Don’t Wash Your Chicken (and Other Food Safety Tips)

PICTURE YOUR FAVORITE MEAL. Maybe it’s your mom’s comforting congee, pot of creamy fettucine Alfredo or a platter of richly spiced doro wat.

But imagine the cook forgot to rinse the veggies. Or came from the Metro with only a cursory hand wash.

“Do you want to take the risk and eat it?” asks UMD Extension family and consumer sciences Senior Agent Shauna Henley. She works to reduce those risks across the state, from leading a cooking club for elementary school students in Baltimore to training farmers about produce safety, to teaching canning and food preservation to consumers. Here are her tips:

Don’t stop with one soapy scrub before your meal prep, says Henley. Make sure you wash throughout. For example, “we’re touching our phones, our tablets to scroll for recipes,” and those devices are covered in germs.

Use a paper towel to get the slime off your poultry—don’t run it under the tap. “You can get an aerosolized spray of bacteria” like salmonella or campylobacter, she says, which can cause diarrhea and vomiting.

“People only pull it out for Thanksgiving, but you should use it anytime you’re cooking proteins or even heating leftovers,” Henley says. Know the safe internal minimum temperatures, especially for items like pork and poultry that must be fully cooked.

Don’t let dishes languish more than two hours before getting them into the refrigerator, because bacteria can grow rapidly. If you have a party, portion items into smaller bowls and swap them out regularly. And eat or freeze leftovers within four days.