Food safety - cooking meat in slow cooker

Queenie

OOooh, great recipe :T (I'll try mine with sliced banana on top of that toasted and a blob of natural yogurt)

How many of you wash your meat first? (curious mind wishes to know)

I dont' have a dishwasher, but I still clean all my utensils in stonking hot water - I wear rubber gloves so it doesn't scold my hands and I can stand a hotter temp.

juno

Queenie wrote:

OOooh, great recipe :T (I'll try mine with sliced banana on top of that toasted and a blob of natural yogurt)

How many of you wash your meat first? (curious mind wishes to know)

I dont' have a dishwasher, but I still clean all my utensils in stonking hot water - I wear rubber gloves so it doesn't scold my hands and I can stand a hotter temp.

I read in a magazine that you're not supposed to wash your meat first, as all the bacteria will be splashed around a large area, and the cooking kills them anyway

squeaky

Curry_Queen wrote:

Ahhhhh now we discussed this a while back and actually wood is more hygienic to use than plastic

I'll see if i can find the thread

YES PLEASE - I'd be very interested.

The only way I'd previously thought of wood as hygenic is to throw it away after you'd used it

squeaky

The blood with liver makes great gravy Though the packs tend to say wash it first.

Curry_Queen

squeaky wrote:

YES PLEASE - I'd be very interested.

The only way I'd previously thought of wood as hygenic is to throw it away after you'd used it

Ooooops got side-tracked and forgot about this, sorry


Here you go, it's amongst this thread, but at least it's not tooooo long to read to find the bits of interest

Curry_Queen

juno wrote:

I read in a magazine that you're not supposed to wash your meat first, as all the bacteria will be splashed around a large area, and the cooking kills them anyway

This is particularly true of chicken and I long ago stopped washing out the insides of a carcass in the kitchen sink because of it, or even washing it full stop! Have never really bothered washing any other type of meat anyway as I prefer the full flavour



Something I might add in that although I take risks in eating out-of-date products and don't always re-heat stuff till it's piping hot cos I wanna scoff it straight away LOL! ... I do always take extra care when handling raw meat/fish and always store it at the bottom of the fridge in sealed containers (I learnt all about food storage in fridges when I worked in pub kitchens) and always thoroughly wash any utensils that come into contact with raw flesh thoroughly in hot soapy water, including my hands, and never touch the taps etc with contaminated hands. You could say I'm almost obsessive about it

apprentice_tycoon

I'm coming to this one very late but if you left the raw food in the slow cooker at, say 7.30 am when you left for work but it didn't need to start cooking till midday could you have some of the stock frozen as ice cubes, so that by midday they would be defrosted but have kept all the ingredients safe through the morning (particularly in the summer)

aycor

on this theme in the summer I use my slow cooker to defrost in as the lid keeps it well covered and cool. The fridge is then not clogged up with a large amount of raw food that could drip and contaminate other food

squeaky

Any pot or casserole dish that's covered does for me. These are all dishwasher proof too, unlike my slow cooker pot.