Cook macaroni slosh

Store food

• Always keep raw food separate from cooked food.
• Keep frozen food frozen, and don’t refreeze it if it defrosts. Keep food in the fridge or freezer until you need to take it out to cook it – don’t leave it out on the side.
• Keep food covered.

Get ready to cook

• If you’re unwell, tell an adult – you might not be able to cook if you could make others poorly.
• If you have long hair, tie your hair up.
• Take off any jewellery – especially rings (a plain gold ring is OK).
• Wash your hands properly. Cover any cuts, spots, or boils with a waterproof plaster or dressing – if you can, use brightly coloured plasters.
• Check all your equipment – is it clean, and free from damage?
• Clean your work surfaces – use an antibacterial spray.

Time to cook

• Wash fruit and vegetables before you prepare them.
• Wash your hands after handling raw meat, fish, or eggs. Wash your hands again if you sneeze, cough, eat anything, touch your hair, use the toilet, or touch rubbish.
• Always carry knives pointing towards the floor, and cut or chop on a chopping board – never in your hand.
• Use tongs or other equipment to touch food – avoid using your hands if you can.
• Remember that you still need to keep raw food separate from cooked food, including using different utensils like chopping boards and knives (if you can’t, always wash and sterilise them).
• Make sure food gets hot enough – it should be at least 70°C for two minutes.
• Don’t leave metal spoons in hot liquids, and don’t leave pan handles over a hot hob.
• Clean up any spills immediately.

Grub’s up

• Don’t leave leftovers to cool on the side – if you’re going to eat them later, they need to be cooled and put in the fridge as soon as possible.
• Clean the surfaces you’ll eat from – use an antibacterial spray.
• Wash your hands before you eat.

Tidy up

• Use hot water (and detergent) when washing up. Ideally, use a second bowl with hot water to rinse.
• Never use a tea towel that’s fallen on the floor.

For vegetarians and vegans (people who avoid foods which come from animals, usually meat, fish, milk, eggs, and honey):

• Replace the sausages with vegetarian or vegan sausages – remember, vegans don’t eat milk or eggs so make sure sausage substitutes don’t contain these.
• Leave the bacon out of the recipe – it’s optional.

For people who eat halal or kosher food:

• Make sure the sausages are labelled as halal or kosher, or use vegetarian sausages (labelled as halal or kosher).
• Leave the bacon out of the recipe – it’s optional.
• Check with individuals (or their guardians) to see if you need to adapt anything else in the recipe or process.

For people who don’t eat cereals containing wheat or gluten:

• Replace the pasta with gluten free pasta, and adjust the cooking time according to the instructions on the packet. You might need to use a different pasta shape (not macaroni).
• Make sure the sausages or sausage substitutes are free from wheat and gluten.

For people who don’t eat soy:

• Make sure the sausages or sausage substitutes are free from soy.

For people who don’t eat milk and/or eggs:

• Make sure the sausages or sausage substitutes are free from milk and/or eggs.
• Make sure the pasta is free from milk and/or eggs (dried pasta is usually OK, but fresh pasta is likely to contain egg).

For people who don’t eat sulphites:

• Make sure the sausages are free from sulphites – or use sulphite-free sausage substitutes.

For people who don’t eat fish, lupin, celery, mustard, nuts, sesame seeds, crustaceans, molluscs – or anyone with other allergies:

• This recipe is unlikely to contain these other common allergens, but check all ingredients carefully to make sure they contain no allergens (or traces of allergens).
• It’s easy to substitute any vegetables that people are allergic to.
• If anyone’s allergic to tomatoes, you could use pesto (likely to be unsuitable for vegetarians, and likely to contain dairy and nuts), a cheese sauce (likely to contain dairy), humous (likely to contain sesame seeds, and sometimes honey) or oil (you could try a garlic oil, for example).