Most food poisoning at home comes from a handful of everyday habits. The UK Food Standards Agency sums up good practice as the four Cs: cleaning, cooking, chilling and avoiding cross-contamination. Here’s what each one means in a real kitchen.
1. Cleaning
- Wash your hands with soap and warm water before cooking, after touching raw meat, fish or eggs, and after handling bins or pets.
- Wash chopping boards, knives and worktops in hot, soapy water after they’ve touched raw meat.
- Change tea towels and dishcloths often. Damp cloths are a perfect home for bacteria.
2. Cooking
- Cook poultry, pork, burgers, sausages and anything made from minced meat until it’s steaming hot all the way through, with no pink meat and with juices that run clear.
- A food thermometer takes out the guesswork: the thickest part should reach 70°C for two minutes (or 75°C).
- Don’t wash raw chicken. It doesn’t make it safer — it splashes bacteria around your sink and kitchen. Cooking kills them.
3. Chilling
- Keep your fridge between 0°C and 5°C. A cheap fridge thermometer is worth having.
- Cool leftovers quickly and put them in the fridge within one to two hours. Splitting big batches into smaller containers helps them cool faster.
- Eat leftovers within two days, and reheat them only once, until steaming hot.
- Rice is the exception: cool it within an hour, keep it in the fridge, and eat it within 24 hours. Rice can carry spores that survive cooking and multiply if it’s left warm.
- Defrost food in the fridge, not on the worktop.
4. Avoiding cross-contamination
- Store raw meat and fish covered, on the bottom shelf of the fridge, so it can’t drip onto other food.
- Use separate chopping boards for raw meat and for ready-to-eat food like salad and bread — or wash the board thoroughly in between.
- Never put cooked food back on a plate that held raw meat.
Use-by vs best-before
Use-by dates are about safety: don’t eat food after its use-by date, even if it looks and smells fine. Best-before dates are about quality: food is usually fine to eat after them, though it may not be at its best.
Cooking for someone with an allergy
Read every label, every time, because recipes change. Clean surfaces and utensils first, and cook the allergy-safe dish before anything else.
For full, up-to-date guidance, visit the Food Standards Agency at food.gov.uk. And to stay on top of what needs eating, log leftovers in CulinaryFlow’s Leftover Tracker, with the date you made them.