How much do you know about food safety? The following are a few important things to consider next time you're fixing dinner.

Cooking By Degrees
You're about to cook a culinary masterpiece, and you've arranged gleaming utensils on the counter with all the care of a surgeon. But where's the thermometer?

A kitchen thermometer is one of your most important weapons against food-borne illness. The thermometer will help you make sure that the internal temperature of meat and poultry rises high enough to kill harmful bacteria, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says.

If you're relying on color changes to tell when food is done, beware: Research shows that color and texture indicators aren't reliable, the USDA says.

There are two basic types of cooking thermometers: The large, oven-proof kind you insert in meat before cooking. Place it two inches deep in larger meats, but away from bone, fat, or gristle that could give you a false reading. And the smaller, instant-read units that display temperatures during cooking. With thinner foods, like a burger or chicken breast, you can insert an instant-read thermometer from the side -- even if you're cooking on a grill.

What should that thermometer say? Safe temperatures vary for different dishes. Your medium-rare steak is done at an internal temperature of 145 degrees, but heat that chicken or turkey to 180 degrees.

Don't go overboard, though -- charred meat can be unhealthy, too. High-temperature barbecuing, frying, and broiling can produce chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that some studies link to an increased risk of cancer. The connection remains unproven, and experts plan more research, but the risks seem greater when meat turns black from cooking longer at high temperatures. Luckily, studies also point to a solution: Minimize the time the meat spends over the coals.

You can cut HCAs up to 90 percent by microwaving meat briefly (even for two minutes). You can also par-cook meat at lower oven temperatures immediately before tossing it on the grill to add flavor at the finish. Don't precook food and let it sit -- you'll put its temperature into bacteria's growth range.

Washing Food Is Not a Fruitless Effort
You're in a convenience store looking for a snack. You pass up the cookies and focus on a plump peach. As you bite into it, should you congratulate yourself for passing up the junk food?

Sure. But you should also be concerned. It would have been a good idea to wash that peach first. Depending on where the fruit was grown, you may have to worry about pesticide residues and even bacterial contamination. Some experts recommend washing and peeling all produce, if possible. Although most produce grown in this country is relatively clean, imported produce can be a problem. In recent years, imported raspberries, strawberries, and grapes have been found to contain bacteria or pesticides.

To wash vegetables and fruits, use running water. Some people use a mild detergent. If the produce has a rind -- cantaloupe, for instance -- remove it before eating the fruit. If a produce has outer leaves -- lettuce or spinach, for example -- remove those before using the rest of the vegetable. And always wash your hands before and after handling fruit and vegetables.

Another misconception is that most of a fruit's or vegetable's nutrient value is in its peel. The nutrients are found throughout the fruit. Even without the peel, you're still getting good nutrient value.

So, get busy washing and peeling.

More food-handling tips
After you've cooked your chicken, don't put it back on the same plate you used to bring it to the stove or grill. Juices from raw chicken could contaminate the cooked food with campylobacter or salmonella bacteria, the main culprits behind food-borne illness. Use separate utensils, plates, and dishes for raw and cooked food, and wash them between uses.

Use disposable paper towels instead of a kitchen sponge or rag, where salmonella or other bacteria can grow and spread.

If you want rare beef, eat a steak, not a hamburger. E. coli may affect the surface of a steak (where cooking will kill it), but it won't penetrate the interior. In a burger, contamination can reach the center. The USDA says ground beef must be cooked to 160 degrees -- hot enough to kill E. coli.

You don't have to overcook pork to be safe. Many people cling to outdated fears about the parasite that causes trichinosis, but farming practices are safer now and don't expose livestock to the parasite. Pork is safe at an internal temperature of 160 degrees, even if it still looks pink.

If you like raw seafood, get to know your fish merchant and restaurateur. The risks from raw oysters drop if they come from unpolluted waters. Sushi or uncooked marinated seafood may be flash-frozen to kill parasites. Cooking will kill live contaminants.

For more information visit the following link:
http://www.nraef.org/nfsem/