If you love to cook at home, you are probably keen to make sure that you do it right. That means that you are producing the kinds of meals you would most like to eat, that you are having fun while doing it, and that you are doing everything you can to keep yourself and the rest of your family safe and healthy. In this post, we are going to go through a number of best practices you might want to bear in mind when you are cooking at home. By taking these on board, you should find you can achieve all of those aims and more.
Clean Counters Regularly
Any work surfaces or counters you use should be cleaned on a regular basis if you are to keep the kitchen hygienic and your food safe from germs. You should really clean down all the counters daily, and also – and especially – after preparing food on or near them, even if you use plates and chopping boards too. Only by keeping on top of this can you ensure that you are doing your part in keeping the kitchen hygienic and a healthy place to prepare food.
Wash Your Hands
You probably already do this, but it is worth bearing it in mind all the same – and if you find that you do not wash your hands religiously before preparing food, you should start to consider doing so. The global events of the past year have shown us just how important this can be, and how effective hand-washing can be in fighting viruses. If you want to go the extra mile, you might even have touchless faucets installed in your kitchen, so you don’t have to touch the tap to wash your hands or rinse produce.
Make A Meal Plan
There are a lot of good reasons to make a meal plan to work with. For one thing, it means that you can ensure you are getting all of the necessary nutrients and minerals in your diet each week. It also helps you to shop for groceries in a less wasteful and more economical manner. Finally, having a meal plan makes cooking easier, as you already know what you are planning to cook tonight and tomorrow and so on. Draw up a meal plan each week, stick it on the fridge, and you can glance at it as and when you need to.
Store Food Properly
For reasons of health and hygiene, but also for a better-tasting meal, you need to make sure you are storing food properly. What does this mean? Simply that food items are stored in the right place for their food type – spices and dry goods in a cool cupboard, fresh fruit and vegetables in the fridge, and so on. This is a simple thing, but it can be easy to forget it, and then you will find that your food doesn’t taste as good, or that it goes off too fast, so you end up wasting it. Or, you might be putting your health at risk.
