Safety in food service is a big deal. When handling food, you have to ensure that your customers will be fed without contamination and your employees are safe. Because of this, many states require you to hold a State Food Safety Food Handler’s Card. It ensures that you have gone through appropriate training to understanding the protocols, and reasoning behind those protocols, for safe food handling. Read on for an overview of what is required to keep your restaurant, food, and employees healthy and safe!
Safe Handling of Equipment
In the kitchen, we use some tools and equipment that can cause us serious bodily harm if we aren’t paying attention. Whether cooking with a crock pot or handling a baking mixer, accidents have the potential to happen. This is true at home but in a restaurant setting, it’s exacerbated due to the nature of the machinery. A knife is one of the most dangerous tools in the kitchen, yet it’s one tool you cannot do without. Chopping, slicing, and dicing means that the knives must be kept sharp. If your knives are not properly cared for, they become dull. When they become dull, we use more force. When we use more force, we are at a greater risk of cutting ourselves. Because of this, it’s required that all knives are kept sharp and yet we worry about what could happen. To combat accidents with sharpened knives, we take precautionary steps such as:
- Slice away from the hand
- Keep your fingers clear of the blade at all times
- Do not hold food in your palms while cutting
- Keep tip of blade on cutting board while mincing
- Curl fingers under & hold food with fingers while chopping
- Don’t lick anything off of any type of knife (you can cut yourself and it’s a contamination issue!)
- Secure your cutting board with a wet towel underneath it
Fight Food Contamination
Food contamination is an easy way to get your customers sick and to shut down your store in a heartbeat. A Chipotle in Virginia recently had to shut down due to norovirus being passed around their store in the kitchen area. It’s easy to contaminate the food in the kitchen but it’s equally easy to keep it out with some simple practices.
- Wash hands after handling one type of food and before you move on to the next (ie marinating raw chicken, wash hands, slice tomatoes)
- Clean your work surface after each task is complete
- Wash your hands before going to the bathroom and after
- Avoid touching your face or hair while handling food
- Store food appropriately. Cold foods should be cold and hot foods should stay hot
- Sanitize your tools and equipment after each use
- Do not work while sick with a cold or virus; you will pass it on to your coworkers and customers
- Avoid sneezing in the kitchen; completely cover your nose and mouth if at all possible. Wash your hands and face immediately.
- Long hair (down the neck and over the ears) requires hair nets or pulling their hair back so that it doesn’t “fall” into food
- Wear gloves when handling food every time it’s possible
- Thoroughly wash all eating utensils and equipment as quickly as possible. Use hot dishwashers whenever possible.
When we take care of our customers and our employees, we find that food poisoning and accidents remain low in numbers. It may seem like a hassle to take so many precautions but with the number of people working and coming in to enjoy your food, it’s well worth it to take these precautions.
