You might have already heard or maybe even practicing clean eating, to give your body a steady supply of essentially nutrition minutes most organic form. However, in addition to clean eating, it’s also important to practice clean cooking.

Keeping your kitchen safe and clean is vital for multiple reasons. While it’s important for simple hygiene, it’s also important for cross-contamination prevention. Even though all this may sound rather intimidating, it’s actually quite simple! Here’s how:

Wash Your Hands

Perhaps the best way to curb the spread of food-borne pathogens is to keep cleaning your hands. Whenever you cook raw meat of poetry, you should always wash your hands before as well as after you’ve cooked. In fact, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued guidelines that indicate at least 20 seconds of washing with hot, soapy water is necessary.

Incorporate Useful Kitchen Appliances and Other Equipment

With the advent of technology, one of the biggest advantages that we are grateful to have access to is modern amenities is that can make our lives really easy. A dishwasher, for example, can fully eliminate the need for spending hours cleaning dirty dishes. What is even more amazing is how technology has made the dishwasher even more advanced with automatic loading and other features.

To make the task even simpler, you should make a point to always empty the dishwasher after you have finished it so that you don’t have to waste any more time for the next batch of dirty dishes. Another trip would be to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher as soon as you are done with them. This can actually be quite an effective hack that can help save a lot of time!

Even a water filter pitcher is an appliance that is both versatile and functional. Firstly, this pitcher helps to remove contaminants from tap water in addition to chlorine which can be great to ensure that there are absolutely zero compromises on your family‘s health. Secondly, you can use the filtered water for making tea, coffee or general cooking. These are only a few examples from the wide range of modern pieces of equipment available in the market. You can select one which you feel would be more suitable as per your needs and preferences.

Clean Your Dishwashing Sponge

One of the most neglected items when it comes to cleaning is the dishwashing sponge. It would be better for you to use a clean dishcloth or a paper towel, but if you cannot use that and instead prefer using a sponge, don’t forget to disinfect it.

Of course, you shouldn’t microwave the sponge as it can burn and other high temperature and power. Instead, boil the sponge for 15 minutes and you will be good to go.

Periodically Wash Your Sink

Some of you may already be aware of how it is the kitchen sink that can slowly turn into a harbor for bacteria to grow. In fact, if studies are to be believed then the bacteria accumulation in the sink is even more than the garbage bin.

When you touch the faucet handle, you reintroduce bacteria that is there even after you have washed your hands. Hence, it’s important that you keep cleaning the kitchen sink as well to keep your kitchen clean and safe.

While you can use a hot, soapy solution to eliminate bacteria, we would recommend that you create a stronger mixture by combining 1 tablespoon of bleach per quart of water. The bleach can even be useful to kill any existing microbes in the drain.

Transfer the Seasoning in Regular Bowls

After coming in contact with salt, bacteria undergo dehydration which eventually leads to their death but then again, they can still reside peacefully on the edges of your salt shaker or container. This, in turn, can lead to contamination.

To avoid such situations, it would be wiser for you to transfer all the necessary seasonings to small bowls to fully eliminate the need for washing your hands before you touch fish or any kind of raw meat. Once done, wash these bowls right away.

We would like to add that bacteria can spread even when you are dealing with beverages. There might be a high chance that your mother may have scolded you when you were trying to drink directly out of the bottle or carton. Now, not only is this practice and hygienic, but it can be really unsafe for you as bacteria tend to thrive if you don’t finish the beverage right away. So, if you do drink directly from the bottle, don’t save it and instead, throw the carton once empty.

Clean the Mess Right Away

It’s human nature to procrastinate and if you tend to do the same, you are most certainly not alone. But, if you want to be efficient in the kitchen, it’s necessary that you clean any mess or spills right away. You see, once the food falls on the ground, it can stick itself on the floor or it might be stepped on, and then be imprinted in different parts of your home. The same goes for spills on the counter.

Spills like milk, gravy, or any other stuff can harden with time, which will take an even longer time to remove. Keeping all this in mind, it would be better for you to instantly wipe the kitchen counter or the ground if it gets dirty.

So, there you go! These are a few ways in which you can keep your kitchen spic and span with minimum chances of the survival of disease-causing bacteria or other microbes. Remember, if you want to schedule kitchen cleanings, you can do so professionally biweekly or once a month.

Resources – The Maids, Cook’s Illustrated, Wake Forest Baptist Health