7 Healthy Kitchen Habits Every Cook Should Embody
New year or old news, it’s always a good time to implement habits in the kitchen that will support and empower you as a cook. Below are 7 simple tips that will help you advance to the next level, regardless of your skill level.
1. Keep your fridge properly organized
Keeping your fridge organized does more than provide you peace of mind and a sense of control over your cooking — it is essential for food safety.
If you are vegan, you can celebrate the fact that your risk of cross contamination and food-borne illness has reduced nearly to zero. But there are still fundamental food safety practices you should get in the habit of adhering to.
As a line cook at Noodles, I learned all about food safety and fridge organization. I can boil it down to three main takeaways:
- Ready to eat food is always stored at the TOP of the fridge.
- Uncooked food is always stored at the BOTTOM of the fridge, BELOW all food that is cooked and/or ready to eat.
- The soonest perishing food is at the FRONT of the fridge, and the newer and/or longer lasting food is at the BACK of the fridge.
Below, I have included a diagram to illustrate a fridge’s basic layout, and examples of food I might store on each shelf. Notice that both cooked and ready to eat food are stored at the top of the fridge, above the shelf containing plant meats and proteins (such as Beyond Beef or tofu).
Notice also that the crisper directly below the plant based meats is ideally empty. A standard fridge leaves you no choice but to store raw vegetables underneath raw proteins, but you can still be strategic by keeping proteins on the opposite side of the fridge from the veggies underneath them. If anything drips, there will be nothing below for it to contaminate.
The reason veggie broth can be stored on the same shelf as plant proteins is because it is in a well sealed container, and will be cooked. You wouldn’t want to store something like bread on this shelf, as it is typically not well sealed and is ready to eat with little to no cooking. This leaves no chance for harmful bacteria to be eliminated should any be picked up in the fridge.
Being mindful of keeping cooked and ready to eat food above uncooked foods will reduce your risk of cross contamination and food borne illness before you have even begun preparing a meal. Similarly, keeping the oldest and quickest perishing foods at the front of the fridge will ensure it is not forgotten and left to rot. We’re all familiar with that sinking feeling knowing that something has been sitting in the fridge a little too long, but it’s so far buried that we have no idea what condition we will find it in.
A safe and well organized fridge provides you with a solid foundation to stand on as a cook. Organizing your pantry is a great practice too, but that is a topic for a separate article, as it is not essential for food safety.
2. Clean up while cooking and after every meal
Cleaning as you go is an essential practice in cooking, especially if you do not have a dishwasher. If you have down time during cooking, it is a great habit to clean whatever you have dirtied. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of relaxing in a spotless kitchen as a single pot of chili slow cooks on the stove next to the single serving spoon and clean bowl you have set out. Your kitchen was a mess minutes ago, but you took the 10 minutes that were needed to get your kitchen back to tip-top shape, and now enjoyment of the meal is all that’s waiting for you.
Sometimes, there isn’t much down time during the cooking process, and the kitchen is left a disaster once you are ready to eat the meal. My philosophy is that food should be enjoyed as soon as it is ready — the cleaning can wait. But not until tomorrow. Unfortunately, it does not take an equal amount of time to clean now versus later — it will take more time later. At this point, the food is caked on, and your cleaning process may take twice as long as it could have had you just taken care of it immediately. Not to mention this is not doing any favors for your cooking tools — particularly your knives.
What’s worse — no one wants to face a cleaning task before they can even start cooking. If you are cleaning up your kitchen completely after every meal you prepare, you will be walking in to a blank canvas every time you prepare a meal. This is a fantastic feeling, and for me personally, it motivates me to maintain the positive cleaning habit.
As cooks, we are always cleaning the kitchen. There is no avoiding it. I would say I usually face kitchen cleanup twice per day. It can be daunting, but holding yourself to immediate cleanup makes an unavoidable task a lot more manageable, and keeps you in good spirits every time you enter the kitchen to prepare your next meal.
3. Gather all ingredients, prepare, and then cook
One of my favorite cooking principles, this can also be referred to as “mise en place.”
I love the methodical nature of cooking, and I love this process in particular. Once you have established the practice of treating yourself to a blank canvas (clean kitchen) every time you cook, the logical next step is gathering the tools that will be applied to your canvas before you begin the preparation.
This is achieved by examining a recipe, and then laying out every single ingredient needed on the clean counter in front of you before beginning any prep work. If you are a visual person and a new cook, this process will be especially helpful for you. Instead of bouncing back and forth between your pantry and fridge throughout the preparation and looking back at the recipe several times, you will refer to the ingredient list a few times before you can then easily make sense of what is laid out in front of you. You can see at a glance X, Y, and Z need to be chopped, and Q, R, and S are all the spices that will be added to the meal.
Next, you are ready for the prep — I like to take care of any chopping that is needed, as well as measuring and setting aside the required spices, before I begin cooking. Be sure to check what spices will be added together during one step, mixing those together in one bowl, and separate the spices that will be added in a later step. I do follow a more prep-as-you-go approach when the meal is simple or provides a lot of down time between steps, but most of the time and particularly when a meal is involved, I get everything in a state where it is ready to be added to the pan on a moment’s notice.
If your prep work is completely done when you start cooking, it allows you to focus exclusively on the cooking process and adding ingredients to the pan at the right times. I have absolutely overcooked meals (one very recently) because I was not prepared to add an ingredient when it needed to be added. When one ingredient is supposed to be cooked for only a minute before the next one is added, it’s easy to see how prolonging the addition of the next ingredient by even one minute can diminish your dish’s final outcome. Some dishes can be quite unforgiving when it comes to timing, and it’s a great habit to be prepared.
As a bonus, if all of your prep work is out of the way once you begin cooking, you can use any down time you have from there to clean, and maybe even achieve a spotless kitchen by the time you are ready to eat!
4. Be mindful of blades and hot pans
There are a few essential habits I follow in regard to blades and hot pans, and they are as follows:
Blades
If knives are laid out anywhere in your kitchen, the blade should face away from you. If you bump into something, it is not a cut waiting to happen. (Notice the knife in my image above adheres to this rule).
Knives should never be placed in the drying rack or face up in the dishwasher. Instead, dry the knives with a towel immediately after cleaning, and place them directly back in the block or on the magnetic strip. If knives are buried out of sight in your drying rack, that is a recipe for disaster. The same is true if even a butter knife is placed blade up in the dishwasher in the utensil holder. Trust me — the knives will get cleaned just fine face down, and if they don’t, it’s better to double-clean a knife than cut yourself.
Keep blades sharp. This is likely something you’ve heard before — probably because it is SO critical. Dull knives are dangerous, and I am nervous every time I work with one in someone else’s kitchen. Do yourself a favor by following this single most important step in reducing your risk of a kitchen accident, and keep your knives sharp!
Use proper knife skills. Your left (or non dominant) hand should have a “claw grip” on the food you are cutting. You should be able to have the blade pressed directly up against your knuckles with no fear of cutting yourself — your fingertips are essentially “tucked in” away from the blade. Be careful that you do not let your thumb creep forward past your knuckles — this is something I have to regularly watch myself. Equally important, you should hold the knife with your hand wrapped around the handle, and your index finger and thumb gripping the base of the blade. Do not wrap all of your fingers around the handle, and do not press down on the blade with your index finger. Gripping the very base of the blade with your index finger and thumb ensures complete control over the knife. If you are not used to this, know it will soon become completely natural and feel much better than the grip you used before.
If you are cooking with someone else, make them aware of the knife before you enter their space with it. Be sure to hold the knife down and at your side, with the blade facing behind you when you are walking around the kitchen. Clearly announce yourself with phrases such as “KNIFE, CORNER” when you are turning a corner to potentially encounter others, or “KNIFE, BEHIND YOU” to alert someone they should not turn around until you have passed.
And please, whatever you do, DO NOT place your nice prep knives in the dishwasher. Knives and most high quality cookware should be washed by hand.
Hot Pans
This one is a little more simple, but equally important. The main point I want to drive home is this — keep your pan handles pointed in a safe direction while cooking. They should not be jutting out from the stove and pointed towards you — there should be no opportunity for you to walk by, accidentally bump the handle, and send a dangerously hot pan flying. Likewise, if you have a second burner lit, you will not want the handle over this burner — turn it in the other direction so it is not jutting out from the stovetop or acquiring heat from a burner underneath it.
Another food safe practice here — if you will be storing your leftovers in the pan or pot you cooked them in (no shame), be sure you let the food cool nearly to room temperature before transferring it to the fridge. If the pan and food are too hot, it will raise the temperature in your fridge to an unsafe level for hours, putting all of your food at risk. For a fast way to cool down a pot of food, you can immerse it in cold water in the sink, being careful that no water gets into the food. This should at least halve the time you need to wait before transferring to the fridge.
Two rules for blades apply here too — do not run your nice cookware through the dishwasher, and be sure to announce yourself when you are moving around the kitchen with a hot pan in the presence of others. Again, phrases like “HOT, CORNER” and “HOT, BEHIND YOU” will do the trick to keep everyone involved safe.
5. Take advantage of your dishwasher
When I moved into an apartment with brand new kitchen appliances, I learned I had a defective dishwasher. A maintenance tech from Whirlpool came out to replace the dysfunctional motor and gave me some tips.
First of all, you need not rinse all of the food off of your plates and utensils. It is actually preferred that plate ware is NOT spotless when it enters the dishwasher. Yes, the chunks of food should all be gone, but leave the crumbs and drippings. The dishwasher works best when the detergent has food particles to interact with. It is made to clean dishes that are actually dirty!
If you have an option for a “high temp wash” and/or “sani (sanitize) rinse”, you should select it. Selecting high wash temp means that the temperature inside your dishwasher will remain consistent as you are using hot water from the adjacent sink to wash dishes by hand. The sanitizing rinse adds an extra layer of cleanliness, though I believe you will need to stock the dishwasher with RinseAid to achieve this. If you have a newer dishwasher, these two cleaning settings are worth selecting, but it may not be an option on older models.
Regardless of your dishwasher’s age, it is undeniably advantageous to have one. It is a much more effective and sustainable way of cleaning than washing all of your dishes by hand (though knives, aluminum, quality cookware, and anything wood or bamboo should always be washed by hand). Everything else should go into the dishwasher unless you plan to use it before running the next load.
Take full advantage of your dishwasher by PACKING it full. Old dishwashers may be less effective and therefore require more space between dishes, but that is not the case for newer models. My downstairs neighbor leaves so much room between dishes in his brand new dishwasher that they barely even touch, and he runs it daily. I called him out, and he told me he is “weird about it.” Don’t be that person hiking up the water prorate for your neighbors, my friend. Your dishwasher is capable of amazing things and should be packed to the brim. Overlap is fine — it all comes out spotless somehow. I consider filling the dishwasher to maximum capacity an art form.
6. Be intentional with chemicals and cleaning tools
Chemicals should always be stored away from food. If you cannot keep them completely separate, they should at least be stored underneath the food — never above. This is the same principle discussed in the first point of this article with always keeping the cooked food above raw.
When possible, use natural cleaning alternatives instead of chemicals. Baking soda, as a natural light abrasive substance, is a cleaning powerhouse mixed with a bit of water. Think you can’t get that residue off of your stovetop? Think again. It does make a mess, and sometimes it’s easier to lean on chemicals (if you are committed to using chemicals, Meyer’s Clean Day is the brand I would recommend — it works noticeably better than my generic Walmart cleaning spray). To avoid chemicals completely, you can make an easy DIY water and vinegar spray — this is something I have not yet committed to myself but am highly interested in (especially for fridge cleaning — I do NOT want any chemical residue where my food lives).
Lastly, it is wise to designate cleaning tools to specific purposes. I have a scrubber used exclusively for my cutting board, another specifically for cast iron, and a non abrasive scrubber for my stainless steel cookware. I also do not mix towels used for food with towels used for cleaning — it may be helpful to invest in different colored or textured towels to keep them easily separated in your kitchen and mind.
7. Schedule monthly or bi-monthly deep cleans
And now for the grand finale — a tip I am horrible at implementing myself. To really keep your kitchen in good shape, I would recommend deep cleaning it once per month if you are cooking multiple days per week. This includes mopping the floor, scrubbing out the fridge and freezer, scrubbing out the sink (this one should really happen weekly or more frequently), cleaning the oven and microwave, scrubbing the trash can, and wiping down the countertops and cabinets.
During quarantine, I scrubbed down my white kitchen floor, and it was the cleanest it had been since I moved in. It was a great feeling, but it didn’t last long. I keep on top of my regular kitchen cleaning pretty well, but deep cleaning is a healthy habit I strive to implement in this new year. It’s nice to not stare at a stain on your trash can for months or avoid a certain part of your fridge because something sticky spilled there weeks ago.
Cleaning is a task that most do not enjoy, so if you can implement this healthy habit of regular deep cleaning, I applaud you. As a cook, I take great pride in making my intensively used kitchen look like it’s never been touched. The hardest part of any task is just starting. Chances are, if you turn on some tunes and commit to cleaning for an hour, you’ll walk away in a much better headspace.
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And that’s it — these above habits will help you find greater peace and enjoyment in your cooking. It is not an exhaustive list, so please let me know in the comments below what other healthy kitchen habits are effective for you!