Equipment & Utensils Hygiene

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Equipment and Utensils

To avoid chemical contamination, the food code requires that no cooking vessels may contain toxic metals.

This means that kettles, pots, serving ware and pans may not be made out of copper, brass, cadmium, zinc, lead, pewter (with over 0.05 percent lead), tin, or enamelware. Copper and cast iron are only acceptable for use as cooking surfaces.

With all of these metals, if an acidic material (tomato sauce for example) contacts these metals, the acid may dissolve the metal thus contaminating the food.

Equipment and utensils should have surfaces that don’t have cracks, chips, dents, separations, tight inside corners, deep knife cuts or crazing. These things can all harbor bacteria.

Equipment should be installed in a way that makes it easy to use and clean. Equipment should also be installed away from garbage containers, soiled fabrics, and high traffic areas.

If equipment is table mounted, the legs must be four inches unless the equipment is sealed to the table.

If equipment is floor mounted, the equipment must have six inch legs unless the equipment is sealed to the floor. This allows for proper cleaning under the equipment. For both table mounted equipment and floor mounted equipment, there are exceptions which lower the height requirements, provided that the space beneath the equipment is of a certain minimal size.

Utensils can cross-contaminate. Separate utensils must be used for different foods. Proper storage between foods is important.

While serving, utensils can be stored with the serving end in the food or in a container with running water that removes food particles and washes them away (ice cream scoops).

Utensils should never be laid on a counter top where the food left on the utensil can then creep into the danger zone, unless the utensils will be cleaned and sanitized at least every four hours.

Salad bars and buffets will often hold food from a period of several hours up to all day. However, at the end of the day all food should be transferred to other containers for storage. The original containers and any serving utensils should be washed and sanitized.

While it is a good practice to change serving utensils every four hours throughout the day, it isn’t required unless the potentially hazardous food is in the danger zone.

The general rule for food contact surfaces and utensils is that if they contact potentially hazardous food, they should be cleaned and sanitized every four hours, but there are exceptions.