Cooking Safety?

[sakon76]

So everything I've ever read about cooking safety and hygiene says, no you nevereverever use the same knife and board to cut vegetables after cutting raw meat. (The other way around, veg then meat, is of course fine.)

But... if they're immediately going in the same Dutch oven together, to be simmered for like an hour, I don't see the point. The raw veg is going to touch the raw meat in the pot anyway. Must I dirty a second board and knife?

Am I totally in the wrong here and going to die a horrible death (or at least get pretty sick) from salmonella one of these days?

Comments

[mmouse15.livejournal.com]

Gotta admit, when I'm doing a stew, I use one board & knife. Seems silly to be squeamish when it's all going in the same pot imo.

[fairegoddess.livejournal.com]

I'm more careful with poultry, but when it comes to red meat I'm with you. I also look at my pile of ingredients and try to do all the veggies before tackling the animal flesh.

[tainry.livejournal.com]

Is the concern there more about the usual use of the board? If you have a wooden board, for example; need to...I dunno, bleach it or vinegar the heck out of it before doing veg again? Or the big deal they make over having dedicated boards color coded for each kind of use.
Knife just goes in the dishwasher so I don/t see how that's a big deal re stew. And as long as the cutting surface gets the usual cleaning I think you will, for now, be spared a horrible, agonizing death. ::nods::

[toothycat]

If you are in the habit of always using separate equipment, you don't have to think about whether, when and what you can get away with, and you reduce the risk of absent-mindedly getting something wrong.

In a catering environment, with multiple people sharing equipment and where you can get walked in on and asked things at any time, being able to say "you can see things can't be cross-contaminated because look we always keep everything separate, it's all colour-coded, red is for meat brown is for veg" this kind of thing is very valuable. Also, if one's practices come with a 1% risk of giving someone food poisoning and they're cooking for 200 people a night, on average they're going to poison two of them. All the professional cooks you see on TV will have had this hammered into them.

In the home there is arguably room for common sense. When I'm making a stew at home I just use my one good board and one good knife for everything :)

See also :)

[aishuu.livejournal.com]

Should be fine. I think the caution is the potential for cross-contamination of uncooked food (like salad). Since you're baking both, not an issue.