3 Tips to Instantly Improve Hygiene Practices in Your Kitchen

Hey Geeks,

Maintaining a hygienic kitchen is essential for ensuring the safety and quality of the food you prepare. The objective of improving hygienic practices during food preparation is to reduce the occurrence of foodborne illnesses.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that an estimated 600 million people – almost 1 in 10 globally – fall ill after consuming contaminated food, and 420,000 die every year. Approximately US$110 billion is lost annually in productivity and medical expenses due to unsafe food in countries with low and middle incomes. Children under five years of age bear 40% of the burden of foodborne diseases, leading to 125,000 deaths each year. Foodborne diseases also hinder socioeconomic development by straining health-care systems and damaging national economies, tourism, and trade.

Therefore, by focusing on key areas of cleanliness and practising a Clean-As-You-Go habit, you can significantly improve kitchen hygiene and reduce the risk of contamination. 

To protect your business license and brand reputation, here are 3 practical tips on what I call the best kitchen hygiene habits to enhance your kitchen hygiene practices right away.

Tip 1: Wash Your Hands the Right Way

Washing your hands properly is one of the easiest yet most important steps to maintain good hygiene in the kitchen. Throughout my years of auditing restaurant kitchens, food kiosks, and processing facilities, I’ve noticed a common weakness: handwashing is often overlooked due to negligence. Fostering the discipline in your team to make proper handwashing a basic routine before handling food may be challenging, but it is essential.

Make it a habit to periodically observe their handwashing process to verify that they wash their hands thoroughly before, during, and after preparing food, especially when handling raw ingredients like meat or seafood. Furthermore, it’s not just about your hands—keeping surfaces, cutting boards, and utensils clean is equally essential. Cross-contamination can happen quickly, so thoroughly washing utensils, surfaces, and equipment after use can prevent germs from contaminating your meals.

A simple way to minimise risk is to use separate cutting boards: one for raw meat and one for vegetables. This small change makes a significant difference in keeping your food preparation safe and hygienic. To read more about handwashing, refer to this article.

Tip 2: Sanitise Your Tools – and Your Produce

It’s crucial to clean your knives, cutting boards, and utensils thoroughly after every use, especially when handling raw meat, seafood, or eggs. You might be surprised to learn that this simple habit not only prevents bacteria from spreading across your kitchen but also keeps your food preparation area safe—yet it’s often overlooked.

From the interviews I’ve conducted during food safety audits as part of a verification step, I notice that food handlers often find washing cutting tools a hassle. They assume that since all types of food eventually get cooked, bacteria, no matter how cross-contaminated, will be eliminated by heat. What doesn’t cross their minds is that raw foods sometimes don’t get fully cooked through to eradicate all pathogens. For instance, it takes heating at over 73°C for an extended time to completely eliminate the presence of Salmonella spp., but it requires 121°C for 15–30 minutes to kill Clostridium spores. These requirements are often not met when raw meats or seafood are consumed undercooked to retain a more desirable texture.

Beyond raw meats and seafood, the same care should extend to fruits and vegetables, even those with inedible peels. Bacteria on the surface can easily spread during cutting or peeling, so rinsing produce under running water is essential. For an added layer of cleanliness, using a food-grade fruit and vegetable sanitiser can help remove residual pesticides and contaminants.

Don’t overlook the tools you use to clean, like sponges and cleaning cloths, as they can quickly become breeding grounds for harmful bacteria. Regularly washing them in hot water is a good start, but for extra peace of mind, you can sanitise damp sponges by microwaving them for one to two minutes. These simple steps are good hygiene practices and can make a significant difference in maintaining a hygienic kitchen and creating a safer cooking environment.

Tip 3: Regularly Clean and Sanitise Surfaces

Kitchen surfaces are breeding grounds for bacteria, especially after food preparation. This may seem like common sense, but that’s likely because you already have some knowledge of food safety. For the average food handler, however, bacteria are invisible to the naked eye, so it’s often out of sight, out of mind.

Wiping down countertops, cutting boards, and sinks with a disinfectant or food-safe cleaning solution may sound simple, but it requires discipline to ensure it’s done properly. Proper cleaning and sanitation also require detailed training to understand the process thoroughly. To simplify this, cleaning means removing visible food scraps from the work surface, while sanitising involves using a separate wiping cloth and an appropriate solution to eliminate bacteria. This step prevents cross-contamination.

Don’t forget high-touch areas like cabinet handles, refrigerator doors, and sink taps. For deeper sanitisation, consider using a strong food-safe solution on surfaces that come into contact with food. This ensures bacteria and germs are effectively eliminated.

For added assurance, conducting a surface swab test for Enterobacteriaceae can help verify the effectiveness of your cleaning solution and protocol or if an intervention is required for kitchen hygiene improvement. If you are operating a home-based business, you can also apply the tips shared in this article to improve hygiene in home kitchens.

You can always level up your game by implementing a kitchen hygiene checklist to maintain consistency in daily practices once you have finalised your daily kitchen hygiene routines.

If you’re curious about how verification swabs work, check out this article for more details.

Bacteria

Salmonella, Campylobacter and enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli are some of the most common foodborne pathogens that affect millions of people annually, sometimes with severe and fatal outcomes. Symptoms can include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea. Foods more frequently involved in outbreaks of salmonellosis include eggs, poultry and other products of animal origin. Foodborne cases due to Campylobacter are mainly caused by raw milk, raw or undercooked poultry and drinking water. Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli is often associated with unpasteurized milk, undercooked meat and contaminated fresh fruits and vegetables.

Listeria infections can lead to miscarriage in pregnant women or death of newborn babies. Although disease occurrence is relatively low, Listeria’s severe and sometimes fatal health consequences, particularly among infants, children and the elderly, count them among the most serious foodborne infections. Listeria is found in unpasteurised dairy products and various ready-to-eat foods and can grow at refrigeration temperatures.

Vibrio cholerae can infect people through contaminated water or food. Symptoms may include abdominal pain, vomiting and profuse watery diarrhoea, which quickly lead to severe dehydration and possibly death. Raw vegetables and various types of raw or undercooked seafood have been implicated in cholera outbreaks.

Antimicrobials, such as antibiotics, are essential to treat infections caused by bacteria, including foodborne pathogens. However, their overuse and misuse in veterinary and human medicine has been linked to the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria, rendering the treatment of infectious diseases ineffective in animals and humans.

I hope this article helped you appreciate the serious impacts poor hygiene practices can have on your business and how you can easily implement the practical tips in your current food operations.

If you have any questions or would like to talk more about our coaching, consulting, or auditing services, drop me an email at me@obsideonmedia.com.

Until next time~

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About the Writer:

Rayki is the founder of FoodCorp, a food safety management training provider dedicated to simplifying learning challenges and offering long-term guidance. With over 15 years of experience across various industries, he specialises in food safety systems, from audits to training, with a focus on empowering internal teams. Holding a master’s degree in food science and innovation from MMU (UK), Rayki combines expertise in food science and risk assessment to help organisations build resilient, tailored food safety management systems.