken and smell sour.
• Eggs darken and smell foul.
• Meat changes slowly, then darkens and smells off.
• Slime and mold appear.

2.5 A food safety plan

What a plan is

A food safety plan (FSP) is the only sure way to know the food you serve is safe. There are two kinds. A recipe-based plan follows one dish. A process-based plan follows a method shared by several dishes, which suits a station or a menu that changes often, such as daily specials; grilling pork chops and chicken breasts, for example, follow much the same process. Both kinds are built in the same seven steps.

A worked example: a beef stew. The recipe uses 2.5 kg of pre-cooked stewing beef, a can each of stew base, consommé and gravy, two packs of frozen vegetables, a seasoning packet and 5 liters of water. The written method has five stages: preparing, cooking, serving and holding, cooling, and reheating. As first written, it only says to simmer for 30 minutes, store leftovers covered in the cooler and reheat "until steaming".

Step 1: find the hazards

Go through the menu and pick out every item that is a PHF or contains one. For each, follow the food from delivery to plate, using the recipe or a flow chart. Then ask:

• Does the food pass through the danger zone — is it cooked then cooled, held hot, or reheated? Most food poisoning involves food heated and then cooled through that zone.
• Do workers handle it a lot, so a sick worker could contaminate it?
• After cooking, could raw food or dirty equipment contaminate it?

Any "yes" means a hazard to control. Beef stew is a PHF. Its hazards are germs in the raw ingredients, and germs that survive cooking or get in afterwards and then grow if the stew is left at the wrong temperature.

Step 2: mark the critical control points

Next, find the steps where each hazard is best controlled. These are the critical control points: the "kill step", where cooking kills bacteria, or the steps where hot holding or fast cooling stop them growing. Four steps are control points in every recipe: cooking, cooling, hot holding and reheating. For ready-to-eat food such as salads and sandwiches, every step where hands touch the food is one too. Underline or highlight these steps on the recipe. In the stew, the cooking, serving and holding, cooling and reheating stages are all control points.

Step 3: set critical limits

For each control point, set the limit: lowest cooking temperature and time, longest cooling time, lowest holding temperature and so on. Most limits can be written straight onto the recipe card. For the stew, these are the limits to write in:

• Cooking: the stew must reach 74°C (165°F) or more, and stay there 15 seconds or longer.
• Holding: keep it at 60°C (140°F) or hotter.
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• Cooling: cool in shallow pans no deeper than 5 cm (2 in.), stirring often, reaching 20°C within 2 hours and 4°C within the next 4 hours.
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• Reheating: within 2 hours, the center must reach 74°C or more and stay there 15 seconds or longer. Reheat once only.

Step 4: check the limits

A limit only works if someone checks it. Where the limit is a temperature, measure the food's internal temperature while cooking, cooling or holding. Where the limit is something a worker does, train them first, then watch regularly that they keep doing it right. Make checking part of each person's job description.

Step 5: plan the fixes

When a limit is missed, workers must already know the corrective action. Examples include:

• refusing an unacceptable delivery
• turning down a cooler's thermostat
• recooking or reheating food (once only)
• changing how the food is handled
• throwing it away

Fix problems at once, and remember the rule: "If in doubt, throw it out!"

For the stew, the fixes are simple:

• Keep cooking until it reaches the limit.
• Turn up the holding unit's thermostat if the stew falls below 60°C.
• Change the cooling method, or discard the stew, if it does not cool in time.
• Keep heating if a reheat falls short.

The finished plan also lists safety steps around the recipe. On receiving, the beef must be below 4°C, in sound packaging and from an approved supplier, or it is refused. It goes straight into the cooler. During preparation:

• Use a thermometer that has been cleaned and sanitized.
• Wash your hands before you handle food, after raw food and after any interruption.
• Clean and sanitize tools before and after use.
• Put ingredients back in the fridge if work stops.

A process-based example

A process plan for a hot entrée station can cover dishes such as chicken cacciatore, beef bourguignon and turkey tetrazzini. For each stage it names the hazard, the control, the check and the action.

A food safety plan for a hot entrée station.

Steps 6 and 7: records and review

Keep records of every check and every corrective action. Reading them regularly shows quickly whether the controls work and whether staff handle food correctly; if they show a problem, fix it straight away.

At least once a year, review the whole plan. Ask whether there are new dishes, changed recipes or changed preparation steps; any "yes" probably means the plan needs updating. It is also wise to confirm with the local health inspector that the plan is suitable.

2.6 Cleaning and sanitizing the workplace

Clean is not the same as sanitary

Bacteria can grow on a dirty surface and pass into food, and a surface that looks clean may not be sanitary. Clean and sanitize your work area before you start preparing food.

These are two separate jobs. Cleaning with soap or detergent removes dirt and grease, but it may not kill germs. Sanitizing kills bacteria, and only a sanitizer does it. The usual sanitizers in food service are chlorine (bleach), quaternary ammonium compounds (called "quats"), and iodine. Use each as its maker directs on the label and on the material safety data sheet (MSDS), wearing the right protective gear.

The sanitation plan

Every kitchen needs a sanitation plan so that all surfaces are cleaned regularly and germs do not spread from dirty surfaces to clean boards and tools. It has two parts:

• a list of the cleaning and sanitizing products, with how to use and store each safely;
• a cleaning schedule saying how each item is cleaned, who does it and how often.

A cleaning schedule follows one pattern for every item:

• For a machine, lock it out by unplugging it, and take off its removable parts (bowl, attachments, blade guard). Set a slicer to zero first. Run removable parts through the dishwasher.
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• Wash every surface with a clean cloth dipped in warm water and detergent.
• Wipe every surface again with a second clean cloth dipped in sanitizer: 100 ppm chlorine, or 28 mL of bleach in 4.5 L of water.
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• Let everything air dry before putting it back together or using it.

The daily schedule cleans a mixer or slicer right after each task, and before use if it has stood unused for two hours. Each entry names the person responsible, such as the pastry cooks for the mixer or the garde manger (the cold kitchen cook) for the slicer, with a space for a supervisor's initials. The weekly schedule gives storage areas a set day after dinner service: shelves are emptied one at a time, with the food kept on a rolling rack, then washed, sanitized and dried before the food goes back.

Washing dishes

Dirty plates are a danger, and they also tell guests that the business cares little for their safety. Scrape dishes first and soak anything with stuck-on food. Then follow the method for your setup.

Dishwashing methods.

Looking after equipment

Most kitchen equipment is made to come apart for cleaning; follow the maker's instructions and your training. Some is cleaned in place, and the sanitation plan should say which. Older machines have corners where dirt and germs hide. Review the cleaning method when equipment or products change. If you spot a frayed cord, a missing guard or a loose part while cleaning, tell your supervisor straight away.

Personal hygiene

Germs pass in a cycle from person to food to person, and good personal hygiene is one of the main ways to break it. Good hygiene in a kitchen means:

• bathing or showering regularly;
• keeping hair clean and tied back or covered;
• wearing clean clothes and shoes kept only for work;
• washing hands often;
• tasting food only with a clean utensil;
• keeping one cloth for cleaning and a different one for wiping plates.

Handwashing

Wash your hands every time after you:

• sneeze, cough or touch your nose or mouth;
• use the toilet;
• smoke or use a toothpick;
• handle raw food;
• clean tables, work surfaces or equipment;
• touch garbage, money or anything dirty.

Then follow these steps:

• Wet your hands with warm water.
• Use liquid soap and keep lathering for 20 to 30 seconds or more.
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• Scrub the backs of the hands, the wrists, each finger, and under the nails.
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• Rinse under running water with your fingers pointing down to the drain.
• Dry with a paper towel.
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• Use that paper towel to turn off the taps and open the washroom door.
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