ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

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We all want our food to be safe to eat. And when it isn’t, the culprit is usually us. Although it‘s an uncomfortable topic, the truth is that when someone becomes sick from eating food, it&#39;s usually because it was handled in an unhygienic way in the kitchen or at the table.With this in mind, sous vide packaging provides an easy way to improve hygiene in the kitchen. Sealing food in packaging provides a protective skin that minimizes how often we handle the food. This reduces the chance that we will contaminate food directly with handling, or indirectly through cross-contamination with other foods in the kitchen. This not only keeps your food fresh and delicious, but also less risky to your well-being.Today, many chefs vacuum package food destined for sous vide cooking. It&#39;s convenient, keeps the food fresher, and reduces the risk of causing foodborne illness. The risk, however, with vacuum packing is that some very harmful bacteria can grow in the absence of oxygen—so-called anaerobic conditions. Health authorities worry about the rare, but potentially life-threatening risks associated with vacuum packaged foods that have been stored improperly. In practice, the risk of listeria or botulism being spread through vacuum packaged foods can be easily mitigated by refrigerating or freezing them after packaging. And the storage temperature is critical: it should always be below [c 5], with [c 2] being better for storage for more than a few days.Ensuring that this happens is straightforward in restaurants. After all, health agencies already require that restaurants and food producers monitor the temperature of their refrigerators and freezers, as well as keep track of when food was packaged. If there is the chance that food wasn&#39;t properly stored, then it gets thrown out. Applying this same attention to hygiene and the proper handling of food in your kitchen is something we strongly recommend.