What's cooking
From chopping boards to pots and pans, Dr Chemical shares his top tips to keep your kitchenware spotless and hygienic.
A question I am often asked is how best to clean cooking utensils - knives, chopping boards, pots and pans, etc.
You've created your culinary masterpiece but what to do about the mess afterwards?
Try these tips to ensure your cookware is hygienically cleaned.
CUTLERY
The cutlery is easy - the stainless steel that modern cutlery is made out of is nonporous, and so is a poor substrate for bacterial growth.
A quick rinse in hot water and detergent or a cycle through the dishwasher and the job's done.
CHOPPING BOARDS
Chopping boards are not quite so straightforward. The issue here, of course, is bacterial growth.
Whether they are made out of wood or plastic, they possess a degree of porosity, with crevices in which moisture can lodge and bacteria can grow. And this is the best time of the year for it (or the worst, depending on how you look at it), with all the damp weather around.
There are several ways of disinfecting hard surfaces - bleach, laundry disinfectants and so on - but the easiest is the way it's done in hospitals: alcohol.
There is a popular brand of disinfecting hand gel called Aqium, whose label tells us how to do it.
It's changed now, but it used to say "70 per cent methylated spirits". That's all it was, and that's all you need to make a very effective disinfectant. Get some metho from the hardware store, and make it up as a 70 per cent solution (7 parts metho to 3 parts water) and you have a very effective disinfectant. This is what hospitals use to disinfect surgical equipment, as it is chemically benign and will not damage anything (unlike bleach, which is a strong oxidiser). But some contact time is required.
Put some in a generic sprayer, spray your chopping board, and leave it. About 30 seconds contact time is required to do the job, so just leave it to evaporate. And don't worry about the "methylated" bit - metho doesn't contain methanol anymore.
POTS AND PANS
For pots and pans, it depends where you are. If you are camping, just clean your cast iron saucepan by sitting it in the fire. With enough heat the food turns to charcoal (carbon) and the carbon turns to CO2. So yes, you could clean your saucepans at home with a butane burner, but it'd raise a few eyebrows.
A simple way to do it is with washing soda. Sprinkle a few tablespoons in the bottom of the saucepan, fill it with water, and bring it to the boil. Then simply turn it off and let it cool.
Once it's cooled, tip it out and you'll be amazed at how clean the pan is. Any solid residue will have been separated from the surface by this process, and will easily be removed with a gentle scourer.
Or, if you're in a hurry, use the washing soda as a paste with a scourer - you get the combined action of the physical scouring and the chemical action.
For more tips see drchemical.com.au.
