Questions bout food spoilage?

Saturday morning I woke up to find my fridge partially open and the contents room temperature. I didn't have much in there but some iced tea and butter but I had just brought home a huge batch of pasta salad along with some baked chicken and cheese and pepperoni. I have read some conflicting reports online as to whether or not the food is salvageable. I really hate to throw it all away but I really rather not get food poisoning and die. :-D

Does anyone know for sure if its ok to still eat or if I gotta toss it?

 

Good idea!...

Say would you like to come try some of this pasta salad? :-D

 

It depends on the temperature of your room.

No, seriously, though...if the pasta salad had a mayonnaise-based dressing, toss it. If it was a vinegar-based it might be ok, but it depends on what else is in it. The cheese and pepperoni should be ok, unless the cheese has started to really weep oil. I don't trust chicken left out for more than a couple of hours, so that I would probably toss. Your butter will be fine...I keep mine on the counter.

 

Tibbs is spot on, i wouldnt trust the chicken, its just not worth the risk.

 

The pasta could have soured and of course the chicken is a nono. Contrary to popular belief, it's not the mayo that goes first as it's vinegar based, it's the simple starches like potatos and pasta that go first. If in doubt then throw it out ! It's not worth it, trust me. uke :crap :-D The chicken more than anything.

 

That must be better than drinking all that Fleet eh? At least it's cheap!roflmao

 

Mayo might contain vinegar, but the main ingredients are egg yolks and oil. Oil may not spoil but egg yolks definitely will. I do agree, though, that the starches will go bad, but I'd trust them a lot further than the mayo. Personal choice, as you are absolutely correct about that last part!

 

I test stuff by eating it, just a small amount but I can usually gage it by eye, if I am unsure in the slightest I wouldn't be able to eat it anyway simply because I wouldn't fancy it knowing it's not perfect.

I'm picky but I'm not and I have an iron stomach :-D

Having said that I agree 100% with Tibbs first post.

 

I wouldn't be eating any of it except the butter. Keep in mind though I am the most paranoid person when it comes to food. My wife just rolls her eyes and chows down on three-day old left overs. She's never had food poisoning and neither have I. I would eat the chicken if it smelled ok and was made into stew with the crap boiled out of it. I've got to say though, what really scares me is stuff like this . Food that you normally eat raw.

 

I would just look at it as a good time to clean the shelves in the fridge.... Except the butter and cheese.

 

Yah! Salty butter on bread and blue cheese but not blue bread!:yum:-D

 

My wife does too . . . makes me shiver.

I agree with sibeer . . . the butter is fine regardess. Especially if it is the salted type. Even my mother would leave butter out on a regular basis, and she is a food-spoilage fanatic. I'd be leery of foods that were not cooked - especially raw chicken or pork. Raw beef I'm more lenient with - if it smells ok, then it's ok. Just make sure it is well cooked before eaten.

My granddaugher has a habit of getting her juice out of the fridge, and leaving the door open. Twice now I have found it open the morning after she was at our house. I have yet found anything spoiled.

 

Well, not really. If one buys a nice thick cut of say sirloin steak, then all one has to do is get a cast iron skillet rocket hot and sear the thing on all sides, inluding the edges. Nothing can live there after that! Then do what you wish with it, the e. coli H5N1 is usually introduced in the slaughter/grinding of the meat where someone cuts something they shouldn't have.

I would never ever eat raw pre-ground meat from a supermarket but I love my meat rare and I will go the extra mile to eat the juiciest burgers in town!:yum:drool

 

There's a more important issue to resolve here,who left the fridge open:confused

Have you finally broken my heart Dyamond and got a new boyfriend who can't close the fridge :cry

I'd close the fridge and put the toilet seat down:cry

:-D

 

I find it a little concerning that you think of the 2 in the same sentence.
Just make sure you don't mix them up.... :yum

 

Thanks everyone for the advice, I appreciate all your responses.

I took Tibbs advice and I tried the pepperoni and cheese. The pepperoni was good but after a few bites the cheese tasted kind of off, so I ditched it. I didn’t get sick so I guess it was ok, maybe it was just the flavor of the cheese. I ditched the chicken and pasta but I am sad about it because the food was so good but I got full and I couldn’t finish it that night and that’s why I brought it home with me.

Looks like your the only one who caught that LOL

No worries, Rikky, no bf yet so you are still safe :-D

Sometimes if I place something in the fridge that’s too close to the door, it will pop open eventually, so it was the fridge that’s at fault here. Yea, that’s it.. it was the fridge not me LOL

 

Phew!

It's the stupid magnetic strip around the outside of the door:confused Why don't they put something in that in that will still stick the door through a quarter inch of grime and mould?

I mean it not rocket science,neodymium people!rolleyes

 

Hmm a 1/4" grime and mould strip?roflmao and uke ing!:-D It's called due diligence folks! I know when my fridge door closes, one hears that 'snick' and if I don't hear it then I check. Simple. Neodimium? Doesn't that cause brain cancer and serious loss of hearing?:-D

 

Augie your the Jedi master of fridge closing!

One day when Yoda has given me my training and I've survived the 10 trials of the Wroshyr tree of enlightenment I shall be ready to keep food in a sealed sub ambient temperature environment.

:-D

 

Mine sometimes reopens on its own also, even when I've heard the sound of it closing. It's a problem when the fridge starts getting old and the rubber seal has been squished enough times it's not as solid as it used to be. Mostly only happens on my freezer, though, which is always a special adventure. rolleyes

 

Yeah when you have to break off all the Icebergs from around the door even though you paid a couple of hundred extra for a Ice and frost free freezer!

In my experience they stay ice free until you plug them in:-D

 

Exactly! It's even more exciting when after you've chiseled away enough ice to combat global warming for another century you discover all your food has melted. :banghead

 

Bah! Defrost your freezer every year, it ain't gonna go moo at you.:-D Actually, I find stuff at the bottom that I was gonna eat at one point but decided not after I saw it.

 

Yea my fridge is as old or older than me, I'd wager. I never have problems with the freezer just the fridge.

My grandmom had a freezer like yours, Tibbs. No matter how many times it was "shoveled" out or defrosted, it always came back with a vengence LOL We actually had to start limiting the amout of frozen foods bought just as a workaround.

 

Ours doesn't do it all the time, just if I have it too full so the door won't necessarily stay shut. LOL

 

See, we could never get the freezer too full no matter how hard we tried LOL

I have another question for you food aficionados. Looking at this recipe and part of the instructions are to bring steak to room temperature. How can one achieve that without just leaving it outside the fridge? isn't defrosting meat outside the fridge a no-no? I want to try this recipe but I don't wanna ruin the steak :confused

 

They assume the steak isn't frozen. Usually you should leave meat out on the counter 30 minutes or so before cooking to warm it up from refrigerator-cold. It won't hurt you. If you've got frozen steak, leave it to defrost in the refrigerator about 24 hours before doing it, or you can do a quick defrost by leaving it in the package and sticking it in a sink of cool water until it defrosts. If you do the water trick, you shouldn't have to let it warm before cooking.

That said, I've never had a problem defrosting meat on the counter (I actually lay mine on the flat part of my sink, because it's enamel-coated cast iron and defrosts meat in a hurry), but it's not recommended for safe consumption.

Edit:
On reading it again, it would seem you only need to leave it out for ten minutes. Either that, or he doesn't include it in the prep time.

 

Steaks really safe,it doesn't have the bacteria in such as chicken that can make you ill.

I don't agree with the way he cooks steak.You can't get ANY oil hot enough to cook steak it always burns in my experience and adds unwanted oily grease to the steak.What I do is remove the fat from the rib eye steak"My favourite steak" and cook just the fat in on a medium heat for 20 mins,not hot enough to blacken or smoke the fat just enough to reduce it down to liquid and completely coat the griddle,but not higher than the top of the ridges or it won't sear the steak.

The reason you should do this is that the time it takes to cook the steak isn't enough time to cook the fat,most of the fat should be removed IMO I hate having it on my plate I always end up eating bits of it.

Next I get the cast iron griddle as hot as possible,turn the cooker to 11 until its smoking like mad.You can't really burn the this fat like oil,it smokes a bit but just adds extra flavour to the steak.

I usually cook for 5-6 mins turning 4 times to put a criss cross pattern on the steak,1inch or so steak done medium.

If you can get hold of it get some peppercorn sauce or horseradish:yum

Or even ketchup of course don't listen to those steak snobs the sugary sweet sauce is great with steak.

 

That is a great technique Dyamond! One can leave a thick steak like that out for an hour though it's a bit warm these days. Tibbs is right, defrost first and then you're good to go. One thing you may want to use is a thermometer at the earliest time stated, I hate eating leather! Another method is(and better IMO) is to feel your meat(shaddup all!), the pad under your thumb is the key! Once you get that then nothing can stop you!

Man, a thick rib-eye eh? You know how to hurt a guy or treat him real nice!:yum:drool:-D

 

Thanks a bunch guys!! I knew I could count on you all and that thumb trick, augie, is genius because don't and have never had a meat thermometer and would hate guessing. Part of the reason why I have always shied away from cooking steaks really.

Ahh, it's only for me, no guy is worthy yet :-D but I have been told more than once that my husband will be lucky because I can actually cook, like from scratch, and have it actually taste good! LOL
I do have a tendency to force my good friends and co-workers to be my guinea pigs for my new cooking/baking recpies and 99% of the time it is a success. I just recently subjected my co-workers to this really unconventional brownie recipe that a friend sent to me and it was a definite hit. I stopped telling people what the ingredients were before they tasted them because they didn't want to taste them by hearing what they were made of :-D

 

Just realize this m'lady, don't ever cook a steak to the pinky feel, it's probably charcoal by then. :-D

 

You have to be sitting on a throne and wearing a crown to be able to do that.

Did you mean No Know or Know No? :-D

Anyway, it's too late now.
After reading all of this, EveryThing is spoiled!!!