Protection Against Bacteria

Appears in
Professional Cooking: 10th Edition
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2025

  • About
Because we know how and why bacteria grow, we should be able to keep them from growing. Because we know how bacteria get from place to place, we should be able to keep them from getting into our food.
There are three basic principles of food protection against bacteria. These principles are the reasons behind nearly all the sanitation techniques we discuss in the rest of this chapter.
  1. Keep bacteria from spreading. Don’t let food touch anything that may contain disease-producing bacteria, and protect food from bacteria in the air.
  2. Stop bacteria from growing. Take away the conditions that encourage bacteria to grow. In the kitchen, our best weapon is temperature. The most effective way to prevent bacterial growth is to keep foods below 40°F (4°C) or above 140°F (60°C). These temperatures won’t necessarily kill bacteria; they’ll just slow their growth greatly.
  3. Kill bacteria. Most disease-causing bacteria are killed if they are subjected to a temperature of 170°F (77°C) for 30 seconds, or higher temperatures for shorter times. This enables us to make food safe by cooking and to sanitize dishes and equipment with heat. The term sanitize means to kill disease-causing bacteria.