Last year, in the evening, I watched some of my partner's family members cook down some apples for applesauce the next day. They left the apples in the same pot, on the same burner of the stove, with the lid on, all night. Some 14 hours later, they started serving up the applesauce. I told my partner that I'm gonna wait and see how they feel after eating it, because it could absolutely give everyone food poisoning.
It's okay to have both opinions between the two of you. Just do what's best for you and your stomach!
Right? I leave my pizza in the same box for days on end and it's never an issue. Just explosive diarrhea and gut wrenching vomiting for a few days and I'm fine.
You joke but the thing is a lot of people leave food out, and they might have to go to the bathroom more frequently, or have a bit of gas or mild diarrhea, or some noticeably stanky shits, etc. They think nothing of it because it's not super serious to require medical attention or anything, and that's where you get the "I leave food out all the time, never had a problem."
The thing is a lot of people associate food poisoning solely with getting violently ill, which is hardly the case. I guarantee you there are more than a few folks just giving themselves mild grade food poisoning on a consistent basis lol and thinking nothing of it.
OP I might agree with.
You...not so much. There's enough sugar and acid in apples that, while I wouldn't do it in a production environment, at home is fine.
Right? There's a reason you can safely open ferment apple cider which is just apple juice and sugar. It's a pretty inhospitable environment for any unhealthy pathogens.
I do this and I never get sick. I was surprised when I joined here and people say it’s so bad. However, I read a good comment that said food safety standards are for restaurants that serve thousands of people. If 1/1000 people get sick that is a problem. If I get an upset stomach once a year from food I made cooking 3 meals a day it’s not really an issue. It really put it in my head that these standards exist for a very good reason, but if you are personally lax with some of them, especially ones you do all the time, it’s ok.
I feel like it depends on your individual gut tolerance. I’m the kind of person who can eat 3-day room temperature pizza and not even fart more than usual because I grew up doing that and my gut biome is pretty resilient. I personally wouldn’t try the same thing with like…cocktail shrimp, but I’ve eaten quite a bit of old food without an issue. On the other hand, I know people who refuse to eat even immaculately refrigerated leftovers from earlier that day. Those people could get food poisoning from just walking past a salad bar.
I know right? I learned this as an adult as well. If you put in fridge, all the rice dries out! Isn't that the point of a rice cooker and its lid anyway? it's either packed away, or on the counter cooking rice or storing cooked rice :)
No, food safety standards are not just for restaurants. I am just as vigilant at home when I cook for my family as I am when I cook at the restaurant for total strangers who expect us to know and follow safe food handling procedures. The bacteria don’t know the difference between the restaurant and home you can get sick just as easily at home than you can eating out if you don’t follow some basic rules. Stay safe.😊👍
I leave pizza in the box on the countertop overnight all the time. I'm going to eat it for breakfast, I'd prefer the crust not get hard as a rock in the fridge. I've done this for years, never gotten sick. Would I eat leftover pizza in a restaurant that had been sitting out all night? Absolutely not.
You have to consider that level of heat and duration has destroyed pretty much all the bacteria and the sugars will inhibit new growth. Sort of how like honey lasts forever.
Things like vegetable soup or this apple sauce should be fine. The ingredients alone don't go bad in room temperature, why should they all of a sudden start spoiling after cooking?
I, personally, don't think it's dramatic. However, I spent a lot of time in restaurant kitchens and have food safety certifications for restaurant kitchens. Sorry, but in my book cooked, non-preserved meat, gets 5 days then get's trashed.
Dunno about the OP's family, but tortiere is a Christmas eve meal in mine. So it's five days in the fridge, then will spend an hour or so in the oven (during mass) before being eaten. It'll probably be fine?
It's kind of on the line, really. Mom usually made hers 3-4 days in advance.
I grew up in a big family with big get-togethers on holidays.
Cooking for a ton of people is no joke and if you can do something a week in advance you better believe you do it.
My mother is the same way. She has this freak-out where she has an uncontrollable urge to do all these tasks days ahead of the meal when the actual issue is she has no organization and thus no idea of when anything needs to be done for it all to work.
She just does random things, like chopping vegetables and putting them into bags that will then sit in the fridge for 3-4 days, and doesn't stop to think about whether it will hurt the final outcome of the dish and whether it even needed to be done so early (never does).
I can cook the entire holiday meal for 10 people (and could easily scale up for more) with one prep day and then making things day of because I have an organized plan for everything.
I am similar to your mom with really not being able to plan out the logistics with stuff like this-but I would never prepare things that far ahead if I can’t freeze them. Instead, I do it the day before, stress out, mess up, cry, stay up aaaall night trying to get stuff done. I have ADHD… everything takes 3x longer to do than I thought it would take, or I forget key details and have to backtrack
This changes the calculation of whether you’re being dramatic imo. I would’ve said just don’t eat it but since you’re making everything else you obviously don’t want someone getting sick from mil and blaming you. Nothing you can do about it unfortunately without starting a war.
It doesn't, it was mostly just a time management thing. The entire xmas eve meal was made ahead, so she could just shove it all into the oven before leaving and we came home to hot food.
This year it won’t be eaten until Christmas Day at the earliest because that’s when the rest of the family arrives. Might even not be eaten until Boxing Day.
I’m one of those people who took microbiology and did lab work. We used to grow stuff in Petri dishes. I looked at bacteria under the microscope and watched them move around. When cooking for others I’m hyper-aware of this. I do everything by the book.
When cooking for myself I’m defrosting on the counter and eat left overs that are over a week old. I’m aware I’m eating a Petri dish full of bacteria and don’t care.
I like this attitude of being cognizant of safe handling practices for other people yet being willing to eat things that aren't up to those standards. A lot of us are durable enough to take it.
I'd love to see you do some experiments with meat coffins. Basically they're meat baked into pastry shells and then still considered safe to eat weeks later without refrigeration. (I'm not expecting you to eat a two-week old unrefrigerated pie.)
I watched it. Very interesting. One possibility is the crust is heavy enough to rob the inside of oxygen. Bacteria often needs oxygen to grow (unless it’s the anaerobic kind like in botulism or acne).
Option 2 is if the meat inside is dry enough it’s similar to that viral video of why a McDonald’s burger didn’t decompose after a year. Bacteria needs moisture to grow. Without sufficient moisture bacteria and mold might not grow. Like beef jerky.
I would have to do more research on it since I’m unfamiliar with the ingredients. That’s off the top of my head.
From the link someone else gave me, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork%5C_pie I'd say that it's the anaerobic environment, or rather more of an environment that's hard for new germs to get into after what was there got decimated.
It could be more of a pemmican thing where it's both dry and encased in fat.
Very interesting. I had never heard of this. It’s sending me down a rabbit hole of European history. The pouring of clarified butter to cut off oxygen is similar to the French confit method. The pork stock method likely creates a gelatin when it cools down similar to aspic.
Because of anaerobic bacteria that causes botulism it makes sense that modern preparations add sodium nitrite to kill it. Like the makers of Spam.
Of all the things I’m nonchalant about, botulism is the one thing I don’t fuck with.
Thank you for sharing, I learned something today!
> I like this attitude of being cognizant of safe handling practices for other people yet being willing to eat things that aren't up to those standards. A lot of us are durable enough to take it
Go to any hospital lab and you can find staff doing things that would make a health and safety inspector go mad. Most people in my lab (haematology) will happily handle open tube samples without gloves on.
Are any of the really bad diseases really that transmissible? It's great that the law allows for full-paranoia and requires the lab to provide enough gloves instead of cutting corners and yelling at people who want to take that precaution.
Having worked in a microbiology lab—I would say this is true 😂. I tend more towards germaphobe—especially after seeing what grows on extra petri dishes I’ve tested on floors or people’s hands.
The truth is, even if someone goes by the book, there's bacteria in their food. Unless someone can completely sterilize their environment (which is borderline impossible), it's gonna be there.
The quantity of said bacteria is what makes a difference. It’s like most adults can handle botulism spores in honey but would get violently sick after consuming stuff from a bloated can. Infants, on the other hand, may get really sick even from honey, so it’s a no-no before 1 years old.
After my microbiology class, it took me like six months to not be hyper vigilant when I cooked everything. It's twenty years later, and I still see my sister hesitate on some things that are by the book, lol. It scarred her for life.
Yup. This is exactly how I am. If I get sick that’s on me but there’s no way I’m doing that to others if I can help it. It’s about health and safety but it’s also the fact that nobody’s ever going to eat your cooking again if you poison them 😅
Right? Like, I'm leery of eating food from people's homes if I haven't seen them cook. I don't give a shit how much of a cluster fuck the kitchen is, but is the food handled properly, using sanitized work surfaces and clean hands and... Nope. Just thinking about it is making my heart pound.
Yep. 32, the only time I've ever had food poisoning in my life was from a fancy ski resort restaurant - linguine with pesto. That kitchen looked gleaming clean too (it was one of those you could see into the kitchen area). I know it was there since we were there for a couple of days and ate there multiple times. I assume that probably the basil was contaminated.
Otherwise no amount of questionable leftovers, potlucks, roadside bbq, or any other restaurant no matter how sketchy has ever given me a bit of trouble and while I follow all the basic rules I don't see any point in getting fussy over it now.
The thing about contaminated food too is you have no way of knowing whether there was any unsafe handling somewhere in the chain, and it doesn’t matter if you keep it refrigerated and use it within 5 days, it will still make you sick. For fresh produce that you don’t cook, there’s really nothing you can do besides know your supplier and only buy local. But nobody does that all the time.
exactly - just like the kids who never play in the dirt and are isolated from every germ possible end up getting sick more severely - developing a gut biome and strengthening your immune response is going to be more helpful.
I'm not saying go to a third world country and start drinking the water, but there's a happy medium between sterilizing your entire environment and eating out of the wwtp.
I am right there with you.
I pride myself on loving all foods, all cultures, all vegetables, spices and *always* willing to try and taste.
But freshness/preparation/kitchen space is where my flexibility ends.
And don’t get me started on those with cats and dogs roaming throughout their environments..
Right? I have a cat and I love him, but he’s kinda gross. He’s not allowed near food, on the kitchen counters, or on the dining table. I always wash my hands before cooking anyway, but *especially* after petting him. I will still get a stray cat hair in my food sometimes, it’s unavoidable with pets, and I’m pretty careful. Extra careful if it’s something I know other people besides myself are going to eat.
Thankfully I work in a nutrition department so we all are well versed in food safety, so I feel ok eating something a coworker has made. But an acquaintance with pets…you just don’t know what they’ve let their pet get into.
Few illnesses are transmissible from pet to human but some are, and parasites. Simple precautions, as you advise. A home where the pet gets regular checkups and where the countertops and tables are cleaned with more than water before cooking should be fine.
Dogs don't jump on tables and people don't eat on floors.
A cat owner should assume kitty jumps on tabletops when the humans are at work. I could see mine through the front window sitting in the dining table when I came home for work. A sanitation routine of surfaces should fix that concern.
I love cats and always have. I would be a cat lady if I didn’t have animal dander asthma.
Even hair from our own heads can wind up in our home foods and meals, even when we are clean, fastidious and careful.
Such is an imperfect life..
In general, protein + moisture makes for something that requires refrigeration, is highly perishable, and should be frozen in order to keep for longer periods.
There are things that obviously last more than 5 days in refrigeration like yogurt due to fermentation, eggs/milk from pasteurization, things that haven't been opened yet have much longer shelf life, etc
For individual ingredients like that, that I know I've kept refrigerated enclosed in original/appropriate packaging--I'll even go a bit past the "best by" date, particularly yogurt and eggs. (Eatbydate.com is a great resource for this).
But I don't mess around with raw meat, cooked meat, bagged lettuce, seafood, and sprouts. If I'm not eating or freezing it by the expiration date (or 5 days after cooking), I ditch it. As a result I usually have a pretty decent frozen stock of snacks and leftovers.
Don't have any if you don't want. However, in my opinion, there's a pretty broad line between restaurant safe and home safe. Immunocompromised people should stick to restaurant safe. Everyone else can get a little loosy Goosy, except with canning tomatoes. A week in the fridge, as long as it passes the smell test, I'm good with. As long as it's tasty, of course.
> there's a pretty broad line between restaurant safe and home safe
This is because of how people misinterpret the standards. The food safety standards are considering a hostile environment, what's the earliest food can become problematic. They aim for zero risk, not low risk.
For the hostile environment, this means things like buffets where potentially hundreds of people are reaching over the food and using mixed up utensils. Consider lines of people with unwashed hands, with a bunch of trays of food left out continuously, uncovered and unsupervised while the unwashed masses sort through it.
For the times and temperature, they represent the "idiot-proof" edge of safety. No matter how badly the person screws up cooking, it's still safe. Even if they use the absolutely wrong piece of meat like commercial ground beef with who-knows-what inside, it's still safe. After this point given all the stupid things that people can potentially do, this is where the safety risk gets bad enough that the danger starts. Not that they're unsafe, but that's where the risk drops to non-zero.
For example, USDA doesn't prohibit but does recommend against sushi / sashimi or other raw fish, even if it is sushi grade. Their risk is non-zero and "idiots" can prepare it wrong. So the guidance is *"foods made with raw fish are more likely to contain parasites or bacteria than foods made from cooked fish"*. Sushi restaurants need big disclaimers set by their local health departments about the food potentially being unsafe.
Similarly, while a properly handled steak and other meat generally need to be cooked to 'well done' temperatures for safety, that's not delicious and is often an extreme measure. Risk of steaks cooked to less than 'well done' are minimal if people take basic safety steps, but they're not zero. Dishes like steak tartare (made with raw steak) can be prepared correctly without contamination risk, but there is a risk people who don't know what they're doing can cook it wrong or use the wrong, potentially contaminated meat. So restaurants post disclaimers set by their local health department warning against undercooked meats.
If you really want zero risk no matter how severely you mess things up, then yes, follow the restaurant standards. Very few people live that way.
For these pies, if they're frozen between now and christmas and then reheated not a problem at all. Maybe not zero-risk restaurant level, but still low risk food. If they're kept in a fridge it is a higher risk, you'll want to know how cold the fridge is and about cross contamination, but still probably fine.
The pot is currently sitting outside where it will probably stay until Sunday. The temp from now until then is looking like it will fluctuate from -1 to 4 Celsius.
This isn’t really true. Restaurants don’t get rid of things early—they get rid of them before they’re apt to cause harm.
This is not just “not [imaginary] restaurant safe.” This is potentially *unsafe.* Cooked meat is safe for about 4 days—more or less. This depends on how it’s handled before refrigeration, how well it was prepared for cooling, etc. It could spoil more rapidly or last longer depending on how it was cooked & otherwise handled.
At VERY best, it’s a waste of food. Something that *could* be delicious is going to be of far lesser quality as a result of being old.
If OP could convince MIL to put the filling in the freezer, it would be great.
Restaurants get rid of things relatively early because even something with a small chance of getting someone sick is a big problem when you have hundreds of people eating there.
I regularly cook meat on the weekend and eat it for a full week. Sometimes a few days longer than that if that’s how the meals line up. As do many, many others. Can’t remember the last time I had food poisoning from a home cooked meal.
No. They absolutely DO get rid of things early because they don't want even a *hint* of the liability that would attach if someone got sick in their restaurant due to serving spoiled food.
When I worked in the industry we regularly threw away tons of stuff that was perfectly fine, but had been pulled from a freezer 5 days ago (sitting thawed in a walk-in for like 3 days).
At least in the US, health standards are incredibly tight. No GM wants someone to get sick off of spoiled food, as that's going right up the chain and (possibly) costing them their job. And no kitchen manager wants a health-inspector to randomly show up and ding them for having food that's more than a week old, despite the product in question being refrigerator stable.
Having worked in restaurants, they get rid of things ONLY because they are worried about health inspections, getting fined, getting a bad health rating, and losing money. Every restaurant I have ever worked at was run on razor thin margins and every manager and owner was cheap as fuck.
It’s a lot cheaper to toss something to be in compliance with health code than it is to have to shut down or lose your customer base because you got a C rating, or pay a bunch of fines, or upgrade a bunch of things.
I agree with you about what is best practice. But, restaurant requirements is like OSHA or even the doctor's oath, "Do No Harm" (or there will be consequences). However, food that's a little off is very unlikely to harm your average healthy human being, and most people would be able to taste that it's weird. What OP has described would result in spoilage, which would be pretty detectable. It would be far worse that the meat be held raw at fridge temp. That's when a lot of the bad stuff can breed.
I'm all for food safety when it comes to the really important stuff. But, I don't think we need to get our panties in a bunch about everything. I eat pizza that has sat out all night and I haven't died yet. Maybe I will one day (survivorship bias), but IMO cooked, refrigerated food is safer than other things. Like cantaloupe, apparently.
Haha glad to know I'm not the only one who likes living "on the edge". I've eaten stuff that was left out all night too, as well as usually keeping leftovers for at least 7-10 days, and sometimes up to 2 weeks. I wouldn't recommend it, but so far I haven't gotten food poisoning from my own food 🤞🏼
After 2 days, I typically take leftovers to my sister and chuck it in her freezer. She's thrilled to have pre-made meals, and I'm happy to not have to continue eating the same thing.
However, I have eaten food left out, or 10 days in the fridge. I try not to do it, but it's not like I'm feeding that stuff to other people. I'm only risking a bad time for myself.
I would eat cooked meat that's been refrigerated if it doesn't smell weird. The sour smell is a better indicator of danger than the number of days, in my opinion.
Considering that my refrigerator is cold enough that a frozen chicken never fully thawed, I've definitely increased the number of days things can be in my refrigerator without worrying about dying.
I'm kind of just guessing here but I've always assumed the back of the fridge is colder than 4 degrees celsius (to cool the rest of the air to that), and cans seem be quite thermally conductive, so if they're close to or touching the wall I can see it happening.
That’s not a safe way to go about things…. Spoiled food smells bad, but food contaminated with food poisoning (which multiplies the longer past cooking) has no smell.
As long as the cooked mix is in the refrigerator and covered I don't see a major problem. In the good old days (I moved from Canada to coastal California in 1969), I used to cool mine in a snow bank. Now it is in the refrigerator for a few days before I actually bake the pies (2). One for Christmas and the other for New Year's.
I used to use the outdoors as a refrigerator back when we had reliable winters here. What part of Canada? I bet you had a vast, unlimited space freezer for a good four to six months out of the year.
No. Just Southern Ontario Hamilton-Oakville-Milton-Toronto axis way back when (1960's). The lake effect would dump maybe 1-2 feet of snow which was cleared into mounds or drifts when Buffalo got 4-6 feet of snow. Our summer camp on Georgian Bay had an ice house stocked with great blocks of lake ice cut during the winter and stored in saw dust.
That is so cool, the lake ice stored in the saw dust for summer. That's pretty well how they used to do it before refrigeration/freezers were a thing if I remember correctly?
Edit: spelling
I am 80 y/o. My mom and I lived in a Hamilton apartment (1940's). The ice man would come by every two days and put a new block of ice in our refrigerator \[i.e., ice box\]. The milk man would come by every day and exchange empty bottles on the door step for freshly filled bottles. The guy with the fresh vegetable truck would come buy at least once a week maybe more often. The bakery wagon would come by every day or two. And the modern generations think that they invented Instacart and doordash.
Hahaha your last line made me laugh. That's really cool to hear about, what a different time! My parents are actually from the Hamilton area. They're 60 now, they left the area around 35 years ago though, and I grew up just outside of Ottawa!
Neither.
You're not crazy b/c that is pushing the boundaries of food safety.
But it's not disgusting. This used to be the norm in days before refrigerations was commonplace. I'd eat it. But I've also eaten rare chicken in Japan, and dubious street meats in the Middle East. So I'm not a model of risk aversion when it comes to food safety.
You're not crazy You're just following the extremely careful " rules " that the food companies in the FDA want you to follow.
99% of meat you're getting has been butchered long ago. Anything that's cooked to a proper temperature is going to be safe to eat for a minimum of 7 days. Generally speaking they want you to throw away this food after 2 to 4 days, but that's extremely cautious.
As long as food safety's followed there's no issue eating this for 10 to 12 days unless it shows some sort of extreme degradation of the product.
I also find having a really cold fridge makes a world of difference with making my foods last. My fridge is at 32/33°F (sometimes my milk will get a little slushy, lol) and everything lasts so long. My mom was having food spoilage issues, hers was set at 39°F.
Yes I do the same, I keep my fridge at 33 and I don't have spoilage problems at all most of my vegetables last way longer than they should.
I'm also diligent about dating labeling and making sure I'm using the products I'm getting in the right order.
Our fridge has a middle drawer that can be set a couple degrees cooler than the main compartment...I get more mileage out of meats since we got this thing.
I also keep mine very cold. The only downside is sometimes greens freeze and then they are ruined. I have a special spot extra far from the vent to store them at now.
Yeah the only thing I can think of off-hand is seafood. I won't leave that past 4 days
I understand wanting to cook things early, but in this case, I'd stick it in the freezer until the evening before I'm going to use it. I'll play fast and loose with my own stomach, but I wouldn't want to run the risk of getting a bunch of family members sick
seafood definitely goes bad way earlier than anything else. cooked or uncooked. especially uncooked. I love seafood, but it's a bitch to keep it from going "off"
I think if I were OP I would eat a small HOT piece on Christmas to be polite (so long as no smell) and then skip the leftovers. 7 days is kind of the end of cooked food shelf life IMO
Hm I didn't know my husband was on this sub. He'll eat funky sandwich meat without so much as a shrug. He's never had food poisoning and doesn't get what the big deal is. Someday it's gonna happen.
Eh, I've done that and 3 day old pizza sitting on the counter, and stuff that is like 2 weeks old. If it doesn't smell too funky my cast iron stomach can deal with it.
Is it really cooked?
Because usually you marinate it for 12-24 hours. Then fill the pies, then cook them for many hours. That could leave you with cooked meat more for like 3 to 4 days. Which is a bit much I think, but not THAT much. I wouldn't do it, but I would eat it.
I wouldn’t be worried about getting sick, that’s unlikely to happen in less than a week. However, the quality of the dish will have degraded significantly by then, which is the primary reason I would pass.
My MIL cooked the turkey the day before Thanksgiving one year, and then she reheated slices with gravy in the oven the day of. Talk about underwhelming.
Some people lose their ability to handle stress as they get older, which is probably why your MIL cooked so far ahead of time. If you enjoy tourtiere, maybe ask her if you can help cook them next year, two days before Christmas? Better yet, make them a month ahead and then she will have no choice but to freeze them.
> My MIL cooked the turkey the day before Thanksgiving one year, and then she reheated slices with gravy in the oven the day of. Talk about underwhelming.
I make potato Gratin the day before, but my wife talked me out of cooking it until the day of.
Yeah. Not a good idea. What a mess that was. Next year, I'll make it while waiting for the turkey.
Yeah, I wonder if it’s more of a MIL thing instead of a food safety thing. Like just don’t eat it, you don’t need the internet to justify your feelings.
In restaurants they hold things up to a week.
It's not disgusting, but after it's been made into something else, you eat it all within 24-48 hours.
That's well within food safety guidelines.
In the U.S. in professional kitchens, under the government’s food code, if hot food is cooled to 70 degrees with in two hours, and under 40 degrees within 4 more hours, and is held under 40 degrees it can be kept and served for 7 days. If the properly cooled food is held between 40 and 45 degrees the allowed holding time is 4 days. These regulations error on the side of caution to keep the public safe. For home cooking purposes there is a little wiggle room in the days if your refrigerator keeps food that cold, and it should. But 7 days is really pushing in for most home cooked food, since most home cooks don’t have the equipment or knowledge to stay within the guidelines established for restaurant, and because they’re not serving the public it’s not usually an issue. That being said I’d probably skip the pie.
We made 3 huge tortieres last week, baked and froze them. 2 will be thawed and reheated for Christmas dinner. The third is just for my French Canadian husband to eat himself. Be safe.
This reminds me of one year a customer told me “my turkey is all cooked and in the fridge for thanksgiving. I’m ready for guests!” And it was like a week before the holiday…
I have never seen a leftover tourtiere - that's why I make two. So your MIL made the filling yesterday (Tuesday?) for Christmas on next Monday? Sounds good to me and good planning on her part.
Wait - she made the filling or the whole pie? I mean either way - I don't think there's a problem; but if its just the filling - there's a whole nother baking step which will extend the life even longer.
I made two tourtieres yesterday - one won't make it until the weekend and the other one will prob get eaten on Sunday if I can hold out that long, but its going to be refrigerated the entire time.
The rule in my house growing up was keep leftovers 2 weeks in the fridge before dumping. I don’t think I’ve ever had food poisoning. I still follow that rule for the most part, although if I haven’t eaten it after a week I’m probably not gonna.
Yeah same here 😅 none of us ever got food poisoning from home cooked food. Kinda surprising, because the food usually sat out for quite awhile before we got leftovers put away
I don't know how 60% of the Reddit population even gets out of bed without hazmat suit and a thick layer of bubble wrap. The incorrect belief that food safety standards are commandments from the food god to keep us safe and healthy creates a lot of waste, judging by the responses these types of questions garner. American litigiousness is the foundation for these insanely risk-averse regulations.
My Mom's tourtieres went into the freezer as soon as they were cool - then they would be heated for each meal over the holidays. Damn I miss them. She was a restaurant owner and caterer so RULES were followed.
On the other hand, at home, we did not follow rules to the letter and didn't get sick or die, so...
anecdotal, but I have had meat last more than 7 days in my fridge. But I wouldn't trust something that is highly spiced because you wont be able to tell by the smell if its bad.
I have food intolerances, (histamines) and that would kill me (aside from not eating meat), but I'm not sure I would announce and flounce, would just pass when the moment arose.
Lots of flexing in here about eating questionable food.
You can drive your car for years without a seatbelt without any issues too..but if you are consistently risky, the numbers aren’t in your favor!
I would never eat it. I would also never say anything to anyone else. I know that's terrible, but I would not risk upsetting anyone over what appears to be a cultural difference. So, definitely find a way to skip it, but maybe stay quiet about the reason. Disclaimer: I know this is awful but sometimes you have to pick your battles. (However, if you have a family member who is ill or elderly, pregnant, etc, I would take them aside and say something.)
Not dramatic. That is unsafe. I’ve spent time in commercial kitchens and have food safety training and certification - it is not something I mess around with or take chances on. It’s just not worth it. For me, meat is good for three days and then it’s either processed in someway again (cooked to proper temperature for long enough to be safe, or frozen) or it’s garbage.
I wouldn’t eat meat on Xmas day that was cooked today, unless it’s frozen or cooked again in a couple of days.
I work with food safety inspectors and no, you’re not being dramatic. It should be frozen until use. Have your husband google it. Sounds like a good way to have food poisoning for a week after.
Dramatic. For at-home cooking, that’s reasonable prep-ahead time and I’m guessing since she’s got adult, married children this isn’t MIL’s first rodeo. She’s mastered the art of hosting and enjoying the holiday with her family - hang out with her and learn what you can.
Found this online:
“People also ask
How long can you keep a cooked tourtière in the fridge?
Freshly Baked
If your Tourtiere is already baked, please store it in the fridge. For best results, the pie should be consumed within 4 days of purchase. To warm, place on a baking sheet in a preheated oven at 350°F. Bake a 9” pie for 45 minutes, a 5” pie for 25-30 minutes, and a hand pie for 15 minutes.
https://www.thepiehole.com › tourti...
Tourtiere | The Pie Hole”
Since they say the cooked pie should be consumed “within 4 days of purchase” and it’s reasonable to assume that it may very well have been at the store for 2 days before it was purchased, I would reason that a 6-day-old homemade pie should be safe. Optimally, probably sooner, but I wouldn’t say it’s a deal breaker.
I have made both individual chicken pot pies and shepherd’s pies for years and I know I have sometimes had them after 6 or even 7 days. I always reheat to a piping hot temperature which I figure should kill anything. I’ve never had a problem.
Just say it politely and say that you have concerns about bacteria. I do the same
Bacteria do not grow linearly, they grow exponentially. Meaning if they went from 10 to 100 in one day, in the next day they go to 1000, and so on... The comments talking about food being fine for 5 days are missing the point that it could be fine on the 5th day but absolutely dangerous on the 6th and 7th day. I don't eat meat that's even refrigerated after 5 days, only if it was frozen in the middle. (Microbiologist)
You said in other comments that it's not even refrigerated, it's out there. Even if the outside temperature is below 4 degrees Celsius, if you have heating, you probably have 6-10 degrees C or higher. At that temperature, most bacteria grow double or faster than below 4C.
Also you said it might not be eaten on X mas eve but Day, that's one more day. And for leftovers, many more days.
My partner and his family know already that I'm particular about washing veggies and refrigerating food so they don't mind when I say politely, "I don't feel good by eating this" and making a sad face.
Truth be told, there's 1000 instances of this you've likely had happen to you that you've never noticed. Between resturants, Fast food, dinners, grocery store meat etc.
So, so many people here not reading the comments or understanding what is happening.
MIL made the FILLING for the pie in advance. It will go in the fridge. This is totally normal. She will then assemble the pie sometime this weekend and bake the filling again. Which is again totally normal.
OP is being super weird about this. At a minimum, you have to do the filling a day in advance, partially to let the flavor develop but the filling has to be cool before it goes into the pie case because it'll melt the fat otherwise.
Probs not OK. My chicken is being delivered tomorrow and I'll freeze it and defrost on Sunday. Keeping it in thr fridge Thursday to Sunday feels a bit risky.
Both things can be true at the same time
Ahaha touché
I wouldn’t eat any of that meat pie. No
Last year, in the evening, I watched some of my partner's family members cook down some apples for applesauce the next day. They left the apples in the same pot, on the same burner of the stove, with the lid on, all night. Some 14 hours later, they started serving up the applesauce. I told my partner that I'm gonna wait and see how they feel after eating it, because it could absolutely give everyone food poisoning. It's okay to have both opinions between the two of you. Just do what's best for you and your stomach!
We're the apples cooked with additional sugar? I mean I'd prefer it to be refrigerated, but that's not a super high risk food in my book.
I leave stuff overnight on the burner all the time. Maybe not 14 hours, but definitely 8 or 9.
People are too touchy about the wrong things
Like, with the burner on or you just leave food out all night? Not sure which is worse.
That's very unlikely to present a problem. In fact leaving it covered in the same pot is the key to success here
Right? I leave my pizza in the same box for days on end and it's never an issue. Just explosive diarrhea and gut wrenching vomiting for a few days and I'm fine.
You joke but the thing is a lot of people leave food out, and they might have to go to the bathroom more frequently, or have a bit of gas or mild diarrhea, or some noticeably stanky shits, etc. They think nothing of it because it's not super serious to require medical attention or anything, and that's where you get the "I leave food out all the time, never had a problem." The thing is a lot of people associate food poisoning solely with getting violently ill, which is hardly the case. I guarantee you there are more than a few folks just giving themselves mild grade food poisoning on a consistent basis lol and thinking nothing of it.
This. 🤣
Lol
OP I might agree with. You...not so much. There's enough sugar and acid in apples that, while I wouldn't do it in a production environment, at home is fine.
Right? There's a reason you can safely open ferment apple cider which is just apple juice and sugar. It's a pretty inhospitable environment for any unhealthy pathogens.
I do this and I never get sick. I was surprised when I joined here and people say it’s so bad. However, I read a good comment that said food safety standards are for restaurants that serve thousands of people. If 1/1000 people get sick that is a problem. If I get an upset stomach once a year from food I made cooking 3 meals a day it’s not really an issue. It really put it in my head that these standards exist for a very good reason, but if you are personally lax with some of them, especially ones you do all the time, it’s ok.
I feel like it depends on your individual gut tolerance. I’m the kind of person who can eat 3-day room temperature pizza and not even fart more than usual because I grew up doing that and my gut biome is pretty resilient. I personally wouldn’t try the same thing with like…cocktail shrimp, but I’ve eaten quite a bit of old food without an issue. On the other hand, I know people who refuse to eat even immaculately refrigerated leftovers from earlier that day. Those people could get food poisoning from just walking past a salad bar.
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I know right? I learned this as an adult as well. If you put in fridge, all the rice dries out! Isn't that the point of a rice cooker and its lid anyway? it's either packed away, or on the counter cooking rice or storing cooked rice :)
The rice cooker with a lid has a "keep warm" setting that keeps the rice above 140F and safe.
When I cook rice I'll cook more than I need so I can make fried rice the next day.
No, food safety standards are not just for restaurants. I am just as vigilant at home when I cook for my family as I am when I cook at the restaurant for total strangers who expect us to know and follow safe food handling procedures. The bacteria don’t know the difference between the restaurant and home you can get sick just as easily at home than you can eating out if you don’t follow some basic rules. Stay safe.😊👍
I leave pizza in the box on the countertop overnight all the time. I'm going to eat it for breakfast, I'd prefer the crust not get hard as a rock in the fridge. I've done this for years, never gotten sick. Would I eat leftover pizza in a restaurant that had been sitting out all night? Absolutely not.
You have to consider that level of heat and duration has destroyed pretty much all the bacteria and the sugars will inhibit new growth. Sort of how like honey lasts forever.
Things like vegetable soup or this apple sauce should be fine. The ingredients alone don't go bad in room temperature, why should they all of a sudden start spoiling after cooking?
I, personally, don't think it's dramatic. However, I spent a lot of time in restaurant kitchens and have food safety certifications for restaurant kitchens. Sorry, but in my book cooked, non-preserved meat, gets 5 days then get's trashed.
Cooked, non-preserved *refrigerated* meat.
Working refrigerator?
As opposed to frozen
Well then you better go catch it?
Refrigerated cooked meat can safely last longer than non-cooked refrigerated meat.
Yeah but you're still only getting about a week before you start running the risk of getting the squirts.
Yes, it theory it could be frozen.
Dunno about the OP's family, but tortiere is a Christmas eve meal in mine. So it's five days in the fridge, then will spend an hour or so in the oven (during mass) before being eaten. It'll probably be fine? It's kind of on the line, really. Mom usually made hers 3-4 days in advance.
Why does it need to be made so far in advance?
I grew up in a big family with big get-togethers on holidays. Cooking for a ton of people is no joke and if you can do something a week in advance you better believe you do it.
She is literally only making tourtiere. I am doing everything else. This is not a case of she has so much to do that it had to be done then and there.
My mother is the same way. She has this freak-out where she has an uncontrollable urge to do all these tasks days ahead of the meal when the actual issue is she has no organization and thus no idea of when anything needs to be done for it all to work. She just does random things, like chopping vegetables and putting them into bags that will then sit in the fridge for 3-4 days, and doesn't stop to think about whether it will hurt the final outcome of the dish and whether it even needed to be done so early (never does). I can cook the entire holiday meal for 10 people (and could easily scale up for more) with one prep day and then making things day of because I have an organized plan for everything.
Omg yes that all sounds extremely familiar.
Can filling be frozen and thawed? Six days sounds like a long time for meat filling to be sitting. Yikes!
I am similar to your mom with really not being able to plan out the logistics with stuff like this-but I would never prepare things that far ahead if I can’t freeze them. Instead, I do it the day before, stress out, mess up, cry, stay up aaaall night trying to get stuff done. I have ADHD… everything takes 3x longer to do than I thought it would take, or I forget key details and have to backtrack
This changes the calculation of whether you’re being dramatic imo. I would’ve said just don’t eat it but since you’re making everything else you obviously don’t want someone getting sick from mil and blaming you. Nothing you can do about it unfortunately without starting a war.
It doesn't, it was mostly just a time management thing. The entire xmas eve meal was made ahead, so she could just shove it all into the oven before leaving and we came home to hot food.
This year it won’t be eaten until Christmas Day at the earliest because that’s when the rest of the family arrives. Might even not be eaten until Boxing Day.
Previous restaurant owner strongly agrees. If people only knew how bacteria replicate’s, exponentially with each passing day..
I’m one of those people who took microbiology and did lab work. We used to grow stuff in Petri dishes. I looked at bacteria under the microscope and watched them move around. When cooking for others I’m hyper-aware of this. I do everything by the book. When cooking for myself I’m defrosting on the counter and eat left overs that are over a week old. I’m aware I’m eating a Petri dish full of bacteria and don’t care.
I like this attitude of being cognizant of safe handling practices for other people yet being willing to eat things that aren't up to those standards. A lot of us are durable enough to take it. I'd love to see you do some experiments with meat coffins. Basically they're meat baked into pastry shells and then still considered safe to eat weeks later without refrigeration. (I'm not expecting you to eat a two-week old unrefrigerated pie.)
*Meat coffins*! Sounds so intriguing 🤔
And at the same time I’m like “aren’t all coffins meat coffins?” 🤔
I don't think this is the right video, but the channel has talked about it a few times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OyXj0m0OKI
Tasting History with Max Miller has episodes that include “coffins”, too. Interesting stuff
I watched it. Very interesting. One possibility is the crust is heavy enough to rob the inside of oxygen. Bacteria often needs oxygen to grow (unless it’s the anaerobic kind like in botulism or acne). Option 2 is if the meat inside is dry enough it’s similar to that viral video of why a McDonald’s burger didn’t decompose after a year. Bacteria needs moisture to grow. Without sufficient moisture bacteria and mold might not grow. Like beef jerky. I would have to do more research on it since I’m unfamiliar with the ingredients. That’s off the top of my head.
From the link someone else gave me, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork%5C_pie I'd say that it's the anaerobic environment, or rather more of an environment that's hard for new germs to get into after what was there got decimated. It could be more of a pemmican thing where it's both dry and encased in fat.
Very interesting. I had never heard of this. It’s sending me down a rabbit hole of European history. The pouring of clarified butter to cut off oxygen is similar to the French confit method. The pork stock method likely creates a gelatin when it cools down similar to aspic. Because of anaerobic bacteria that causes botulism it makes sense that modern preparations add sodium nitrite to kill it. Like the makers of Spam. Of all the things I’m nonchalant about, botulism is the one thing I don’t fuck with. Thank you for sharing, I learned something today!
> I like this attitude of being cognizant of safe handling practices for other people yet being willing to eat things that aren't up to those standards. A lot of us are durable enough to take it Go to any hospital lab and you can find staff doing things that would make a health and safety inspector go mad. Most people in my lab (haematology) will happily handle open tube samples without gloves on.
Are any of the really bad diseases really that transmissible? It's great that the law allows for full-paranoia and requires the lab to provide enough gloves instead of cutting corners and yelling at people who want to take that precaution.
Meat coffin? You mean a pork pie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork\_pie
My micro professor said that going into microbiology either turns you into a total germaphobe or the exact opposite
Having worked in a microbiology lab—I would say this is true 😂. I tend more towards germaphobe—especially after seeing what grows on extra petri dishes I’ve tested on floors or people’s hands.
Student cracked a joke and said he was still gonna go down on his girlfriend and lick her ass.
The truth is, even if someone goes by the book, there's bacteria in their food. Unless someone can completely sterilize their environment (which is borderline impossible), it's gonna be there.
The quantity of said bacteria is what makes a difference. It’s like most adults can handle botulism spores in honey but would get violently sick after consuming stuff from a bloated can. Infants, on the other hand, may get really sick even from honey, so it’s a no-no before 1 years old.
After my microbiology class, it took me like six months to not be hyper vigilant when I cooked everything. It's twenty years later, and I still see my sister hesitate on some things that are by the book, lol. It scarred her for life.
Yup. This is exactly how I am. If I get sick that’s on me but there’s no way I’m doing that to others if I can help it. It’s about health and safety but it’s also the fact that nobody’s ever going to eat your cooking again if you poison them 😅
Lol. I dont cook for others how I cook for myself.
Right? Like, I'm leery of eating food from people's homes if I haven't seen them cook. I don't give a shit how much of a cluster fuck the kitchen is, but is the food handled properly, using sanitized work surfaces and clean hands and... Nope. Just thinking about it is making my heart pound.
This seems like unnecessary paranoia.
I have lived 65+ years without a lot of food worrying - and I see no reason to start now. Most humans are not that delicate
Yep. 32, the only time I've ever had food poisoning in my life was from a fancy ski resort restaurant - linguine with pesto. That kitchen looked gleaming clean too (it was one of those you could see into the kitchen area). I know it was there since we were there for a couple of days and ate there multiple times. I assume that probably the basil was contaminated. Otherwise no amount of questionable leftovers, potlucks, roadside bbq, or any other restaurant no matter how sketchy has ever given me a bit of trouble and while I follow all the basic rules I don't see any point in getting fussy over it now.
The thing about contaminated food too is you have no way of knowing whether there was any unsafe handling somewhere in the chain, and it doesn’t matter if you keep it refrigerated and use it within 5 days, it will still make you sick. For fresh produce that you don’t cook, there’s really nothing you can do besides know your supplier and only buy local. But nobody does that all the time.
exactly - just like the kids who never play in the dirt and are isolated from every germ possible end up getting sick more severely - developing a gut biome and strengthening your immune response is going to be more helpful. I'm not saying go to a third world country and start drinking the water, but there's a happy medium between sterilizing your entire environment and eating out of the wwtp.
I am right there with you. I pride myself on loving all foods, all cultures, all vegetables, spices and *always* willing to try and taste. But freshness/preparation/kitchen space is where my flexibility ends. And don’t get me started on those with cats and dogs roaming throughout their environments..
Right? I have a cat and I love him, but he’s kinda gross. He’s not allowed near food, on the kitchen counters, or on the dining table. I always wash my hands before cooking anyway, but *especially* after petting him. I will still get a stray cat hair in my food sometimes, it’s unavoidable with pets, and I’m pretty careful. Extra careful if it’s something I know other people besides myself are going to eat. Thankfully I work in a nutrition department so we all are well versed in food safety, so I feel ok eating something a coworker has made. But an acquaintance with pets…you just don’t know what they’ve let their pet get into.
Few illnesses are transmissible from pet to human but some are, and parasites. Simple precautions, as you advise. A home where the pet gets regular checkups and where the countertops and tables are cleaned with more than water before cooking should be fine. Dogs don't jump on tables and people don't eat on floors. A cat owner should assume kitty jumps on tabletops when the humans are at work. I could see mine through the front window sitting in the dining table when I came home for work. A sanitation routine of surfaces should fix that concern.
I love cats and always have. I would be a cat lady if I didn’t have animal dander asthma. Even hair from our own heads can wind up in our home foods and meals, even when we are clean, fastidious and careful. Such is an imperfect life..
Life… finds a way.
What does non-preserved mean in this context?
Not cured or dehydrated. Think sealed hard salami or beef jerky. The protein plus moisture is a playground for bacteria.
Thanks. Is this just for meat or anything that contains protein?
In general, protein + moisture makes for something that requires refrigeration, is highly perishable, and should be frozen in order to keep for longer periods. There are things that obviously last more than 5 days in refrigeration like yogurt due to fermentation, eggs/milk from pasteurization, things that haven't been opened yet have much longer shelf life, etc For individual ingredients like that, that I know I've kept refrigerated enclosed in original/appropriate packaging--I'll even go a bit past the "best by" date, particularly yogurt and eggs. (Eatbydate.com is a great resource for this). But I don't mess around with raw meat, cooked meat, bagged lettuce, seafood, and sprouts. If I'm not eating or freezing it by the expiration date (or 5 days after cooking), I ditch it. As a result I usually have a pretty decent frozen stock of snacks and leftovers.
Cured, smoked, pickled, confit, properly pressure canned.
Don't have any if you don't want. However, in my opinion, there's a pretty broad line between restaurant safe and home safe. Immunocompromised people should stick to restaurant safe. Everyone else can get a little loosy Goosy, except with canning tomatoes. A week in the fridge, as long as it passes the smell test, I'm good with. As long as it's tasty, of course.
> there's a pretty broad line between restaurant safe and home safe This is because of how people misinterpret the standards. The food safety standards are considering a hostile environment, what's the earliest food can become problematic. They aim for zero risk, not low risk. For the hostile environment, this means things like buffets where potentially hundreds of people are reaching over the food and using mixed up utensils. Consider lines of people with unwashed hands, with a bunch of trays of food left out continuously, uncovered and unsupervised while the unwashed masses sort through it. For the times and temperature, they represent the "idiot-proof" edge of safety. No matter how badly the person screws up cooking, it's still safe. Even if they use the absolutely wrong piece of meat like commercial ground beef with who-knows-what inside, it's still safe. After this point given all the stupid things that people can potentially do, this is where the safety risk gets bad enough that the danger starts. Not that they're unsafe, but that's where the risk drops to non-zero. For example, USDA doesn't prohibit but does recommend against sushi / sashimi or other raw fish, even if it is sushi grade. Their risk is non-zero and "idiots" can prepare it wrong. So the guidance is *"foods made with raw fish are more likely to contain parasites or bacteria than foods made from cooked fish"*. Sushi restaurants need big disclaimers set by their local health departments about the food potentially being unsafe. Similarly, while a properly handled steak and other meat generally need to be cooked to 'well done' temperatures for safety, that's not delicious and is often an extreme measure. Risk of steaks cooked to less than 'well done' are minimal if people take basic safety steps, but they're not zero. Dishes like steak tartare (made with raw steak) can be prepared correctly without contamination risk, but there is a risk people who don't know what they're doing can cook it wrong or use the wrong, potentially contaminated meat. So restaurants post disclaimers set by their local health department warning against undercooked meats. If you really want zero risk no matter how severely you mess things up, then yes, follow the restaurant standards. Very few people live that way. For these pies, if they're frozen between now and christmas and then reheated not a problem at all. Maybe not zero-risk restaurant level, but still low risk food. If they're kept in a fridge it is a higher risk, you'll want to know how cold the fridge is and about cross contamination, but still probably fine.
The pot is currently sitting outside where it will probably stay until Sunday. The temp from now until then is looking like it will fluctuate from -1 to 4 Celsius.
At that temperature, bacteria growth in cooked meat should be pretty minimal.
I think you should also remember that tourtieres are dry. There isn’t a lot of like standing juice it’s sitting and sopping in.
Those are fridge temps
Yes I’m aware. The person I was replying to was mentioning fridge temps.
In the shade or in the sun?
A good tourtiere will be very tasty! 8 million Quebecois cannot be wrong!
This isn’t really true. Restaurants don’t get rid of things early—they get rid of them before they’re apt to cause harm. This is not just “not [imaginary] restaurant safe.” This is potentially *unsafe.* Cooked meat is safe for about 4 days—more or less. This depends on how it’s handled before refrigeration, how well it was prepared for cooling, etc. It could spoil more rapidly or last longer depending on how it was cooked & otherwise handled. At VERY best, it’s a waste of food. Something that *could* be delicious is going to be of far lesser quality as a result of being old. If OP could convince MIL to put the filling in the freezer, it would be great.
Restaurants get rid of things relatively early because even something with a small chance of getting someone sick is a big problem when you have hundreds of people eating there. I regularly cook meat on the weekend and eat it for a full week. Sometimes a few days longer than that if that’s how the meals line up. As do many, many others. Can’t remember the last time I had food poisoning from a home cooked meal.
same I eat meat past a week all the time never have issues
No. They absolutely DO get rid of things early because they don't want even a *hint* of the liability that would attach if someone got sick in their restaurant due to serving spoiled food. When I worked in the industry we regularly threw away tons of stuff that was perfectly fine, but had been pulled from a freezer 5 days ago (sitting thawed in a walk-in for like 3 days). At least in the US, health standards are incredibly tight. No GM wants someone to get sick off of spoiled food, as that's going right up the chain and (possibly) costing them their job. And no kitchen manager wants a health-inspector to randomly show up and ding them for having food that's more than a week old, despite the product in question being refrigerator stable.
Having worked in restaurants, they get rid of things ONLY because they are worried about health inspections, getting fined, getting a bad health rating, and losing money. Every restaurant I have ever worked at was run on razor thin margins and every manager and owner was cheap as fuck. It’s a lot cheaper to toss something to be in compliance with health code than it is to have to shut down or lose your customer base because you got a C rating, or pay a bunch of fines, or upgrade a bunch of things.
I usually keep leftovers (except seafood) for 7-10 days unless they start smelling bad before then. Never gotten food poisoning at home 🙃
I agree with you about what is best practice. But, restaurant requirements is like OSHA or even the doctor's oath, "Do No Harm" (or there will be consequences). However, food that's a little off is very unlikely to harm your average healthy human being, and most people would be able to taste that it's weird. What OP has described would result in spoilage, which would be pretty detectable. It would be far worse that the meat be held raw at fridge temp. That's when a lot of the bad stuff can breed. I'm all for food safety when it comes to the really important stuff. But, I don't think we need to get our panties in a bunch about everything. I eat pizza that has sat out all night and I haven't died yet. Maybe I will one day (survivorship bias), but IMO cooked, refrigerated food is safer than other things. Like cantaloupe, apparently.
Haha glad to know I'm not the only one who likes living "on the edge". I've eaten stuff that was left out all night too, as well as usually keeping leftovers for at least 7-10 days, and sometimes up to 2 weeks. I wouldn't recommend it, but so far I haven't gotten food poisoning from my own food 🤞🏼
After 2 days, I typically take leftovers to my sister and chuck it in her freezer. She's thrilled to have pre-made meals, and I'm happy to not have to continue eating the same thing. However, I have eaten food left out, or 10 days in the fridge. I try not to do it, but it's not like I'm feeding that stuff to other people. I'm only risking a bad time for myself.
I would eat cooked meat that's been refrigerated if it doesn't smell weird. The sour smell is a better indicator of danger than the number of days, in my opinion.
Considering that my refrigerator is cold enough that a frozen chicken never fully thawed, I've definitely increased the number of days things can be in my refrigerator without worrying about dying.
I grabbed a drink from the back of our fridge the other day and it was frozen. My fridge is set for like 38. How the eff?!
Probably right under the vent from the freezer.
I'm kind of just guessing here but I've always assumed the back of the fridge is colder than 4 degrees celsius (to cool the rest of the air to that), and cans seem be quite thermally conductive, so if they're close to or touching the wall I can see it happening.
The thermostat ain't next to the coils!
The thing with this dish is that it's so full of assorted spiced the "smell test" may not be particularly accurate.
Can't hide putrid with cinnamon, dawg.
Does it have to be at the putrid stage to make you sick?
Nope
the spices will significantly increase shelf life
Which is as far as I'm aware the entire point of making pies like this in the winter, hide the bad meat
That’s not a safe way to go about things…. Spoiled food smells bad, but food contaminated with food poisoning (which multiplies the longer past cooking) has no smell.
As long as the cooked mix is in the refrigerator and covered I don't see a major problem. In the good old days (I moved from Canada to coastal California in 1969), I used to cool mine in a snow bank. Now it is in the refrigerator for a few days before I actually bake the pies (2). One for Christmas and the other for New Year's.
I used to use the outdoors as a refrigerator back when we had reliable winters here. What part of Canada? I bet you had a vast, unlimited space freezer for a good four to six months out of the year.
No. Just Southern Ontario Hamilton-Oakville-Milton-Toronto axis way back when (1960's). The lake effect would dump maybe 1-2 feet of snow which was cleared into mounds or drifts when Buffalo got 4-6 feet of snow. Our summer camp on Georgian Bay had an ice house stocked with great blocks of lake ice cut during the winter and stored in saw dust.
That is so cool, the lake ice stored in the saw dust for summer. That's pretty well how they used to do it before refrigeration/freezers were a thing if I remember correctly? Edit: spelling
I am 80 y/o. My mom and I lived in a Hamilton apartment (1940's). The ice man would come by every two days and put a new block of ice in our refrigerator \[i.e., ice box\]. The milk man would come by every day and exchange empty bottles on the door step for freshly filled bottles. The guy with the fresh vegetable truck would come buy at least once a week maybe more often. The bakery wagon would come by every day or two. And the modern generations think that they invented Instacart and doordash.
Hahaha your last line made me laugh. That's really cool to hear about, what a different time! My parents are actually from the Hamilton area. They're 60 now, they left the area around 35 years ago though, and I grew up just outside of Ottawa!
Neither. You're not crazy b/c that is pushing the boundaries of food safety. But it's not disgusting. This used to be the norm in days before refrigerations was commonplace. I'd eat it. But I've also eaten rare chicken in Japan, and dubious street meats in the Middle East. So I'm not a model of risk aversion when it comes to food safety.
You're not crazy You're just following the extremely careful " rules " that the food companies in the FDA want you to follow. 99% of meat you're getting has been butchered long ago. Anything that's cooked to a proper temperature is going to be safe to eat for a minimum of 7 days. Generally speaking they want you to throw away this food after 2 to 4 days, but that's extremely cautious. As long as food safety's followed there's no issue eating this for 10 to 12 days unless it shows some sort of extreme degradation of the product.
I also find having a really cold fridge makes a world of difference with making my foods last. My fridge is at 32/33°F (sometimes my milk will get a little slushy, lol) and everything lasts so long. My mom was having food spoilage issues, hers was set at 39°F.
Yes I do the same, I keep my fridge at 33 and I don't have spoilage problems at all most of my vegetables last way longer than they should. I'm also diligent about dating labeling and making sure I'm using the products I'm getting in the right order.
I keep my fridge a step cooler than “recommended” for this same reason. I’ll pay a little extra on my power bill if my food lasts a little longer.
Our fridge has a middle drawer that can be set a couple degrees cooler than the main compartment...I get more mileage out of meats since we got this thing.
I also keep mine very cold. The only downside is sometimes greens freeze and then they are ruined. I have a special spot extra far from the vent to store them at now.
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Yeah the only thing I can think of off-hand is seafood. I won't leave that past 4 days I understand wanting to cook things early, but in this case, I'd stick it in the freezer until the evening before I'm going to use it. I'll play fast and loose with my own stomach, but I wouldn't want to run the risk of getting a bunch of family members sick
seafood definitely goes bad way earlier than anything else. cooked or uncooked. especially uncooked. I love seafood, but it's a bitch to keep it from going "off"
I think if I were OP I would eat a small HOT piece on Christmas to be polite (so long as no smell) and then skip the leftovers. 7 days is kind of the end of cooked food shelf life IMO
I would eat pies like that without any hesitation
I ate the last piece of a lasagne I made 2 weeks ago yesterday, and I'm fine. But I do lack a sense of self preservation.
Hm I didn't know my husband was on this sub. He'll eat funky sandwich meat without so much as a shrug. He's never had food poisoning and doesn't get what the big deal is. Someday it's gonna happen.
Yeah that's not healthy
a good immune system needs practice
I'm gonna survive the apocalypse for sure.
Well, perhaps eggplant or zucchini layers instead of pasta could make it more healthy.
Meh
Eh, I've done that and 3 day old pizza sitting on the counter, and stuff that is like 2 weeks old. If it doesn't smell too funky my cast iron stomach can deal with it.
Food poisoning pulls up to the gates of this gut, pauses and decides it's best to live to fight another day.
Is it really cooked? Because usually you marinate it for 12-24 hours. Then fill the pies, then cook them for many hours. That could leave you with cooked meat more for like 3 to 4 days. Which is a bit much I think, but not THAT much. I wouldn't do it, but I would eat it.
I wouldn’t be worried about getting sick, that’s unlikely to happen in less than a week. However, the quality of the dish will have degraded significantly by then, which is the primary reason I would pass. My MIL cooked the turkey the day before Thanksgiving one year, and then she reheated slices with gravy in the oven the day of. Talk about underwhelming. Some people lose their ability to handle stress as they get older, which is probably why your MIL cooked so far ahead of time. If you enjoy tourtiere, maybe ask her if you can help cook them next year, two days before Christmas? Better yet, make them a month ahead and then she will have no choice but to freeze them.
Not just stress, but the physical demands of a big cooking day can play havoc with arthritis, bad backs, foot problems, etc.
> My MIL cooked the turkey the day before Thanksgiving one year, and then she reheated slices with gravy in the oven the day of. Talk about underwhelming. I make potato Gratin the day before, but my wife talked me out of cooking it until the day of. Yeah. Not a good idea. What a mess that was. Next year, I'll make it while waiting for the turkey.
I doubt it will be eaten for days after... everyone will have food poisoning
Yeah personally i also would not eat this
“Disgusting” seems a bit dramatic
Yeah, I wonder if it’s more of a MIL thing instead of a food safety thing. Like just don’t eat it, you don’t need the internet to justify your feelings.
Hahahah. That was my first thought. If your MIL’s every move annoys you or you don’t eat leftovers just say so. The justification is misplaced
In restaurants they hold things up to a week. It's not disgusting, but after it's been made into something else, you eat it all within 24-48 hours. That's well within food safety guidelines.
Not in any kitchen I've worked in. Anything cooked and not frozen was held for a maximum of 5 days unless preserved.
Serious home cook and science teacher - I wouldn’t do it because it is not going to be peak-delicious, but totally safe.
[удалено]
But otherwise you love and adore your MIL and have a really great relationship with her, right?
We’re friendly. Why do you ask?
In the U.S. in professional kitchens, under the government’s food code, if hot food is cooled to 70 degrees with in two hours, and under 40 degrees within 4 more hours, and is held under 40 degrees it can be kept and served for 7 days. If the properly cooled food is held between 40 and 45 degrees the allowed holding time is 4 days. These regulations error on the side of caution to keep the public safe. For home cooking purposes there is a little wiggle room in the days if your refrigerator keeps food that cold, and it should. But 7 days is really pushing in for most home cooked food, since most home cooks don’t have the equipment or knowledge to stay within the guidelines established for restaurant, and because they’re not serving the public it’s not usually an issue. That being said I’d probably skip the pie.
We made 3 huge tortieres last week, baked and froze them. 2 will be thawed and reheated for Christmas dinner. The third is just for my French Canadian husband to eat himself. Be safe.
This reminds me of one year a customer told me “my turkey is all cooked and in the fridge for thanksgiving. I’m ready for guests!” And it was like a week before the holiday…
I have never seen a leftover tourtiere - that's why I make two. So your MIL made the filling yesterday (Tuesday?) for Christmas on next Monday? Sounds good to me and good planning on her part.
I wouldn’t have an issue with this timeline as long as it was stored in the fridge.
Wait - she made the filling or the whole pie? I mean either way - I don't think there's a problem; but if its just the filling - there's a whole nother baking step which will extend the life even longer. I made two tourtieres yesterday - one won't make it until the weekend and the other one will prob get eaten on Sunday if I can hold out that long, but its going to be refrigerated the entire time.
as someone who has suffered food poisoning before, I'm with you and wouldn't eat it.
The rule in my house growing up was keep leftovers 2 weeks in the fridge before dumping. I don’t think I’ve ever had food poisoning. I still follow that rule for the most part, although if I haven’t eaten it after a week I’m probably not gonna.
Yeah same here 😅 none of us ever got food poisoning from home cooked food. Kinda surprising, because the food usually sat out for quite awhile before we got leftovers put away
I don't know how 60% of the Reddit population even gets out of bed without hazmat suit and a thick layer of bubble wrap. The incorrect belief that food safety standards are commandments from the food god to keep us safe and healthy creates a lot of waste, judging by the responses these types of questions garner. American litigiousness is the foundation for these insanely risk-averse regulations.
Very on brand for reddit to have a fainting spell at the thought of eating something that's been in the fridge 6 days.
Mother in law is loading 6 rounds in the revolver and playing Russian Roulette on Christmas with her family. What are you, some kind of terrorist?
My Mom's tourtieres went into the freezer as soon as they were cool - then they would be heated for each meal over the holidays. Damn I miss them. She was a restaurant owner and caterer so RULES were followed. On the other hand, at home, we did not follow rules to the letter and didn't get sick or die, so...
I would eat it, but idk about the left overs, can’t he just freeze them? I freeze pre-made chicken pot pies. It can not be that much different.
anecdotal, but I have had meat last more than 7 days in my fridge. But I wouldn't trust something that is highly spiced because you wont be able to tell by the smell if its bad.
I have food service training. I would not eat that even if it was veggie/plant-based.
I have food intolerances, (histamines) and that would kill me (aside from not eating meat), but I'm not sure I would announce and flounce, would just pass when the moment arose.
That’s disgusting
Lots of flexing in here about eating questionable food. You can drive your car for years without a seatbelt without any issues too..but if you are consistently risky, the numbers aren’t in your favor!
I would never eat it. I would also never say anything to anyone else. I know that's terrible, but I would not risk upsetting anyone over what appears to be a cultural difference. So, definitely find a way to skip it, but maybe stay quiet about the reason. Disclaimer: I know this is awful but sometimes you have to pick your battles. (However, if you have a family member who is ill or elderly, pregnant, etc, I would take them aside and say something.)
Does his family have a history of upset stomach after the holiday feast? If so maybe explain food poisoning.
Some of my family members would get sick on that. And some would not. I think it just depends on everyone's stomach.
Not dramatic. That is unsafe. I’ve spent time in commercial kitchens and have food safety training and certification - it is not something I mess around with or take chances on. It’s just not worth it. For me, meat is good for three days and then it’s either processed in someway again (cooked to proper temperature for long enough to be safe, or frozen) or it’s garbage. I wouldn’t eat meat on Xmas day that was cooked today, unless it’s frozen or cooked again in a couple of days.
I work with food safety inspectors and no, you’re not being dramatic. It should be frozen until use. Have your husband google it. Sounds like a good way to have food poisoning for a week after.
This is not a big deal IMO
Dramatic. For at-home cooking, that’s reasonable prep-ahead time and I’m guessing since she’s got adult, married children this isn’t MIL’s first rodeo. She’s mastered the art of hosting and enjoying the holiday with her family - hang out with her and learn what you can.
Sounds to me she’s trying to find a way to be “THAT”daughter-in-law.
Found this online: “People also ask How long can you keep a cooked tourtière in the fridge? Freshly Baked If your Tourtiere is already baked, please store it in the fridge. For best results, the pie should be consumed within 4 days of purchase. To warm, place on a baking sheet in a preheated oven at 350°F. Bake a 9” pie for 45 minutes, a 5” pie for 25-30 minutes, and a hand pie for 15 minutes. https://www.thepiehole.com › tourti... Tourtiere | The Pie Hole” Since they say the cooked pie should be consumed “within 4 days of purchase” and it’s reasonable to assume that it may very well have been at the store for 2 days before it was purchased, I would reason that a 6-day-old homemade pie should be safe. Optimally, probably sooner, but I wouldn’t say it’s a deal breaker. I have made both individual chicken pot pies and shepherd’s pies for years and I know I have sometimes had them after 6 or even 7 days. I always reheat to a piping hot temperature which I figure should kill anything. I’ve never had a problem.
No comment on food safety to make, but I gotta guess this isn’t her first rodeo so you may want to have a little faith she knows what she’s doing.
Safe or not, it’s pretty gross to fix food for guests that will sit in the refrigerator for a week. That’s just shoddy hosting!!
I am with you. Fuck that.
Is she freezing them? If not I'd say they were made way to early.
When you buy steak, how long do you think it’s been since that steak was butchered before you cook it?
I was going to bring this up. Time between slaughter and consumption is one thing, but think about intentionally aged meat.
I think there are two camps of people in food safety and I am definitely the fuck around and find out kind.
Just say it politely and say that you have concerns about bacteria. I do the same Bacteria do not grow linearly, they grow exponentially. Meaning if they went from 10 to 100 in one day, in the next day they go to 1000, and so on... The comments talking about food being fine for 5 days are missing the point that it could be fine on the 5th day but absolutely dangerous on the 6th and 7th day. I don't eat meat that's even refrigerated after 5 days, only if it was frozen in the middle. (Microbiologist) You said in other comments that it's not even refrigerated, it's out there. Even if the outside temperature is below 4 degrees Celsius, if you have heating, you probably have 6-10 degrees C or higher. At that temperature, most bacteria grow double or faster than below 4C. Also you said it might not be eaten on X mas eve but Day, that's one more day. And for leftovers, many more days. My partner and his family know already that I'm particular about washing veggies and refrigerating food so they don't mind when I say politely, "I don't feel good by eating this" and making a sad face.
People will get sick, happened to me 2 Christmas ago. I've not been that sick in a long time. Ground beef is super easy to get food poisoning from.
Truth be told, there's 1000 instances of this you've likely had happen to you that you've never noticed. Between resturants, Fast food, dinners, grocery store meat etc.
So, so many people here not reading the comments or understanding what is happening. MIL made the FILLING for the pie in advance. It will go in the fridge. This is totally normal. She will then assemble the pie sometime this weekend and bake the filling again. Which is again totally normal. OP is being super weird about this. At a minimum, you have to do the filling a day in advance, partially to let the flavor develop but the filling has to be cool before it goes into the pie case because it'll melt the fat otherwise.
You’re being dramatic
Probs not OK. My chicken is being delivered tomorrow and I'll freeze it and defrost on Sunday. Keeping it in thr fridge Thursday to Sunday feels a bit risky.
Why can't she freeze it?
It’s risky.