Expert reveals whether you should swap utensils when cooking meat

Should you be changing utensils when cooking meat?

An expert has warned of the dangers of touching raw meat with a utensil and re-using it later in the cooking process.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Renee Boyer, a food safety professor and extension specialist at Virginia Tech, explained there's an extra step when sorting out dinner that we should all be thinking about.

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"You want to make sure you cook [meat] to the right temperature, but you also want to make sure that there's no cross-contamination that happens in between handling the raw product and then handling the finished product," Boyer revealed. 

"The big key is making sure that you use a meat thermometer to get that food, whatever it is, cooked to the appropriate temperature," Boyer explained.

Boyer says the risk of contamination through utensils is "relatively minimal", but we should be using a different spoon, tong or spatula to serve the food.

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Boyer says changing your utensils over can help you avoid food poisoning.

"The absolute best practice would be to utilise a fresh, safe, clean and sanitised utensil because then you can be sure that you're not going to be at risk of contaminating anything," Boyer said.

So there you go. Next time you're pulling the BBQ out, you may want to take a good look at how many pairs of tongs you're taking with yout.

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