Having recently suffered from food poisoning, I’ve become a little more vigilant about germs in the kitchen. Although it was shellfish poisoning, which is quite common, you can get food poisoning from a variety of sources – so smart to be super careful. I’ve been using white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide for years to clean my food.
Instead of a veggie wash, you can easily just fill a sink with cold water and add 1/2 cup of white vinegar and 1/2 cup of hydrogen peroxide. Soak for 15 minutes and then rinse. This, however, wastes a lot of water, so use the simple sprayers instead:
1.You will need 2 sprayers. I like to get opaque sprayers, especially for the peroxide, as it’s light-sensitive. I found a large opaque silver sprayer at Smart & Final, which is perfect.
2.Fill one sprayer with food grade hydrogen peroxide (which is what will be on sale at the grocery or drug store.) Fill the other with white vinegar. Label your sprayers clearly.
How To Disinfect Your Food:
Before spraying my veggies, I lay out either a clean dish towel, or a few sheet of 100% recycled kitchen towel on my clean counter top.
1. Produce: Simply rinse of any dirt and/or bugs. First spray with the vinegar and then the peroxide. There is no need to rinse. Lay them out to on the towel to dry.
2. Meat: It’s really important to disinfect meat too, and you use exactly the same procedure as above: spray with vinegar and then peroxide. No need to rinse.
Hydrogen peroxide is 100% effective at removing all contaminants, including E. coli and Salmonella. Vinegar also works well to remove waxes and pesticides. Remember cooking a piece of food well will deal with most of these contaminants, but when you are eating raw food, such as salad, you are very susceptible to these poisons.
Don’t forget! You must spray food packaging too – especially meat and fish packaging and the packaging that it has come into contact with. You obviously can’t spray cardboard or paper, but you can spray plastic packaging. When you are done with any food preparation, you can also spray the counters*, fridge shelves and the sink down with the hydrogen peroxide.
*Be careful using these sprays on marble and vinegar can dissolve marble. Instead, you can use the Method Home Counter Sprays, which smell wonderful.
