Food Safety Level 2 (VTQ)

58 videos, 3 hours and 2 minutes

Course Content

Chopping Board Colours

Video 29 of 58
3 min 17 sec
English
English
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One problem within a kitchen or food preparation area is cross-contamination. Now, what can happen if you just had, for example, one chopping board, you may well be chopping up raw fish or raw meat and the next thing you are doing is cutting into ham or dairy products.

The board itself could be a transfer of bacterias over to the foods, so you are moving bacteria from raw food onto cooked food. The bacteria themselves could remain in the board itself, even if you are cleaning them. There is always that potential risk that someone may well pick up the wrong board and use it incorrectly.

Current food safety guidelines state you would have a different coloured chopping board for each area or type of food you are actually working with. That way if you are dealing with raw meats you are not going to accidentally pick up a chopping board that could be for dairy products. So these are based in six key colours.

The first one of these colours is red. The red chopping board is used for preparing raw meats, such as carving steaks or lamb. The blue chopping board is used for any type of fish. If you are filleting fish or preparing fish you would use the blue one. The yellow chopping board is for high-risk foods. This could be things like cooked meats, hams or pates. The green chopping board is used for salads. If you are preparing, cutting up tomatoes, onions and whatever, you can use the green chopping board. Brown is used for the preparation of vegetables. If you are dicing up carrots or cutting up chips, brown is the one you would use. And finally, the white one is used for bakery and dairy products. This could be if you are cutting up bread or you are cutting cheeses.

With the chopping board, it is very important to clean them correctly. Make sure you clean them correctly in a dishwasher, or whatever is the correct one for your kitchen.

Also with the chopping boards, they will have a shelf life because they are going to get cuts and scrapes in them. At this point, you need to throw them away and replace them with a new chopping board.

Finally, it is just worth mentioning the wooden chopping boards. Now, traditionally wooden chopping boards have been used a lot, but if you are going to use a hardwood wooden chopping board then you would just use it for cutting up meat and that is it. You would not want to have a wooden chopping board and use it for other things, because wood is a very good surface to use as a chopping board; however, it is quite hard to keep it clean. When you are not using the chopping boards they need to be stored correctly. Now, by storing them in a rack like this, each of the boards is kept separate. So we are still not getting a risk of one board touching another board.

They can go through to the dishwasher and when they are dry, they can be put onto the rack where they can be kept separate and also when you are removing the board from the rack, it is nice and easy. We are not going to get any cross-contamination between one colour and another colour.

The other good thing about this type of rack is they can very easily dry. Because they are not actually touching there is lots of air movement between the boards and also minimal contact with the stand as it only touches on the bottom and just on the side. There is loads of air movement round, so that boards can fully dry when you store them.