Four steps, quoted
A tool catalogue has no standing to invent food safety, so this page repeats what the agencies publish and says what it means for a bench full of steel.
The four steps
Clean, separate, cook, chill.[1] Wash hands, utensils and surfaces often, with plain soap and water rather than antibacterial soap. Keep raw foods to themselves. Cook to a temperature rather than to a colour. Refrigerate promptly. Everything below is only these four applied to a drawer of tools.
What it means at the bench
Clean covers the tool as much as the counter: a scraper that lifted raw meat is not a scraper for dough until it has been washed. Separate is why a second board is cheaper than a bout of food poisoning. Cook is a thermometer rather than a guess, and the griddle guide has the two numbers that matter for beef. Chill is the step people skip when the kitchen is busy, and it is the one that decides whether leftovers are still food tomorrow.
What this page is not
It is not medical advice and not a substitute for the agencies themselves, which are linked below and are more complete than any summary. If a public health agency and a catalogue disagree, the agency wins.
Sources
Each of these was read before it was cited, on the date shown on the sources page.
- 4 Steps to Food Safety: Clean, Separate, Cook, Chill FoodSafety.gov (USDA, FDA, CDC) The frame of the kitchen-safety guide: clean hands, utensils and surfaces often, keep raw foods separate, cook to temperature, chill promptly. Also the plain-soap instruction, which is the agency's wording rather than ours.
Published 2026-08-01. Figures updated 2026-08-21.