Chefs and the ever present dirty rag. (ingredients, restaurants, grill)

[jambo101]

Cooking shows are my favorite viewing on tv, one idiosyncrasy/observation i see is just about all chefs have a rag hanging off their belt line, i see them constantly using the rag to clean their hands,clean small spills,wipe off cutting boards and then use the rag to wipe the edges of plates of food before delivery to the customer , seems a rather unsanitary practice..

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Not only that, but they have their bare hands into all the food and so many of them are smokers.

I always find myself hoping that they wash their hands after the bathroom.

[cape_fisherman]

A kitchen towel should never be used like that. It is not a multi-tasker. Every health department I know would frown on the practice.

Also, hand sanitation is very important. I prefer bare hands. Gloves give a false sense of security.

[mainebrokerman]

years ago i was written up for using rags ,they are a "bacteria dump-site"


an inspector said a month ago, that more and more food professionals are wearing gloves now- which is suppose to be good- but in reality, it gives a false sense of security , and folks tend to not change their gloves as often as they should,,


to the op,,,you are right i had to chuckle on a few ocassions,,,the chef will stop and say how important it is ,,,to clean surfaces if handling chicken,,,,but then he wipes his hand on the same rag for everything

[chiroptera]

Originally Posted by jambo101

Cooking shows are my favorite viewing on tv, one idiosyncrasy/observation i see is just about all chefs have a rag hanging off their belt line, i see them constantly using the rag to clean their hands,clean small spills,wipe off cutting boards and then use the rag to wipe the edges of plates of food before delivery to the customer , seems a rather unsanitary practice..

I like cooking shows but I guess this went under my radar. I guess if food poisoning was a common occurence for celebrity chefs - or chefs in general - and the people who eat their food I might be mildly concerned...but it is not, and I am not.

I assume that part of eating food prepared by other people - whether it's McDonalds, my local indie restaurants, friends' houses or haute cuisine, I just need to relax about their food handling practices and idiosyncracies. If I were to be so concerned about rags and gloves and so on, I guess I'd only eat food that I had prepared myself from start to finish so I could control the entire process.

Healthy humans can and do survive "unsanitary practices" pretty much every day. Consider where the raw materials for that meal came from, and how it was processed and prepared. So basically it has never occurred to me to worry about cooking show chefs making me sick LOL.

What was the question, again?

[Emeraldmaiden]

I don't think you can really be sure it's the same cloth; there are lots of cuts and edits.

That said, I've been trying for twenty years to break my DH of the habit of using a dish towel to wipe surfaces, especially the stove. Just a couple of weeks ago, after I told him (again!) not to use a dish towel, he asked, "what should I use??" ... really? How about a dishcloth, that square cloth thing that's in the hot soapy water?

The worst is when he uses the dish towel and then hangs it back up as if it's to be used again. Ohhellno.

[Attrill]

I always have a kitchen towel on my belt/apron/shoulder when I'm cooking. The main thing is to use it only to clean up things that won't contaminate your food, i.e. don't use it to clean up raw meat spills. I use mine mostly to dry off the chopping block after cutting vegetables, to dry my hands after washing them, to dry pans after washing them, and so on. If someone is wiping up raw chicken juices or something and then using the same towel to clean a surface used to prep raw ingredients - well, yeah, that's awful. I don't think I've ever seen a situation where that's the case.

I have seen plenty of people use tongs to put raw meat in a pan or on the grill and then use the same tongs to take them off after they've cooked, that's actually a much more common practice that is very dangerous in terms of food poisoning.

[jlawrence01]

Personally, when I worked in a kitchen, I hated the attaching the rag to my clothing as it would get my clothes dirty. I always had a rag at my station BUT I would store it is a pail of sanitizing solutions, a practice encouraged by the local heath department

We watch a lot of the cooking completion shows and honestly, I see so many BAD practices. Very rarely do chefs get docked for it unless they leave blood on a plate.

[d from birmingham]

Depending upon the cooking show you could be seeing a multi hour event which for tv was only what 15-20 minutes? That rag would have been changed over a dozen times. Also they do wash their hands multiple times during that shift.. Also they are trained to use their hands and fingers to determine when meat is a certain temperature, because this is how they are taught in cooking school.

You don't see every minute from every angle. So often a lot of stuff where they do things like take breaks to eat or relax for 15 minutes, do cleaning of their hands, get new tasting spoons, get new cleaning rags etc is done without the viewers being aware it occured.

[Blondy]

This is why I use paper towels. I agree a little dirt never hurt anyone; however, I now do a lot of cooking for my elderly parents who have compromised immune systems so I am fanatical about avoiding contamination.

The wet dish towel used to wipe down the counters and then draped over the faucet has always skeeved me and I just told my parents and my sister who cooks for them also they are forbidden from that practice anymore lol.