Food safety as well as proper preparation techniques are IMPORTANT! No one wants to get sick from a mishandled food item or get stitches from a bad knife cut. Avoid cross-contamination and food-borne illnesses by properly setting up your workstation and properly handling food.
Anchor your cutting board: A cutting surface that slides all over the counter is both annoying and unsafe! The dishwasher-safe cutting board I recommend has grippy sides like this OXO one, but if yours doesn’t have nonslip grips, you can place a damp kitchen towel or even some grippy shelf liner between the counter and the cutting board.
I don't like flimsy cutting mats, especially when just used by themselves; some people use them for food-safe color coordination and easy cleanup, but I don't personally like using them.
Mise en place, or "everything in its place": Organizing prepped ingredients into little bowls isn’t just for the celebrity chefs on TV; it’s a great idea for home cooks, too! I like having everything lined up in the order it's used, with the correct measurements in the prep bowls ready to add to a hot pan at just the right moment. This is especially great when making things like stir-fry that progress really quickly where it can be easy to overcook or burn something if it's on the heat too long.
A sharp knife is a safe knife, and a dull knife is a dangerous knife. make sure your knives are nice and sharp to prevent injuries! You can test the sharpness of each knife by slicing a piece of paper, like shown below - if it cuts through cleanly, it's ok, but if it struggles or isn't able to cut the paper, it's too dull to be safe and needs to be sharpened.
You can do this with a sharpening stone (I don't recommend this as a sharpener or outsourcing is easier) or knife sharpener like this manual one or this electric one, or take them to a local kitchen supply store or Williams Sonoma to have them sharpened professionally. Sometimes they will do it for free, sometimes they will charge money, but it isn't a lot.
Keeping your knives sharp is key to cooking safely and more easily! Slicing through things like butter with a sharp knife is also much more enjoyable than hacking through food with a dull knife.
What about a honing rod? Also known as a honing steel, knife steel, or sharpening steel, these are not sharpeners. They are the best and easiest way to maintain a knife’s edge between sharpenings by straightening out the tiny dings and dents caused by everyday slicing and chopping. Honing is a simple and fast process, and it can extend the life of a sharp edge for weeks or even months. I consider them an essential tool for cooks and list them alongside knives, sharpeners, and other tools in my post about cooking basics here.
Put a barrier between you and the mess. Items such as kitchen scales and platters that come in contact with both raw and cooked food should be covered with aluminum foil or plastic wrap to create a protective barrier. Once the item has been used, the protective layer should be discarded.
Wash your hands before you begin cooking, every time before and after you touch raw meat, etc. Particularly when cooking for a crowd, you can wear disposable kitchen gloves to limit decontamination but the most important thing, gloves or not, is to wash hands continuously!
Don't rinse raw meat: Doing this can spread contaminants around your sink. The only exception is brined food (food marinated in salt water), which needs to be rinsed before cooking to rid the food of excess salt, then patted dry to remove excess moisture. Cooking food to a safe internal temperature will effectively kill surface bacteria.
Avoid cross-contamination: only use one cutting board for raw meat and one for vegetables. It's also a good idea to have a separate board for cooked meat and one for fruits (think about cutting onions and then apples on the same cutting board - yuck!)
Bacteria can live on the edges of a box or salt shaker. To avoid contamination, grind your pepper into a clean small bowl and then mix it with salt. Reach into the bowl for seasoning without having to wash your hands every time. Then the prep bowl goes into the dishwasher!
Temperature tips: I like using tongs to flip food around - it's more precise than a spatula and can grab things out of hot oil much easier - and it's so easy to use them as an extension of your hand to check a piece of meat or whatever you're cooking to see if it's passed the minimum internal cooking temperature, like below:
Take the temperature of a piece of food by inserting a thermometer like this one 3 inches into the side (not the top) and wait until the thermometer gives you a reading; if it's not above the minimum internal cooking temperature, let it cook a bit longer. For example, a hamburger should be at least 160°F and chicken breast should be at least 165°F. When roasting meat and poultry, use an oven temperature no lower than 325°F.
When defrosting or dining al fresco, keep foods under 40°F and above 140°F. Per the USDA, leaving food out too long at room temperature can cause bacteria (such as Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella Enteritidis, Escherichia coli O157:H7, and Campylobacter) to grow to dangerous levels that can cause illness, fastest in the range of temperatures between 40°F and 140°F doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes. This range of temperatures is often called the "Danger Zone."
Never leave food out of refrigeration over 2 hours. If the temperature is above 90°F, food should not be left out more than 1 hour.
Keep hot food hot—at or above 140°F. Place cooked food in chafing dishes, preheated steam tables, warming trays, and/or slow cookers.
Keep cold food cold—at or below 40°F. Place food in containers on ice.
For storing and reheating foods, be aware that one of the most common causes of foodborne illness is improper cooling of cooked foods. Bacteria can be reintroduced to food after it is safely cooked. For this reason, leftovers must be put in shallow containers for quick cooling and refrigerated at 40 °F or below within two hours. Foods should be reheated thoroughly to an internal temperature of 165 °F or until hot and steaming. In the microwave oven, cover food and rotate so it heats evenly.
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