Preventing the contamination of bacteria on your food can be quite tricky. Bacteria multiply incredibly quickly in your food. Even in less than ideal condition still allows for bacteria to multiply relatively quickly. It means that we need to prevent the food to stay in ideal situation for a long period of time. This includes the right amount of moisture and temperature. If the food is no longer consumed, we need to make sure that we store it at lower temperature. This should make sure that the bacteria will be inactive, although they are not killed by the cold temperature. We should make sure that the food doesn’t come into contact with high degree of moisture or water before the handling and cooking process. Also thawing your food in water can give bacteria a head start, so this process needs to be completed as soon as possible. Remove bones from the meat before freezing it, so we could reduce the thawing period and cut up the meat when it’s still half frozen with a sharp cleaver.
The cooking process should be performed as soon as possible and the cooking process starts at 70 degrees Celsius. If the food isn’t immediately consumed, we need to cool it down as soon as possible. It is also important to shut the food tightly to prevent air circulation and a varying degree of contamination. If we want to keep the food for a longer period of time, we could put it in the fridge. However, even if the food is completely frozen; it doesn’t mean that it will last forever. Chemical breakdown may still occur, rendering the food inedible after a period of time, depending on the type of the food. Pressure cooker is the best method for destroying all bacteria, compared to using pans and other cookware. The high atmospheric pressure and temperature have direct effects in completely eradicating small organisms. We should also make sure that bacteria on the work surface have been eradicated as well. The cooking process is intended to kill organisms, soften the food and enhance taste, so we still should cook the food more than necessary to maintain the nutritional content.
There are different ways to prevent bacteria from multiplying inside the food, such as smoking, dehydration, concentrating, pickling and sterilization. They should be able to prevent the development of bacteria inside our food. The environment should also determine the hygiene of our food. Work surfaces should be proper washed with detergent and hot water. In restaurants and any professional kitchen, the working area should have stainless steel surface. All cooking utensils should be boiled in hot water after a few weeks of usage. Regular washing isn’t enough, because traces of foods could accumulate in nooks and crannies of the cooking utensils; which is quite hard to wash away. Boiling water should enter all parts of the cooking utensils, killing much of the small organisms. Perform this regularly and you should be able to maintain proper hygiene.
