Yeah, food safety is a bit of a mine field. Other common foods to watch out for are improperly cooked beans and green potatoes.
Just be cautions of the unsafe side. You can never wipe your hands when they're unsafe (raw meat juice). Because the next time you wipe your hands, you're bringing the contamination back. I wash spatulas and forks that handle unsafe stuff like meat and eggs while they're cooking to help contain that danger.
As far as hand washing goes. Wash your hands at the start. Avoid cross contamination by washing your hands immediately after handling raw meat. You can wipe your hands on a (clean) apron or towel if you want to go from chopping veggies to handling raw chicken but not the other way around.
Always wash all fresh fruits and vegetables even ones you don't eat the outside of (oranges, grapefruits)
When I handle raw meat I always wear gloves and wash my hands after j take the gloves off. The gloves remind me that I'm "unsafe" when I am wearing them.
The health department required us to have separate cutting boards for meat and veggies when I worked in a kitchen. I think that's a good idea for home as well.
> Yes, you can get food poisoning from eating reheated rice. However, it's not the reheating that causes the problem, but the way the rice has been stored before it is reheated.
> How does reheated rice cause food poisoning?
> Uncooked rice can contain spores of Bacillus cereus, a bacterium that can cause food poisoning. The spores can survive when rice is cooked.
> If rice is left standing at room temperature, the spores can grow into bacteria. These bacteria will multiply and may produce toxins (poisons) that cause vomiting or diarrhoea.
> The longer cooked rice is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that the bacteria or toxins could make the rice unsafe to eat.
Reheating the rice will kill the bacteria, but will not remove the toxin. It also puts the rice at bacteria breeding temperature again.
The more you know. The suggestion is to cool it down as fast as possible and put it in the fridge. NHS says the "symptoms are relatively mild and usually last about 24 hours", so it seems unlikely that it's gonna kill you (IANA doctor).
[1] http://www.foodsafety.govt.nz/elibrary/industry/safe_cooling...
[2] http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-po...
The fish is easy, just keep it cold. The rice, not so simple. :)
[1] Gilbert RJ, Stringer MF, Peace TC. The survival and growth of Bacillus cereus in boiled and fried rice in relation to outbreaks of food poisoning. The Journal of Hygiene. 1974;73(3):433-444. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130471/ Possibly the "seminal paper" when it comes to rice and B. cereus?
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_cooker#History
[3] Manual for some random rice cooker on Amazon: "In Keep warm status, it will reheat to maintain the temperature at 73C" http://img1.midea.com/my/Local_Library/info_instructions/ins...
> According to food scientist Donald Schaffner of Rutgers University, some restaurants “cook up a large batch of rice, hold it at room temperature all day,” and then take portions from the batch as needed. “Because Bacillus makes a heat stable toxin,” he explained “this is not a best practice, and has led to outbreaks in the past.”
That doesn't sound like something you would do in home cooking, so if the large number of food poisoning cases come from restaurants doing that, they may not be a good guide to the "absolute" danger from rice.
If it's a large portion of rice, and you don't spread it out to allow it to cool, the temperature of the rice will stay in the danger zone for hours--even in a refrigerator.
Can you expand on this one? A quick google search and I'm not finding anything. Do you mean bean sprouts?