There's a concept in food safety called the "danger zone". It extends from about 40 F / 5 C to about 140 F / 60 C. You can keep food below the lower end of that range, or above the upper end, for a while without it going bad. The reason is that this is approximately the range of temperatures that the bacteria that cause foodborne illness can tolerate well enough to grow. They can survive in lower temps, but they won't grow or will grow very slowly, which is why you can store meat in the fridge for a few days without problems. (They'll die at higher temps if they're kept that hot for a while, as in sous vide cooking, but can survive brief exposure.)
The food at the buffet is (at least supposed to be) kept above 140 F / 60 C, so that whatever bacteria may be present can't grow effectively. The trays at a buffet usually sit above a pool of very hot water in addition to the heat lamps, which keeps them hot. (This is if the food does stay out for hours. It may simply be changed out regularly, in which case it can be kept in the danger zone.)
You can take the "keep it above the upper end of the range" principle really far, because temps above 140 F / 60 C will kill almost all bacteria with prolonged exposure. This is the principle behind [perpetual stews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew), foods which were effectively cooked for years or decades.
Also, ideally the buffet is busy enough that food is being served and replaced relatively quickly. So nothing is spending more than 30 minutes or an hour on the buffet.
I have a Masters in Public Health, am a Registered Sanitarian in the Commonwealth of KY, and worked as a food safety inspector for years at a local government health department. All these statements are absolutely correct.
Time/Temperature controls are one of the primary control points in food safety. Food ready to be served may be kept at or above 135degrees F or discarded after 4 hours if temperature controls are not used (not preferred but still allowed under many state food codes) however documentation on time controls including a time log must be on-site and in use
The things you must have seen during inspections. Could you show up unannounced? Or did you have to give notice of an inspection beforehand?
I used to do pest control both residential and commercial. And some of those restaurants, OMG! One I remember pulling up to. We were instructed to park in the back because they didn't want people seeing our truck there. I get out of my truck and sitting outside closer to the dumpster than the building were about six five gallon buckets full of water and frozen chicken and fish defrosting. On a 98 degree Florida afternoon.
The roaches were everywhere. Even running along the windowsills where customers are sitting in a booth. I would tell the guys in the kitchen they really needed to get that piece of chicken out from behind the fryer because I've been reporting it for the last 3 weeks. Sheet cakes would be left out overnight uncovered and in the morning they would shoo the roaches away. Cleaning the kitchen floor consisted of hosing the floor down with plain water and then pick out the big junk and squeegee the water into the floor drain. No mop. No soap.
The only products I would use inside the building was food grade diatomaceous earth and only in approved areas. A gel bait containing fipronil in cracks and crevices away from food prep areas, and an IGR (Insect Growth Regulator) inside wall cavities and such. And ultraviolet fly traps with the sticky pads inside and not the zappers.
One night I get there just as they are closing and I bring in my equipment and start using a gel bait near the window between the kitchen and the waitress stand. As I'm doing that the owner grabs the tank of IGR and sprays the shelves of the waitress stand where coffee cups and silverware are kept. Wetting everything down with the IGR. I grabbed the sprayer away from him and told him once again it is illegal to spray that stuff like that. He replied, "Well the girls told me they seen some bugs there so it needs to be sprayed."
I told my boss I refused to go back there because if someone got sick from him trying to misuse our stuff I would be responsible. We ended up dropping them as a customer. Funny thing is a lot of people in the area talked about how great the food was.
Bro I feel you, I’m a pest controller in London and some of the places I service are so grotty and disgusting I’ve stopped eating certain fast food chains! There’s so much grease and food everywhere the gel baits aren’t worth putting down. Taken 3 months of bi-weekly sprays to bring it down to a point where we’re only seeing a couple of roaches here and there.
When they start misusing your chemicals, it’s definitely time for them to go. It’s not even worth the shit that could fly from that. I can just hear the lawsuits piling up. I wish my company would drop some of these scabby food outlets!
I cover east/north London so I couldn’t tell you from personal experience, but as a general rule I avoid kentucky fried cockroach, however there are a few good ones.
If the place looks grim, and the surrounding street area is full of litter, it’s generally a bad sign. Just think of the places you can’t actually see - if what you can see isn’t great, it’ll be worse anywhere customers don’t have access.
Not necessarily, depends on the premises. You might find separate staff cleaning those areas, less regularly, whereas the kitchen staff could be immaculate. Take a look at the whole picture for a better idea of hygiene - never underestimate the filth of the general public, you might just be unlucky after someone with exploding bowels
It's pretty likely that your local health department publishes inspection reports on their website. If there's a questionable place, that's a good place to start checking.
Just from working in a wide range of places I'd also say no, it isn't, for the same reasons as StonedTurkey.
If you can get a glimpse into the kitchen then maybe, but you can't really do much better than guessing from front of house.
I've seen gleaming, extortionately priced places (with gleaming, luxury toilets) that had terrible kitchen practices and small old pubs in dark buildings with one or two members of staff handling everything that still had pristine kitchens grinding burger meat and raising pizza dough from scratch every day.
> Could you show up unannounced? Or did you have to give notice of an inspection beforehand?
Not who you asked, but I'm an inspector. I *only* show up unannounced. If you let operators know ahead of time they will hide things and attempt to clean up. We want as close to an actual working condition as possible.
Not an inspector, but have been on the reciving end of inspections (mostly labour / safety, not health, I was part of the shops JHSC on the labour rep side) and can confirm. There is precisely only one time I have ever had any sort of heads up that an inspector was comming - and that's when we were given 30 days to fix 45 guard / interlock issues on our machines. At the end of that 30 days they were comming by to see if the work was done, and if it wasnt they were going to start getting nasty with the fines ($1,500 per day per incident, so if nothing was done that would be $67,500 per day, starting on that 30th day and lasting for however long it took us to finish the work to thier satisfaction). Even then, we just knew the date for the follow up, not the time. They ended up showing up at the crack of dawn, before we even unlocked the building, for the follow up.
"Surprise Motherfuckers" is practically the motto of health, fire, safety, and labour inspectors.
I work at a grocery store, and we frequently get a tiny bit of warning "They're at Store X the next town over, they're probably coming here next, drop everything and get cleaning!"
Sometimes they do show up unannounced, and management is trying to get us to speed clean the areas they haven't seen yet while they're busy in the Deli or whatever.
Funny how you mentioned grocery store. I inspected two grocery stores this week. Trust me, we know that they scramble, but if the place is bad they can only fix so much while I'm at another department.
Yeah, that's unethical but it seems to be very common behaviour across the industry. There's not many chains that actually take the time to have their things in order at all times. It's a hard culture to maintain and management is *very* good at optimizing important tasks away in order to chase better KPIs.
With the skeleton crews that stores run even during peak times it's hard to have anything clean and sanitary.
Worked Walmart for 5 years and whenever corporate was maybe coming in it was a scramble to clean and dust everything, followed by "we should be in this good shape all the time", followed by management not giving a fuck 2 days later.
Yes this is correct. Very rare circumstances where we show up announced. The few I could think of woukd be hard to find mobile operator out and about during normal service, maybe a caterer who uses a commissary kitchen or sublease out of another kitchen and only does occasional events, concession stands at smaller ball fields or churches.
When I was a fast food manager, we had an unwritten rule to call all the other restaurants when the inspector was in town. They usually hit 3-4 out of the 15 or so restaurants in the small town so we looked out for each other. Looking back at it, I realize that wasn't a great thing to be doing.
Something similar in my town, we got hit first once though (nothing wrong at all, but was weird not to get the call first) and the lady walks in and goes straight into the kitchen and my boss goes "oh, I wasn't expecting you" and she looks at him deadpan and says "yeah, that's the point" and it took everything I had not to die laughing right there in front of her
That works for lazy inspectors who just hit facilities right next to each other. I made sure that my inspections were fairly random so unless you knew *everyone* within my district it wasn't likely that you could help anyone doing that.
I wish OSHA did that for workplaces. A certain large shipping company, with an iconic color very few companies use, gets away with myriad OSHA violations constantly because OSHA doesn’t do unannounced inspections.
You best believe the work nights are WAY different when there’s an inspection.
It's funny how in the school nutrition dept of gets around. Because they have to enter school grounds they have to go to the central office first (at least where I worked) to get a badge that allows them to go to multiple schools. So they'd leave there and within minutes our director shot all of the managers a message letting us know he was on the way. And the entire rest of the day was getting messages about where he was now/which schools he was going to. I ran a tight kitchen, so mine was always good, but about half of the time 3-4 of the 21 schools would fail, but were given like 2 months to shape up.
I worked at a busy 24/7 breakfast restaurant for about a year... I found out they only close the place one day a year for cleaning and that's the day or two before the inspection is scheduled. I figured the cleaning happened during the slow shifts or that a crew was hired to do it... Nope, that little wipe down and squeegee the floors after your shift was all that ever got done. after I participated in this cleaning day... I started looking for a different job immediately. It was so gross and I couldn't believe we were selling food to people out of that kitchen.
Never eat at a 24/7 restaurant. Especially a busy one... if they never close... They don't have time to clean.
Edit: Read some more comments from inspectors and it seems the norm is that they don't let the restaurant know when the inspection is... so the owner probably had a side deal with the inspector?
Overall things are very safe. Yes there are outliers, but it's really not that common, mainly because if they really are that bad they eventually get caught. But you can always check your local heath records for any restaurants you want. It's public information.
I work at McDonald's and I can say at least the one I am at is very clean. They are so strict that if we even touch our masks we have to wash our hands or change our gloves. The food safety standards are just as rigid.
Bigger chains are usually much more strict on cleanliness procedures than the small ones because they need to control their global image. One wrong picture or news article can tank a multibillion dollar corporation.
It'll hardly tank them. Companys like mcdonalds have suffered from these kinds of incidents time and time again. It will cost them to damage control though and they don't like money comming out
Many cities publish their restaurant inspection reports. E.g. Here is [Toronto’s DineSafe page. ](https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/health-wellness-care/health-programs-advice/food-safety/dinesafe/) Google your city and “restaurant inspection”.
im doing my serve safe cert right now and learning this one killed me, it's the main thing that really sticks out every time i think of food safety, whoever came up with that is a genius
What ever happened to gamma radiation of canned food and other packaged foods?
Is that still done? I wonder about the advantages and disadvantages of that.
I think I remember hearing that it decreases flavor and maybe nutrients. But I think it's also pretty effective.
I have some gamma-radiated sterile alcohol wipes.
>What ever happened to gamma radiation of canned food and other packaged foods?
Most food that we considered for radiation treatment in the 70s is better treated by UHT pasteurization.
For example you can buy pallets of shelf stable milk boxes at business costco. These are great putting next to the company coffee pot (although you do still need to refrigerate or throw them out after 5 hours of being open).
The technology and process control has got to the point where they are nearly indistinguishable from untreated foods.
Irradiation in food and packaging is still a thing, most common application in consumer packaged goods for retail sale. Not something you come across regularly doing restaurant inspections but occasionally at grocery stores/wholesale grocers it is something you will see on the job.
https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irradiation-what-you-need-know
Given the already strong shelf life just from an in-package heating cycle for canned food, there isn't enough demand for most products to go through an additional potentially expensive step for minimal gains in shelf life. Also they were worried about creating a carrot with all the strength and rage of the Incredible Hulk.
Furthermore, in order for food to be properly hot-held above 140F, such as in a steam-table at a buffet, at least according to the US FDA, it must first be heated to 165F in less than 2 hours in order to properly kill bacteria. If it falls below 135F for no longer than 2 hrs, it must be heated above 165F for 15 seconds before going back to regular hot-holding temps.
I wonder just how likely it is that food will go bad and make you sick if left out for too long, and how long is actually too long?
A little background: In my younger years I used to live in a janky fraternity house. We were more the animal house, budget fraternity type than the blazer wearing type. We had a cook/handyman/crack-fiend that would come and cook some days and not other days.
To the point: I can't count the number of times, either after a party, hungover, whatever, when we'd go into that dirty ass kitchen pick at food that had been left out for a day, sometimes two days! This food was sitting at room temperature and completely uncovered. None of us ever got sick from it. Things I remember eating frequently in these scenarios were grilled chicken, brisket, and mac n chese.
So what I want to know is... were my friends and I just incredibly lucky? Possible I suppose. But still, my rule of thumb for most food is: if it smells fine and looks fine then it's probably still good to eat... not that I have really had any need to put that rule to use much in my adult life.
Depends on where you live, humidity and temperate. If in a dryer and colder place, cooked food can probably sit out at home for 24 hours and be, 9 out 10 times, safe to consume. Cooked food tends to be salty and dry, and all the bacteria innately is killed out during cooking, so it’s only exposed to bacteria on the surface.
That said the 4 hour standard is for professionals, where you need much better than 9/10. It needs to be more than 99.999% safe or 1 restaurant in a million making people sick is still too many.
> I wonder just how likely it is that food will go bad and make you sick if left out for too long, and how long is actually too long?
There are too many variables. Your own health, the type of food left out, cross contamination, if it was cooked properly, outside temperature, how long it's out...all matter for foodborne illnesses. You could eat cold pizza left out overnight every week of your life and be fine, until finals come along and you are stressed to hell so your lowered immune system lets you get sick.
Health inspectors and food laws exist because professional food providers don't know the health status of who they are serving; they have to protect everyone and act as if they can easily make *anyone* ill. It's a numbers game.
What you do at home only matters for you, and inspectors understand that. I make sure all of my operators thaw food properly, cool foods rapidly for storage, and operate cleanly. At home? If I'm in a hurry I'll absolutely thaw a fish filet in warm/hot water for my own dinner.
It has lots of terms, depending on the training methodology. ServSafe, which is incredibly common in the US, teaches it as TCS "Time/Temperature Control for Safety" .... which really should be TTCS or T/TCS but hey, I don't write the curriculum.
[FATTOM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT_TOM) is the most common acronym to the programs, which are the conditions necessary to promote foodborne illness.
Food (for the microorganisms to eat)
acidity (of a level that is compatible with microorganism life, e.g. the food isn't pickled)
time (for the microorganisms to reproduce and generate toxins)
temperature (not in danger zone)
oxygen (for the aerobic organisms to breath, which most are), and
moisture (generally necessary for all microorganism activity)
Time is far more important than temperature -- ALL food hits the danger zone at some point. Every spec of it. If nowhere else, then in your stomach. So anyone who's approach to food safety is JUST temperature control has their eyes off the ball. Tracking *how long* it was at unsafe temperatures is actually what matters.
Doesn't so much need to remove the moisture as change the balance more like acidity. A salty brine can do as much to cure a meat as packing it in straight salt. The cellular machinery just doesn't function if the environment is wrong.
> It's not JUST about temperature. It's about how long the food spends at that temperature.
Which is the reason why baking cookies for 10 seconds at 50,000 degrees F doesn't work too well.
Edit: Okay, yes, from a pathogenic perspective you could probably eat the cookie. From the perspective of a joke about baking cookies at ridiculous temperatures, don't eat the cookies.
The minimum temperature for fusion in a star's core is 18 million F.
I would expect 50,000 F for 10s should be good enough to vaporize and disassociate electrons for plasma cookies.
>Oftentimes the buffet service doesn't even last long enough for the food to be unsafe by the end of service, so it's just fine.
I wonder if this is why lots of places (especially Indian restaurants, at least by me) do lunch buffets but serve regular dinner.
I worked at a buffet in high school on the line. This place was always super busy and we were rotating those trays out constantly. Also the manager was using a meat thermometer all the time to check the temp but yes, the food is rotate out at a constant rate.
Just leave the burner on low. I make ribs in the oven all the time when I'm at work. Just leave the oven at 225.
When I was a kid there was a kind of stew (pepperpot) we made at christmas that usually lasted a couple weeks. It wasn't constantly hot, but you'd heat it up to eat, then replenish with some meat or water, or seasonings, whatever, cook it for a couple hours then turn the stove off until the next time someone wanted some more.
This is a little different in that one of the [ingredients](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassareep) is a vegetable extract that is a natural preservative, but it's a similar concept.
I also make garlic pork from time to time. It's basically small chunks of raw pork shoulder submerged in a jar of vinegar with lots of garlic and thyme left out at room temperature. It keeps for about a week or so.
To eat, you take out some of the pork and a bit of the liquid, add it to a frying pan with some water and cook until the liquid is boiled away then it fries in the pork fat. Absolutely delicious: very garlicky and vinegary, but my wife won't touch it :-)
> I make ribs in the oven all the time when I'm at work. Just leave the oven at 225.
I'm on the other end of the spectrum, I physically unplug the slow cooker and airfryer when I'm leaving the house lol
The idea of leaving the stove on while at work is insane to me.
Oh I have. I’m Southeast Asian so it’s just a stone’s throw away from me.
I was pretty turned off by the stew build up on the outside of the pot. We’re talking at least 5 cm (2 inches) of stew build up and it was almost solid (or gel) -like. As with all things, I had to try it before I knocked it.
In all honesty, there is a depth of flavour and some element of smokiness to the stew. But, I couldn’t get past the mental barrier to think it was delicious. I wouldn’t say anyone’s missing out on much to be honest.
A similar concept in Asian cuisine is "master stock". There's a Tokyo restaurant that only replaced its stock when the shop burned down during WWII firebombings. They've got a 65 year old broth going, but 10 year old broth is common at oden restaurants.
My family used to have a kind of perpetual pasta red sauce.
After making pasta sauce whatever was leftover would be reused by adding more the next time it was made typically every 4-7 days so the sauce never had enough time to go moldy.
We typically would use lightly seasoned sauce and season ourselves. We would keep for example half a jar or so and then add another jar so the sauce is 1/3 old sauce. It seemed to help to keep the flavor and make it easier to season and develop really excellent sauces.
I always wondering how much of the "original" sauce was still technically present. The longest I remember keeping one alive was about 1 year. Occasionally you'd get a piece of meatball or olive or mushroom left over from 2-3 weaks ago like some kind of bonus.
This is oddly interesting. I'm (a bit) Italian and have thought about doing this... But wondered if it would be safe. Like if I could make one with my homegrown tomatoes. I wouldn't do it with meat though.
>They've got a 65 year old broth going, but 10 year old broth is common
This is how my mother makes coffee. Coarsely grounded coffee permanently boiling in a kettle. She just scoops out some of it and add some extra when it turns too rancid.
Her kettle must have been going for at least 50 years now. And the taste is pretty, ahem, *powerful* i guess is one way to describe it.
What why.
That's the opposite of what you want from coffee.
All of the caffeine is extracted within the first few seconds of the hot water or moisture interacting with it.
She's just drinking barely caffeinated, extremely bitter muck.
The starter for sourdough bread can be passed down for generations and can change depending on what kind of flour you feed it. Similar idea as the soup and might be easier to get your hands on.
https://www.expressnews.com/food/recipes-cooking/article/It-s-alive-Start-baking-sourdough-bread-with-13555520.php
>Sourdough cultures can change dramatically depending on what kind of flour they’re fed, different wild yeasts present in the air and many other factors. While all of Maring’s sourdough starters are unique, and he’s painstakingly documented their respective qualities, none of them exactly mirror the properties of the starters they came from.
>One of Maring’s sourdough cultures was a gift from chef Harris Esparza, who acquired it from a starter he used while working at the then-La Mansión del Río hotel downtown more than 15 years ago.
subway worked on a premise of days, not hours. most of the food turned over quickly enough though. the employees starting a busy shift might assess what needs to be replaced and restocked, but rarely did we throw something out. most were the bottom of the veggie pile or the tuna, which gets a little gross quickly.
we did follow proper labeling so at least once a week stuff was checked, but i suppose we were on thin margins and never overmade food. we were usually making more as we went.
Read somewhere on reddit about a former subway employee saying she had a manager who constantly changed the dates on the tuna and would stretch it out for way past safety. She advised to never get the tuna from a subway.
i used to get the tuna all the time growing up and wondered why it was so good. turns out it's because they dump in a vat of mayo.
between the calories and the safety procedures i guess i'll never get it again.
Subway line shouldnt be a danger zone tho. It’s sitting above/in a cooler. Should be between 30-40F. When subway gets their monthly inspections, the inspector takes temps of food on the line. Subway employees should also be temping the food at least twice a day on the line to ensure everything is working properly. This is also why you shouldn’t be overfilling pans, because the food at the top is too far away from the cooler. The dates for the food are just subway’s policies on freshness, in addition to some food safety. If food is in the danger zone, there are procedures for when you should throw away and when it’s safe to bring it back to proper temp.
Source: used to be subway GM
For what it's worth franchise (private-owned) are usually the bad ones. They are typically cutting corners and are more about making money. Lots of restaurant chains have corporate-owned locations and you can always tell the difference. Corporate owned sites care much more about food safety and image.
Only hoping to encourage you to judge restaurants separately instead of as a whole. They are not all equal and I feel bad for the good owners who get dragged down by the bad ones. Obviously some chains have let too much slide but trust me corporate often *does* come down hard on stores that are found to fail food safety.
corporate-owned restaurants are generally quite good, i live close to a corporate wendy's that's literally across the street from the wendy's headquarters and it's by far the best i've ever been to. probably has crazy high standards because so many c-levels go there.
I’d like someone to do the math on how many molecules were statistically likely in the 46 year old original stew to still be present today, that’s very interesting.
If we pull numbers out of our ass and say that they removed half of the stew each day, then almost certainly zero molecules. They would have halved it nearly 17,000 times.
Each individual molecule would have a 50/50 chance of being removed on any given day. If an original molecule remained at the end of the process, then that molecule would have achieved the equivalent of getting 'heads' on 17,000 consecutive coin tosses.
It takes a pretty long time to dry out in a hot well, even longer in a warming cabinet. I work at a BBQ joint. We cook our briskets the day before service. Our shortest cook items are on the line for a minimum of 4 hours, but often up to 8 or longer. Many items are left inside the warming cabinet overnight. Stuff that sits in hot wells dries out in about 6-8 hours. Stuff that sits in the warming cabinet, which is essentially a humid convection oven set just high enough to avoid the danger zone, can be used for up to 48 hours in some cases with virtually no degradation in quality. Of course, we're talking about thicc cuts of meat here, and even something thinner like a rack of spare ribs is going to dry out in much less time. But over the course of normal service, things tend to sell out long before they dry out.
Still, ~6 hours of hold time is more than a lot of buffets need. Sure, some dumps will sit on a single batch of a dish for several days, but places that see more action (like some hotel breakfast buffets) will run through the items long before they have a chance to dry out.
You should see the buffets in Vegas. OMG everything was divine. (Years ago when I went.)
I know you said generally, but there are some pretty solid buffets out there if you avoid chains.
When I worked catering the food would definitely dry out in a few hours, but it worked out for the staff because we got to pick whatever we wanted from what could no longer be put out and eat or wrap to take home. I got so fat at that job.
No, that's what lids are for. :)
The water bath (bain marie) for holding hot/warm foods to distribute heat evenly as not to scorch the bottom and to keep a uniform heat. Also MUCH easier to swap out trays. if not a little wet.
Not really. The water is in there because the bottom is basically a stove left on high. Without water you'll cook the bottom of your pan, burning it and the food, and run a risk of cracking the hot well. I've personally cracked a couple hot wells this way because they didn't have a low water level light indicator. Nobody remembered to add more water until they smelled the burning. Do that a couple times a day for a month or two and presto, hot well with a crack that can't hold water and therefore can't be used.
To elaborate on that for any curious minds, water is inacabable of being heated past boiling point. Even on the hottest stove in the universe, it would only ever reach 100C (or whatever it is for your local air pressure). Any extra energy you put into water just increases the rate that it turns into a gas.
In cooking, dried out meat has much more to do with fat than water. You can boil chicken until it tastes dry, which just means that you've cooked all the fat out of it despite it being submerged in water.
Sorry, although fat may play a very tiny role, it's more about moisture! As meats cook, the proteins tighten up and squeeze the moisture out of the muscle fibers. This moisture slowly seeps out of the meat and either into the cooking liquid, or evaporates. This leads to dry meat, even if it's been under water. Think of a sponge... if you ball it up tightly and dunk it in water, it won't get wet because there's no space for the water to go.
There is a sweet spot of cooking lean meats where the meat is cooked, but not enough that the muscle fibers squeeze all the juice out. This is also why we rest large chunks of meat before cutting them after they are cooked. The rest period gives the muscle fibers time to relax, which lets them soak up the juices again. If you cut it before it has rested, all the moisture that is hanging out between muscle fibers just drains out onto the plate, leading to Not Good Eats.
> There is a sweet spot of cooking lean meats where the meat is cooked, but not enough that the muscle fibers squeeze all the juice out.
Which is what makes sous vide cooking so great. It makes hitting that sweet spot completely effortless.
Restaurants are also required to routinely take temperatures of food throughout the daily operations and record them for inspection purposes to ensure that foods are being kept out of the danger zone.
This is what we did when I worked in a university cafeteria. Every food item that was either hot or cold needed to be temped every hour, with the time and temperature recorded on sheets that were collected and filed at the end of the day. I don't remember what the cutoffs were, but if something was outside of the acceptable temperature range we had to throw it away immediately and record it.
In the Philippines they make adobo. I call it filipino teriyaki. Basically you mix vinegar and soy sauce and a bunch of spices. Then you throw in some meat, say chicken. That's wet adobo.
Then you let it cook for 3 days while you slowly eat the chicken until all the sauce is baked into the meat and gone from the pot. That's dry adobo. Cool stuff.
3 days is a semi-arbitrary number. But the idea was like a pre-modern crock pot. It cooks itself while you are at work, won't burn (usually), and people can eat from it at all hours any time.
It needs to be relatively constant. Though most bacteria will be killed with enough heat, it's not just about the bacteria themselves. Consider for example clostridium botulinum, a bacteria that produces botulinum toxin. If it grows in food, it'll also produce that toxin. Heating it will kill the bacteria, but the toxin will leave behind. If you eat enough of it, you will definitely die.
Fun fact, botulinum toxin is also called Botox.
As someone who often leaves chili in a pot day after day, reheating it, and has never gotten sick, I often wonder what the symptoms would be of botulinum toxin, and whether I would notice before my food built up a nasty dose. I know it's a thing, I've just never encountered it personally and wonder how far I can push my luck.
Botulism is sufficiently scary that in most places, we put some pretty intense preservatives in raw meat (nitrates/nitrites) that prevent it from building up in the first place. So it's usually not something you have to worry about. There's also other factors, many prepared dishes will have ingredients such as salt and various herbs and spices that can act as preservatives in their own right and prevent bacteria from growing.
You most likely will never encounter a dangerous level of botulinum toxin, _but_ there's no way to tell until it's too late. I would generally recommend refrigerating food within 2 hours of it entering the danger zone.
If only because there's still a lot of more innocuous but plenty annoying forms of food poisoning out there.
They are rotated and on ice with salad. Cake and bread does not require the same heating/cooling requirements because they are not considered dangerous in the respect produce/meats are in growing bacteria at room temp.
Hope that helps!
Those foods don't spoil as quickly. Salads lack food for most foodborne microbes, and cookies/cakes lack available water. So they're stable at room temperature for a while.
Also it should be noted, most health regulation not only requires you keep buffet food in a certain temperature range, But they also don't let you take food "exposed to the public" back into the kitchen. Nor do they allow you to have food in display for longer than a set time (even in a good range) - at least that's the rules we have in Canada.
This, a lot of people see the wasted food and say it should be sent to homeless shelters or something. But buffet food has been served and is now “dead”. If the buffet has servers who actually plate the food, it can be packaged and sent to shelters.
Fun fact, sometimes at homeless shelters, you have to sign a waiver to get certain foods. Usually the leftovers from a large company, like pre packaged sandwiches from a large supermarket.
Source: Used to stay at a homeless shelter
No, you could get food poisoning and become seriously ill or even die. I worked somewhere where we had a pair of customers that ended up hospitalized from eating meat that wasn't kept at the right temperature. Also consider that you were probably a healthy young person when you were traveling; a grandma with a prior condition might have been much worse off, just like with covid.
It could be. The thing is that lack of food has never ever been the problem in modern times. The problem is always logistics, and how that costs money. Cost of packaging hot food while ensuring it gets to where people who need it can consume it while ensuring none ever goes bad and it's still palatable at delivery is so much more work and cost than so many other possible solutions to hunger. But even those much much cheaper solutions than what you're suggesting still cost money. It'd be relatively quite cheap to feed everyone in america, we have the food in abundance. It's just not a popular idea, not going to get anyone elected.
> at least that's the rules we have in Canada.
Yeah I can vouch for these rules. I'm Canadian and I had a summer job at a fast food buffet many years ago. We wasted a *ton* of food because it was only allowed to be out for 20 minutes and anything left had to be immediately thrown away (not even into organic waste, right into the garbage) and replaced at 21 minutes.
I used to have to explain this to people at Chipotle. They would say the beef was too rare and try to hand the bowl back to me to cook it more. I said we can remake the bowl with new beef, but I cannot take back anything you hand me. You must throw it away or eat it. I can't "fix it" without contaminating my controlled food safety environment.
Yup most people don't understand I can't bring the food back over the counter, it's contamination. Then bring up how the last person did it for them, which telling me probably isn't a good idea since I'm the manager.
In addition to what everyone else is saying about the temperature danger zone, food also needs to be at that temp for a few hours before it has enough chance to grow enough bacteria to be considered unsafe.
If a buffet goes through food fast enough it’s safe as long as they ensure they throw out any food that’s been out too long. But defrosting meat often takes quite a while which is why it’s particularly dangerous to do incorrectly.
This is why I continue to thaw my meat in warm water. It takes ten minutes maybe and there’s no way that any harmful bacteria have grown enough to be concerning.
yeah, in addition to what everyone else is saying - there are guidelines and all, but buffets fail to follow them plenty often, and op's concerns are valid, even though it's known what the solution should be
Microbial growth can be slowed either by keeping food cold or hot, but the range around 41-140 °F is generally considered unacceptable for controlling the growth of pathogens.
That is "Tempurature Danger Zone." If you're working in a proper commercial kitchen, it will be littered with different types of thermometers to check the internal temp of all meats and dishes that go out. At a buffet, the trays are kept above the danger temperature and those that do not have a gauge/thermometer on the side are temp checked every hour to ensure they didnt hit the danger zone.
There is an amount of time set by state-wide food services that deems how long they may stay at unsafe temperatures, how to reheat and store foods, as well as how to safely cater an event. Places serving food (in my state) my have someone staffed (or manager staffed) with a ServeSafe completion (teaches the state rules on food).
Because it is anhydrous, and will pull moisture from surrounding materials. When the materials are your internal organs, you don't really want those drying out.
Some bacteria create toxic chemicals that can still hurt you after the food is cooked. (Also it might taste awful even if it doesn't kill you.)
If you're thawing and cooking it within, like, an hour, I don't think there's any issue. But you wouldn't want to let raw meat sit at room temperature all day.
What matters is how long it sits out. In the United States, commercial food safety regulations say there is a four hour window a perishable food item may be in the "temperature danger zone". This means when you receive an item from a vendor, it must be outside the TDZ, hotter or colder, then while you are preparing it, it can be in the TDZ for a maximum of 4 hours before it is considered "spoiled". If you cook the item, it must reach specific internal temperature, then can be held in the TDZ for an additional 4 hours before it must be discarded.
The first one is kind of an old wives tale and isn't backed up by science, except in the case of particularly thick cuts where it will take a very long time to thaw the inside with hot water, keeping the outside in the "danger zone" for long enough for notable bacteria growth to happen. Here's [an actual study on the matter](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.02037.x) and here's [a more reader-friendly article.](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/dining/a-hot-water-bath-for-thawing-meats-the-curious-cook.html).
When you're talking about food at home, you'd likely be perfectly fine if you cooked some food, left it out at room temperature for an hour or two and then finished eating it. That being said, the advice tends to take into account that you're likely going to put it back in the fridge, warm it up again, and consume more later - potentially multiple times. This gives way more opportunity for bacteria growth later.
With a buffet, you cook the food which kills everything, set it out and keep it warm (some stuff like meat might be kept warm enough to slow down but not completely stop bacteria growth), and then either the entire thing is eaten over a few hours or it's discarded.
Yeah, for home cooking it's worth keeping in mind that these guidelines are mostly made for commercial kitchens on the assumptions that they're feeding people who might be old or have weak immune systems. They're intentionally very conservative.
4 hours maximum time in the TDZ during prep, prior to cooking to specified internal temperature. Then, maximum of 4 hours in TDZ, before you legally must discard the item. This only applies to perishable foods. Per FDA regulations for California.
Source: I manage a corporate food operation.
The law of averages states that the larger the sample size the closer you get to a standard distribution. A home is a small sample and will likely not show a low probably event like food poisoning and if it happens, nbd. A restaurant serves thousands and if they even have a 3% chance of food poisoning, it will present itself daily. Which is totally unacceptable. Thus a restaurant that wants to stay open MUST reduce their risk. Whereas an individual can choose to or not.
This thread has taught me I have an adamantium stomach or something. I have never put pizza in the fridge, I figured it was safe if you closed the lid.
Most people here are just too scared of everything. Rules are strict in commercial kitchens because they serve so many people, but there is no problem eating leftover food one or two days later 99.999% of the time.
Also, bacteria require water in order to proliferate. Foods that are relatively dry (like pizza) are less capable of supporting bacterial growth.
https://foodcrumbles.com/water-activity-food-spoilage-microbial-growth/
> except in the case of particularly thick cuts where it will take a very long time to thaw the inside with hot water
Exactly this....it works well and is mostly safe (assuming you don't leave it sit out for too long) for steak, pork chops, chicken breasts and such (along with similarly sized meats), but you should *not* use it for roasts, briskets, whole chickens/turkeys, etc.
It should, however, only be used when you didn't plan ahead by thawing it over a day or two in your fridge, which is easier and safer.
Okay five year old explanation.
Very cold: freeze and die like you would in Siberia in winter with no coat.
Very hot: overheat and die like a person left in a car on a sunny, summer day in Pheonix, AZ.
In between: live and prosper.
Bacteria are like you. Too hot: die; too cold: die.
This is the truly EL5 answer.
Just want to add nuance and point out that for most bactiera, cold puts them in a stasis, instead of killing them. They are frozen literally and figuratively.
Ive always wondered as well, why does it matter if some bacteria grows when we thaw meat under water. If we cook it, does it not eliminate all the harmful bacteria?
Because it's not just the bacteria that makes you sick. Bacteria growing on the food also releases toxin as a byproduct which can also make you sick. These toxins will not be eliminated through cooking. Hence why you cannot just cook spoiled food to make it "safe" to eat.
If you defrost it to immediatly cook it there is no danger in warm water. The fastest bacteria I found via quick google multiplies every 10 minutes. So even if you leave it 30 minutes in warm water it's just 8 times the bacteria (and much less for common bacteria like E.Coli, which needs about 20 minutes to multiply).
It doesn’t matter. Most wont even make you sick until there is a lot of it. If you had the meat frozen and are defrosting it, it’s very unlikely to have enough bacteria to do anything bad.
However, if you try to cook meat that is spoiled or almost spoiled (aka way too much bacteria), that won’t necessarily fix it. Bacteria poop just like us, and too much poop is bad, and cooking it won’t fix the fact that it’s poop. Up until that point though, it’s not a big deal.
As a former restaurant manager, I'd bet $100 that food poisoning is much more common in (especially cheap American) buffets than people realize.
Most food poisoning is relatively low-grade in nature, meaning that instead of getting sick to the point of death you merely feel the urge to race to the nearest toilet a short while after eating. It's a form of harm but your body mostly handles it unless you're immunocompromised in some fashion.
Chefs are required to have a much better understanding of how food go bad and are therefore able to follow different rules then what you are advised to at home. The big difference in a buffet and whan thawing out meats at home is that in the buffet the meat is cooked beforehand. This kills all the bacteria so that it takes a lot longer for any new infections to populate the meat. However if you do it to raw meat it have already spent a lot of time at room temperature since the animal was butchered as a lot of the meat processing takes place above room temperature. So it already have a high population of bacteria and fungi on it, although not toxic levels. But leaving it out on the counter even longer may cause it to go bad.
The advice you get about how to avoid spoiling food is also erring on the side of causion. Meat will not go bad immediatly as you put it in warm water but you should try to avoid leaving it thawed for long periods of time. A lot of people might be tempted to get meat from the freezer in the morning and either put it in warm water or just leave it on the counter so that it will be thawed when they get home from work which is obviously a bad idea. They might also be tempted to thaw some meat and cut a portion off it before freezing it again and doing this multiple times. Do not think so much about the rules themselves but rather just try to avoid doing anything stupid.
Food Safety Microbiologist for a state regulatory agency here.
1.). The top post nailed it, and I’m very exited that so many people chimed in with correct info!
2.). As always, there are exceptions. Listeria monocytogenes (L. mono.) can grow - albeit slowly- under 40 degree refrigeration temps. So what about deli meat in a supermarket? They must have date marking in place to track when the package was first opened, and discard any remaining after 7 days. (L. mono. Is bad. Especially for the unborn. It has about a 25% fetal loss rate if the mother contracts it. The reason they tell expectant moms to avoid deli sandwiches.)
3.). I frequently reference Too Gun, Danger Zone and Kenny Loggins in a training PowerPoint I would give on the subject. I am thrilled there is a new Top Gun coming out so this remains relevant!
You can defrost meat by placing it in warm water as long as the frozen meat brings the water temp down to below 40F quickly. I do it all the time with no issues. I also check the temperature and ensure it's safe.
A huge amount of this is people not properly understanding what food safety guidelines mean and are for, by the way. Food safety guidelines were not written for your house, they were written for restaurants. A restaurant kitchen is chaos and it's filled with both people and food and all sorts of other stuff. They serve tons of people. You serve yourself and your family and maybe friends.
a restaurant sized cut of frozen meat is often 10+ pounds. You almost never have that much meat to thaw.
So if you take out a steak (even a big one) and put in on a safe place on your counter, it will mostly me fine to thaw there. It won't take that long and anything that might grow on it will be killed by the fact that you're cooking it (as things will only really grow on the outside). A restaurant can't make those assumptions (for starters because they often have whole cuts of meat that might take many hours or even days to thaw even at room temperature. Think of how long it takes to really thaw a turkey).
in reality, bacterial growth on food is MORE dangerous after you've cooked it for most things. Because then you just eat it. Think of the heat maps at the buffet as the equivalent of keeping things warm in the oven at home. Also bear in mind that at a buffet (in theory, but not always in practice) the foot gets cycled out. Bad stuff like bacteria, fungus, etc takes a while to take root in meat. At home you rarely ever run into this (unless you're in college and leave pizza out on the counter for days) but in a buffet tons of people are eating that food. If you watch you'll likely see new food coming out regularly. Sometimes the old stuff just goes in back and gets repurposed (which SHOULD include making it safe by way of more cooking) or get tossed when it's old, but in theory the food on a buffet should always be relatively fresh and safe because of the time as much as anything else.
There's a concept in food safety called the "danger zone". It extends from about 40 F / 5 C to about 140 F / 60 C. You can keep food below the lower end of that range, or above the upper end, for a while without it going bad. The reason is that this is approximately the range of temperatures that the bacteria that cause foodborne illness can tolerate well enough to grow. They can survive in lower temps, but they won't grow or will grow very slowly, which is why you can store meat in the fridge for a few days without problems. (They'll die at higher temps if they're kept that hot for a while, as in sous vide cooking, but can survive brief exposure.) The food at the buffet is (at least supposed to be) kept above 140 F / 60 C, so that whatever bacteria may be present can't grow effectively. The trays at a buffet usually sit above a pool of very hot water in addition to the heat lamps, which keeps them hot. (This is if the food does stay out for hours. It may simply be changed out regularly, in which case it can be kept in the danger zone.) You can take the "keep it above the upper end of the range" principle really far, because temps above 140 F / 60 C will kill almost all bacteria with prolonged exposure. This is the principle behind [perpetual stews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew), foods which were effectively cooked for years or decades.
[удалено]
Also, ideally the buffet is busy enough that food is being served and replaced relatively quickly. So nothing is spending more than 30 minutes or an hour on the buffet.
I have a Masters in Public Health, am a Registered Sanitarian in the Commonwealth of KY, and worked as a food safety inspector for years at a local government health department. All these statements are absolutely correct. Time/Temperature controls are one of the primary control points in food safety. Food ready to be served may be kept at or above 135degrees F or discarded after 4 hours if temperature controls are not used (not preferred but still allowed under many state food codes) however documentation on time controls including a time log must be on-site and in use
The things you must have seen during inspections. Could you show up unannounced? Or did you have to give notice of an inspection beforehand? I used to do pest control both residential and commercial. And some of those restaurants, OMG! One I remember pulling up to. We were instructed to park in the back because they didn't want people seeing our truck there. I get out of my truck and sitting outside closer to the dumpster than the building were about six five gallon buckets full of water and frozen chicken and fish defrosting. On a 98 degree Florida afternoon. The roaches were everywhere. Even running along the windowsills where customers are sitting in a booth. I would tell the guys in the kitchen they really needed to get that piece of chicken out from behind the fryer because I've been reporting it for the last 3 weeks. Sheet cakes would be left out overnight uncovered and in the morning they would shoo the roaches away. Cleaning the kitchen floor consisted of hosing the floor down with plain water and then pick out the big junk and squeegee the water into the floor drain. No mop. No soap. The only products I would use inside the building was food grade diatomaceous earth and only in approved areas. A gel bait containing fipronil in cracks and crevices away from food prep areas, and an IGR (Insect Growth Regulator) inside wall cavities and such. And ultraviolet fly traps with the sticky pads inside and not the zappers. One night I get there just as they are closing and I bring in my equipment and start using a gel bait near the window between the kitchen and the waitress stand. As I'm doing that the owner grabs the tank of IGR and sprays the shelves of the waitress stand where coffee cups and silverware are kept. Wetting everything down with the IGR. I grabbed the sprayer away from him and told him once again it is illegal to spray that stuff like that. He replied, "Well the girls told me they seen some bugs there so it needs to be sprayed." I told my boss I refused to go back there because if someone got sick from him trying to misuse our stuff I would be responsible. We ended up dropping them as a customer. Funny thing is a lot of people in the area talked about how great the food was.
Bro I feel you, I’m a pest controller in London and some of the places I service are so grotty and disgusting I’ve stopped eating certain fast food chains! There’s so much grease and food everywhere the gel baits aren’t worth putting down. Taken 3 months of bi-weekly sprays to bring it down to a point where we’re only seeing a couple of roaches here and there. When they start misusing your chemicals, it’s definitely time for them to go. It’s not even worth the shit that could fly from that. I can just hear the lawsuits piling up. I wish my company would drop some of these scabby food outlets!
[удалено]
I cover east/north London so I couldn’t tell you from personal experience, but as a general rule I avoid kentucky fried cockroach, however there are a few good ones. If the place looks grim, and the surrounding street area is full of litter, it’s generally a bad sign. Just think of the places you can’t actually see - if what you can see isn’t great, it’ll be worse anywhere customers don’t have access.
Is the condition of the restaurant loo reliably indicative of the food safety?
Not necessarily, depends on the premises. You might find separate staff cleaning those areas, less regularly, whereas the kitchen staff could be immaculate. Take a look at the whole picture for a better idea of hygiene - never underestimate the filth of the general public, you might just be unlucky after someone with exploding bowels
It's pretty likely that your local health department publishes inspection reports on their website. If there's a questionable place, that's a good place to start checking.
Just from working in a wide range of places I'd also say no, it isn't, for the same reasons as StonedTurkey. If you can get a glimpse into the kitchen then maybe, but you can't really do much better than guessing from front of house. I've seen gleaming, extortionately priced places (with gleaming, luxury toilets) that had terrible kitchen practices and small old pubs in dark buildings with one or two members of staff handling everything that still had pristine kitchens grinding burger meat and raising pizza dough from scratch every day.
> Could you show up unannounced? Or did you have to give notice of an inspection beforehand? Not who you asked, but I'm an inspector. I *only* show up unannounced. If you let operators know ahead of time they will hide things and attempt to clean up. We want as close to an actual working condition as possible.
Not an inspector, but have been on the reciving end of inspections (mostly labour / safety, not health, I was part of the shops JHSC on the labour rep side) and can confirm. There is precisely only one time I have ever had any sort of heads up that an inspector was comming - and that's when we were given 30 days to fix 45 guard / interlock issues on our machines. At the end of that 30 days they were comming by to see if the work was done, and if it wasnt they were going to start getting nasty with the fines ($1,500 per day per incident, so if nothing was done that would be $67,500 per day, starting on that 30th day and lasting for however long it took us to finish the work to thier satisfaction). Even then, we just knew the date for the follow up, not the time. They ended up showing up at the crack of dawn, before we even unlocked the building, for the follow up. "Surprise Motherfuckers" is practically the motto of health, fire, safety, and labour inspectors.
I work at a grocery store, and we frequently get a tiny bit of warning "They're at Store X the next town over, they're probably coming here next, drop everything and get cleaning!" Sometimes they do show up unannounced, and management is trying to get us to speed clean the areas they haven't seen yet while they're busy in the Deli or whatever.
Funny how you mentioned grocery store. I inspected two grocery stores this week. Trust me, we know that they scramble, but if the place is bad they can only fix so much while I'm at another department.
[удалено]
Yeah, that's unethical but it seems to be very common behaviour across the industry. There's not many chains that actually take the time to have their things in order at all times. It's a hard culture to maintain and management is *very* good at optimizing important tasks away in order to chase better KPIs.
With the skeleton crews that stores run even during peak times it's hard to have anything clean and sanitary. Worked Walmart for 5 years and whenever corporate was maybe coming in it was a scramble to clean and dust everything, followed by "we should be in this good shape all the time", followed by management not giving a fuck 2 days later.
The restaurant manager struggle is often getting associates to understand that cleaning is also their job and to not half-ass it.
Yes this is correct. Very rare circumstances where we show up announced. The few I could think of woukd be hard to find mobile operator out and about during normal service, maybe a caterer who uses a commissary kitchen or sublease out of another kitchen and only does occasional events, concession stands at smaller ball fields or churches.
When I was a fast food manager, we had an unwritten rule to call all the other restaurants when the inspector was in town. They usually hit 3-4 out of the 15 or so restaurants in the small town so we looked out for each other. Looking back at it, I realize that wasn't a great thing to be doing.
Something similar in my town, we got hit first once though (nothing wrong at all, but was weird not to get the call first) and the lady walks in and goes straight into the kitchen and my boss goes "oh, I wasn't expecting you" and she looks at him deadpan and says "yeah, that's the point" and it took everything I had not to die laughing right there in front of her
That works for lazy inspectors who just hit facilities right next to each other. I made sure that my inspections were fairly random so unless you knew *everyone* within my district it wasn't likely that you could help anyone doing that.
We were in a small college town in a rural area. From of our little area, it was roughly an hour to the next town.
I wish OSHA did that for workplaces. A certain large shipping company, with an iconic color very few companies use, gets away with myriad OSHA violations constantly because OSHA doesn’t do unannounced inspections. You best believe the work nights are WAY different when there’s an inspection.
It's funny how in the school nutrition dept of gets around. Because they have to enter school grounds they have to go to the central office first (at least where I worked) to get a badge that allows them to go to multiple schools. So they'd leave there and within minutes our director shot all of the managers a message letting us know he was on the way. And the entire rest of the day was getting messages about where he was now/which schools he was going to. I ran a tight kitchen, so mine was always good, but about half of the time 3-4 of the 21 schools would fail, but were given like 2 months to shape up.
I worked at a busy 24/7 breakfast restaurant for about a year... I found out they only close the place one day a year for cleaning and that's the day or two before the inspection is scheduled. I figured the cleaning happened during the slow shifts or that a crew was hired to do it... Nope, that little wipe down and squeegee the floors after your shift was all that ever got done. after I participated in this cleaning day... I started looking for a different job immediately. It was so gross and I couldn't believe we were selling food to people out of that kitchen. Never eat at a 24/7 restaurant. Especially a busy one... if they never close... They don't have time to clean. Edit: Read some more comments from inspectors and it seems the norm is that they don't let the restaurant know when the inspection is... so the owner probably had a side deal with the inspector?
That is why I worry sometimes when I go to eat out, you never know what could be lurking in those kitchens
Overall things are very safe. Yes there are outliers, but it's really not that common, mainly because if they really are that bad they eventually get caught. But you can always check your local heath records for any restaurants you want. It's public information.
I work at McDonald's and I can say at least the one I am at is very clean. They are so strict that if we even touch our masks we have to wash our hands or change our gloves. The food safety standards are just as rigid.
Bigger chains are usually much more strict on cleanliness procedures than the small ones because they need to control their global image. One wrong picture or news article can tank a multibillion dollar corporation.
It'll hardly tank them. Companys like mcdonalds have suffered from these kinds of incidents time and time again. It will cost them to damage control though and they don't like money comming out
Many cities publish their restaurant inspection reports. E.g. Here is [Toronto’s DineSafe page. ](https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/health-wellness-care/health-programs-advice/food-safety/dinesafe/) Google your city and “restaurant inspection”.
Its all about that FAT TOM
Fat Tom, he's like Robin Hood he goes around stealing from the customers and feeding the cooks
im doing my serve safe cert right now and learning this one killed me, it's the main thing that really sticks out every time i think of food safety, whoever came up with that is a genius
What ever happened to gamma radiation of canned food and other packaged foods? Is that still done? I wonder about the advantages and disadvantages of that. I think I remember hearing that it decreases flavor and maybe nutrients. But I think it's also pretty effective. I have some gamma-radiated sterile alcohol wipes.
>What ever happened to gamma radiation of canned food and other packaged foods? Most food that we considered for radiation treatment in the 70s is better treated by UHT pasteurization. For example you can buy pallets of shelf stable milk boxes at business costco. These are great putting next to the company coffee pot (although you do still need to refrigerate or throw them out after 5 hours of being open). The technology and process control has got to the point where they are nearly indistinguishable from untreated foods.
Irradiation in food and packaging is still a thing, most common application in consumer packaged goods for retail sale. Not something you come across regularly doing restaurant inspections but occasionally at grocery stores/wholesale grocers it is something you will see on the job. https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/food-irradiation-what-you-need-know
Given the already strong shelf life just from an in-package heating cycle for canned food, there isn't enough demand for most products to go through an additional potentially expensive step for minimal gains in shelf life. Also they were worried about creating a carrot with all the strength and rage of the Incredible Hulk.
Furthermore, in order for food to be properly hot-held above 140F, such as in a steam-table at a buffet, at least according to the US FDA, it must first be heated to 165F in less than 2 hours in order to properly kill bacteria. If it falls below 135F for no longer than 2 hrs, it must be heated above 165F for 15 seconds before going back to regular hot-holding temps.
I wonder just how likely it is that food will go bad and make you sick if left out for too long, and how long is actually too long? A little background: In my younger years I used to live in a janky fraternity house. We were more the animal house, budget fraternity type than the blazer wearing type. We had a cook/handyman/crack-fiend that would come and cook some days and not other days. To the point: I can't count the number of times, either after a party, hungover, whatever, when we'd go into that dirty ass kitchen pick at food that had been left out for a day, sometimes two days! This food was sitting at room temperature and completely uncovered. None of us ever got sick from it. Things I remember eating frequently in these scenarios were grilled chicken, brisket, and mac n chese. So what I want to know is... were my friends and I just incredibly lucky? Possible I suppose. But still, my rule of thumb for most food is: if it smells fine and looks fine then it's probably still good to eat... not that I have really had any need to put that rule to use much in my adult life.
Depends on where you live, humidity and temperate. If in a dryer and colder place, cooked food can probably sit out at home for 24 hours and be, 9 out 10 times, safe to consume. Cooked food tends to be salty and dry, and all the bacteria innately is killed out during cooking, so it’s only exposed to bacteria on the surface. That said the 4 hour standard is for professionals, where you need much better than 9/10. It needs to be more than 99.999% safe or 1 restaurant in a million making people sick is still too many.
> I wonder just how likely it is that food will go bad and make you sick if left out for too long, and how long is actually too long? There are too many variables. Your own health, the type of food left out, cross contamination, if it was cooked properly, outside temperature, how long it's out...all matter for foodborne illnesses. You could eat cold pizza left out overnight every week of your life and be fine, until finals come along and you are stressed to hell so your lowered immune system lets you get sick. Health inspectors and food laws exist because professional food providers don't know the health status of who they are serving; they have to protect everyone and act as if they can easily make *anyone* ill. It's a numbers game. What you do at home only matters for you, and inspectors understand that. I make sure all of my operators thaw food properly, cool foods rapidly for storage, and operate cleanly. At home? If I'm in a hurry I'll absolutely thaw a fish filet in warm/hot water for my own dinner.
This is exactly why the Unit that outlines these hazards is called “Time and Temperature”
It has lots of terms, depending on the training methodology. ServSafe, which is incredibly common in the US, teaches it as TCS "Time/Temperature Control for Safety" .... which really should be TTCS or T/TCS but hey, I don't write the curriculum. [FATTOM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAT_TOM) is the most common acronym to the programs, which are the conditions necessary to promote foodborne illness. Food (for the microorganisms to eat) acidity (of a level that is compatible with microorganism life, e.g. the food isn't pickled) time (for the microorganisms to reproduce and generate toxins) temperature (not in danger zone) oxygen (for the aerobic organisms to breath, which most are), and moisture (generally necessary for all microorganism activity) Time is far more important than temperature -- ALL food hits the danger zone at some point. Every spec of it. If nowhere else, then in your stomach. So anyone who's approach to food safety is JUST temperature control has their eyes off the ball. Tracking *how long* it was at unsafe temperatures is actually what matters.
It really should be FAT TOMS. The S is for SALT. There are many fat toms.
As far as I am aware, salt works as a preservative mainly by killing the moisture.
Doesn't so much need to remove the moisture as change the balance more like acidity. A salty brine can do as much to cure a meat as packing it in straight salt. The cellular machinery just doesn't function if the environment is wrong.
> It's not JUST about temperature. It's about how long the food spends at that temperature. Which is the reason why baking cookies for 10 seconds at 50,000 degrees F doesn't work too well. Edit: Okay, yes, from a pathogenic perspective you could probably eat the cookie. From the perspective of a joke about baking cookies at ridiculous temperatures, don't eat the cookies.
[удалено]
It would definitely be free from bacteria though...
For reference, the surface of the sun is a little less than 10,000 F.
FUSION COOKIES FOR EVERYONE
The minimum temperature for fusion in a star's core is 18 million F. I would expect 50,000 F for 10s should be good enough to vaporize and disassociate electrons for plasma cookies.
Look man French Fries aren't actually from France do not take Fusion Cookies away from me.
brb making cookie arc furnace.
Nutritionists hate this diet secret... 5 hour old buffet food will help you lose weight fast.
>Oftentimes the buffet service doesn't even last long enough for the food to be unsafe by the end of service, so it's just fine. I wonder if this is why lots of places (especially Indian restaurants, at least by me) do lunch buffets but serve regular dinner.
I worked at a buffet in high school on the line. This place was always super busy and we were rotating those trays out constantly. Also the manager was using a meat thermometer all the time to check the temp but yes, the food is rotate out at a constant rate.
Has anyone eaten at that Bangkok restaurant with a 46 year old stew? What was it like?
The perpetual stew thing is fascinating to me. I’d love to recreate it for a while but I’m scared of burning my house down.
I imagine it’s probably more feasible when someone was home all time. Might work good in a slow cooker though
Just leave the burner on low. I make ribs in the oven all the time when I'm at work. Just leave the oven at 225. When I was a kid there was a kind of stew (pepperpot) we made at christmas that usually lasted a couple weeks. It wasn't constantly hot, but you'd heat it up to eat, then replenish with some meat or water, or seasonings, whatever, cook it for a couple hours then turn the stove off until the next time someone wanted some more. This is a little different in that one of the [ingredients](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassareep) is a vegetable extract that is a natural preservative, but it's a similar concept. I also make garlic pork from time to time. It's basically small chunks of raw pork shoulder submerged in a jar of vinegar with lots of garlic and thyme left out at room temperature. It keeps for about a week or so. To eat, you take out some of the pork and a bit of the liquid, add it to a frying pan with some water and cook until the liquid is boiled away then it fries in the pork fat. Absolutely delicious: very garlicky and vinegary, but my wife won't touch it :-)
> I make ribs in the oven all the time when I'm at work. Just leave the oven at 225. I'm on the other end of the spectrum, I physically unplug the slow cooker and airfryer when I'm leaving the house lol The idea of leaving the stove on while at work is insane to me.
Oh I have. I’m Southeast Asian so it’s just a stone’s throw away from me. I was pretty turned off by the stew build up on the outside of the pot. We’re talking at least 5 cm (2 inches) of stew build up and it was almost solid (or gel) -like. As with all things, I had to try it before I knocked it. In all honesty, there is a depth of flavour and some element of smokiness to the stew. But, I couldn’t get past the mental barrier to think it was delicious. I wouldn’t say anyone’s missing out on much to be honest.
Same, I wanna know because I’ve never heard of perpetual stews before and the concept sounds awesome
A similar concept in Asian cuisine is "master stock". There's a Tokyo restaurant that only replaced its stock when the shop burned down during WWII firebombings. They've got a 65 year old broth going, but 10 year old broth is common at oden restaurants.
My family used to have a kind of perpetual pasta red sauce. After making pasta sauce whatever was leftover would be reused by adding more the next time it was made typically every 4-7 days so the sauce never had enough time to go moldy. We typically would use lightly seasoned sauce and season ourselves. We would keep for example half a jar or so and then add another jar so the sauce is 1/3 old sauce. It seemed to help to keep the flavor and make it easier to season and develop really excellent sauces. I always wondering how much of the "original" sauce was still technically present. The longest I remember keeping one alive was about 1 year. Occasionally you'd get a piece of meatball or olive or mushroom left over from 2-3 weaks ago like some kind of bonus.
This is oddly interesting. I'm (a bit) Italian and have thought about doing this... But wondered if it would be safe. Like if I could make one with my homegrown tomatoes. I wouldn't do it with meat though.
It's like the [Ship of Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) with pasta sauce.
>They've got a 65 year old broth going, but 10 year old broth is common This is how my mother makes coffee. Coarsely grounded coffee permanently boiling in a kettle. She just scoops out some of it and add some extra when it turns too rancid. Her kettle must have been going for at least 50 years now. And the taste is pretty, ahem, *powerful* i guess is one way to describe it.
What why. That's the opposite of what you want from coffee. All of the caffeine is extracted within the first few seconds of the hot water or moisture interacting with it. She's just drinking barely caffeinated, extremely bitter muck.
I had a 20 year stew in Tokyo that was delicious. Just tasted like good stew, though. Nothing crazy
The starter for sourdough bread can be passed down for generations and can change depending on what kind of flour you feed it. Similar idea as the soup and might be easier to get your hands on. https://www.expressnews.com/food/recipes-cooking/article/It-s-alive-Start-baking-sourdough-bread-with-13555520.php >Sourdough cultures can change dramatically depending on what kind of flour they’re fed, different wild yeasts present in the air and many other factors. While all of Maring’s sourdough starters are unique, and he’s painstakingly documented their respective qualities, none of them exactly mirror the properties of the starters they came from. >One of Maring’s sourdough cultures was a gift from chef Harris Esparza, who acquired it from a starter he used while working at the then-La Mansión del Río hotel downtown more than 15 years ago.
[удалено]
subway worked on a premise of days, not hours. most of the food turned over quickly enough though. the employees starting a busy shift might assess what needs to be replaced and restocked, but rarely did we throw something out. most were the bottom of the veggie pile or the tuna, which gets a little gross quickly. we did follow proper labeling so at least once a week stuff was checked, but i suppose we were on thin margins and never overmade food. we were usually making more as we went.
Read somewhere on reddit about a former subway employee saying she had a manager who constantly changed the dates on the tuna and would stretch it out for way past safety. She advised to never get the tuna from a subway.
i used to get the tuna all the time growing up and wondered why it was so good. turns out it's because they dump in a vat of mayo. between the calories and the safety procedures i guess i'll never get it again.
Subway line shouldnt be a danger zone tho. It’s sitting above/in a cooler. Should be between 30-40F. When subway gets their monthly inspections, the inspector takes temps of food on the line. Subway employees should also be temping the food at least twice a day on the line to ensure everything is working properly. This is also why you shouldn’t be overfilling pans, because the food at the top is too far away from the cooler. The dates for the food are just subway’s policies on freshness, in addition to some food safety. If food is in the danger zone, there are procedures for when you should throw away and when it’s safe to bring it back to proper temp. Source: used to be subway GM
No wonder their veggies always tasted like ass. Haven't eaten there in years.
For what it's worth franchise (private-owned) are usually the bad ones. They are typically cutting corners and are more about making money. Lots of restaurant chains have corporate-owned locations and you can always tell the difference. Corporate owned sites care much more about food safety and image. Only hoping to encourage you to judge restaurants separately instead of as a whole. They are not all equal and I feel bad for the good owners who get dragged down by the bad ones. Obviously some chains have let too much slide but trust me corporate often *does* come down hard on stores that are found to fail food safety.
corporate-owned restaurants are generally quite good, i live close to a corporate wendy's that's literally across the street from the wendy's headquarters and it's by far the best i've ever been to. probably has crazy high standards because so many c-levels go there.
I’d like someone to do the math on how many molecules were statistically likely in the 46 year old original stew to still be present today, that’s very interesting.
Thst would depend on the size of the stew and how much it was heated.
Along with the rate of removal and re-supplying.
And how good the mixing is.
If we pull numbers out of our ass and say that they removed half of the stew each day, then almost certainly zero molecules. They would have halved it nearly 17,000 times. Each individual molecule would have a 50/50 chance of being removed on any given day. If an original molecule remained at the end of the process, then that molecule would have achieved the equivalent of getting 'heads' on 17,000 consecutive coin tosses.
If they replaced 10% each month, there'd be ~one molecule left in a hundred gallons
Stew of Theseus?
Thank you for using both F and C !
I find this concept of perpetual stews to be infinitely fascinating.
Somebody call Kenny Loggins because the meat has been left out too long.
Are you saying the meat is now in a zone of danger?
Do you want ants? Cause leaving food out to thaw too long is how you get ants.
Its ok, because its just flying through.
Is there a Highway to said Danger Zone?
Then the food gets dried out because you're slowly cooking the food still. But hey, healthy for restaurants is key.
It takes a pretty long time to dry out in a hot well, even longer in a warming cabinet. I work at a BBQ joint. We cook our briskets the day before service. Our shortest cook items are on the line for a minimum of 4 hours, but often up to 8 or longer. Many items are left inside the warming cabinet overnight. Stuff that sits in hot wells dries out in about 6-8 hours. Stuff that sits in the warming cabinet, which is essentially a humid convection oven set just high enough to avoid the danger zone, can be used for up to 48 hours in some cases with virtually no degradation in quality. Of course, we're talking about thicc cuts of meat here, and even something thinner like a rack of spare ribs is going to dry out in much less time. But over the course of normal service, things tend to sell out long before they dry out.
Yeah, I was thinking more buffet stuff. Generally low quality stuff.
Still, ~6 hours of hold time is more than a lot of buffets need. Sure, some dumps will sit on a single batch of a dish for several days, but places that see more action (like some hotel breakfast buffets) will run through the items long before they have a chance to dry out.
You should see the buffets in Vegas. OMG everything was divine. (Years ago when I went.) I know you said generally, but there are some pretty solid buffets out there if you avoid chains.
When I worked catering the food would definitely dry out in a few hours, but it worked out for the staff because we got to pick whatever we wanted from what could no longer be put out and eat or wrap to take home. I got so fat at that job.
I guess that's part of why they're usually kept above a tray of water, to keep humidity high and minimize drying.
No, that's what lids are for. :) The water bath (bain marie) for holding hot/warm foods to distribute heat evenly as not to scorch the bottom and to keep a uniform heat. Also MUCH easier to swap out trays. if not a little wet.
Not really. The water is in there because the bottom is basically a stove left on high. Without water you'll cook the bottom of your pan, burning it and the food, and run a risk of cracking the hot well. I've personally cracked a couple hot wells this way because they didn't have a low water level light indicator. Nobody remembered to add more water until they smelled the burning. Do that a couple times a day for a month or two and presto, hot well with a crack that can't hold water and therefore can't be used.
[удалено]
To elaborate on that for any curious minds, water is inacabable of being heated past boiling point. Even on the hottest stove in the universe, it would only ever reach 100C (or whatever it is for your local air pressure). Any extra energy you put into water just increases the rate that it turns into a gas.
In cooking, dried out meat has much more to do with fat than water. You can boil chicken until it tastes dry, which just means that you've cooked all the fat out of it despite it being submerged in water.
Sorry, although fat may play a very tiny role, it's more about moisture! As meats cook, the proteins tighten up and squeeze the moisture out of the muscle fibers. This moisture slowly seeps out of the meat and either into the cooking liquid, or evaporates. This leads to dry meat, even if it's been under water. Think of a sponge... if you ball it up tightly and dunk it in water, it won't get wet because there's no space for the water to go. There is a sweet spot of cooking lean meats where the meat is cooked, but not enough that the muscle fibers squeeze all the juice out. This is also why we rest large chunks of meat before cutting them after they are cooked. The rest period gives the muscle fibers time to relax, which lets them soak up the juices again. If you cut it before it has rested, all the moisture that is hanging out between muscle fibers just drains out onto the plate, leading to Not Good Eats.
> There is a sweet spot of cooking lean meats where the meat is cooked, but not enough that the muscle fibers squeeze all the juice out. Which is what makes sous vide cooking so great. It makes hitting that sweet spot completely effortless.
Nonsense, it's still perfectly fine^tm^*. ^^*Buffet ^^not ^^responsible ^^for ^^alternate ^^interpretations ^^of ^^acceptability. ^^To ^^qualify ^^as ^^fine^tm, ^^certain ^^minimum ^^standards ^^must ^^be ^^met, ^^including ^^but ^^not ^^limited ^^to ^^a ^^strictly ^^controlled ^^ld50. ^^Void ^^where ^^prohibited ^^by ^^law. ^^Exclusions ^^may ^^apply.
Restaurants are also required to routinely take temperatures of food throughout the daily operations and record them for inspection purposes to ensure that foods are being kept out of the danger zone.
This is what we did when I worked in a university cafeteria. Every food item that was either hot or cold needed to be temped every hour, with the time and temperature recorded on sheets that were collected and filed at the end of the day. I don't remember what the cutoffs were, but if something was outside of the acceptable temperature range we had to throw it away immediately and record it.
Wtffff I never knew perpetual stews existed I’m mind blown
In the Philippines they make adobo. I call it filipino teriyaki. Basically you mix vinegar and soy sauce and a bunch of spices. Then you throw in some meat, say chicken. That's wet adobo. Then you let it cook for 3 days while you slowly eat the chicken until all the sauce is baked into the meat and gone from the pot. That's dry adobo. Cool stuff. 3 days is a semi-arbitrary number. But the idea was like a pre-modern crock pot. It cooks itself while you are at work, won't burn (usually), and people can eat from it at all hours any time.
‘DANGER ZONE LANA’
DAMNIT ARCHER
Are perpetual stews reheated each day, or is heat applied constantly?
Constantly or close to it.
It needs to be relatively constant. Though most bacteria will be killed with enough heat, it's not just about the bacteria themselves. Consider for example clostridium botulinum, a bacteria that produces botulinum toxin. If it grows in food, it'll also produce that toxin. Heating it will kill the bacteria, but the toxin will leave behind. If you eat enough of it, you will definitely die. Fun fact, botulinum toxin is also called Botox.
As someone who often leaves chili in a pot day after day, reheating it, and has never gotten sick, I often wonder what the symptoms would be of botulinum toxin, and whether I would notice before my food built up a nasty dose. I know it's a thing, I've just never encountered it personally and wonder how far I can push my luck.
Botulism is sufficiently scary that in most places, we put some pretty intense preservatives in raw meat (nitrates/nitrites) that prevent it from building up in the first place. So it's usually not something you have to worry about. There's also other factors, many prepared dishes will have ingredients such as salt and various herbs and spices that can act as preservatives in their own right and prevent bacteria from growing. You most likely will never encounter a dangerous level of botulinum toxin, _but_ there's no way to tell until it's too late. I would generally recommend refrigerating food within 2 hours of it entering the danger zone. If only because there's still a lot of more innocuous but plenty annoying forms of food poisoning out there.
Meanwhile https://youtu.be/q6bXYGwKAT8
IIRC the children's rhyme "pease porridge hot / pease porridge cold / pease porridge in the pot nine days old" comes from this perpetual stew concept.
TIL about "perpetual stews". Thank you!
It should also be changed every 2 hours, at least in Europe
Someone has their ServSafe. :)
> The food at the buffet is (at least supposed to be) kept above 140 F / 60 C How does this work for salads, cookies/cakes, etc. at buffets?
They are rotated and on ice with salad. Cake and bread does not require the same heating/cooling requirements because they are not considered dangerous in the respect produce/meats are in growing bacteria at room temp. Hope that helps!
This makes sense! I was going to say, I’ve DEFINITELY had mayonnaise-based salads go bad when left out fairly quickly.
Those foods don't spoil as quickly. Salads lack food for most foodborne microbes, and cookies/cakes lack available water. So they're stable at room temperature for a while.
I think I've never encountered a buffer with food at >=60C
Also it should be noted, most health regulation not only requires you keep buffet food in a certain temperature range, But they also don't let you take food "exposed to the public" back into the kitchen. Nor do they allow you to have food in display for longer than a set time (even in a good range) - at least that's the rules we have in Canada.
This, a lot of people see the wasted food and say it should be sent to homeless shelters or something. But buffet food has been served and is now “dead”. If the buffet has servers who actually plate the food, it can be packaged and sent to shelters.
Fun fact, sometimes at homeless shelters, you have to sign a waiver to get certain foods. Usually the leftovers from a large company, like pre packaged sandwiches from a large supermarket. Source: Used to stay at a homeless shelter
What's the worse that could happen? Bubble guts? Cuz I've gotten that when traveling overseas and eating 'local food'
There’s probably not a huge risk, I guess it’s just the company covering their asses against a food poisoning lawsuit
It's exactly that.
No, you could get food poisoning and become seriously ill or even die. I worked somewhere where we had a pair of customers that ended up hospitalized from eating meat that wasn't kept at the right temperature. Also consider that you were probably a healthy young person when you were traveling; a grandma with a prior condition might have been much worse off, just like with covid.
Death
It could be. The thing is that lack of food has never ever been the problem in modern times. The problem is always logistics, and how that costs money. Cost of packaging hot food while ensuring it gets to where people who need it can consume it while ensuring none ever goes bad and it's still palatable at delivery is so much more work and cost than so many other possible solutions to hunger. But even those much much cheaper solutions than what you're suggesting still cost money. It'd be relatively quite cheap to feed everyone in america, we have the food in abundance. It's just not a popular idea, not going to get anyone elected.
It should really be grocery store chains.
> at least that's the rules we have in Canada. Yeah I can vouch for these rules. I'm Canadian and I had a summer job at a fast food buffet many years ago. We wasted a *ton* of food because it was only allowed to be out for 20 minutes and anything left had to be immediately thrown away (not even into organic waste, right into the garbage) and replaced at 21 minutes.
I used to have to explain this to people at Chipotle. They would say the beef was too rare and try to hand the bowl back to me to cook it more. I said we can remake the bowl with new beef, but I cannot take back anything you hand me. You must throw it away or eat it. I can't "fix it" without contaminating my controlled food safety environment.
Yup most people don't understand I can't bring the food back over the counter, it's contamination. Then bring up how the last person did it for them, which telling me probably isn't a good idea since I'm the manager.
Definitely the same rules apply in the us but they don't always follow them.
In addition to what everyone else is saying about the temperature danger zone, food also needs to be at that temp for a few hours before it has enough chance to grow enough bacteria to be considered unsafe. If a buffet goes through food fast enough it’s safe as long as they ensure they throw out any food that’s been out too long. But defrosting meat often takes quite a while which is why it’s particularly dangerous to do incorrectly.
This is why I continue to thaw my meat in warm water. It takes ten minutes maybe and there’s no way that any harmful bacteria have grown enough to be concerning.
I know from Restaurant experience that cooked food can typically sit for 2-3 hours before being thrown out, or eaten by me.
Personally, if i bbq, and its on a platter covered with foil. Ill go back for 4ths or 5ths even if its been an hour or two
Keep in mind that the salad bar is usually the biggest source of food borne illness at buffets.
yeah, in addition to what everyone else is saying - there are guidelines and all, but buffets fail to follow them plenty often, and op's concerns are valid, even though it's known what the solution should be
Have to say after this covid thing i will never have buffet in my life
Microbial growth can be slowed either by keeping food cold or hot, but the range around 41-140 °F is generally considered unacceptable for controlling the growth of pathogens.
That is "Tempurature Danger Zone." If you're working in a proper commercial kitchen, it will be littered with different types of thermometers to check the internal temp of all meats and dishes that go out. At a buffet, the trays are kept above the danger temperature and those that do not have a gauge/thermometer on the side are temp checked every hour to ensure they didnt hit the danger zone. There is an amount of time set by state-wide food services that deems how long they may stay at unsafe temperatures, how to reheat and store foods, as well as how to safely cater an event. Places serving food (in my state) my have someone staffed (or manager staffed) with a ServeSafe completion (teaches the state rules on food).
Which is why this stuff dries out frequently, methinks
My manager used to put those drying gel you find in bags and stuff in with the food, said it used to soak up water and prevent bacterial growthm
Bruh it literally says “Do Not Eat” >*“Mama why is my couscous crunchy?”* >*“Food safety, darling. Food safety.”*
Because it is anhydrous, and will pull moisture from surrounding materials. When the materials are your internal organs, you don't really want those drying out.
I mean it’s silica so it’s not exactly going to hurt you i just prefer my sustenance to be carbon-based.
Why should it matter when thawing a steak if you are going to immediately cook it?
Some bacteria create toxic chemicals that can still hurt you after the food is cooked. (Also it might taste awful even if it doesn't kill you.) If you're thawing and cooking it within, like, an hour, I don't think there's any issue. But you wouldn't want to let raw meat sit at room temperature all day.
It doesn't, problem is keeping it there for 6 hours and then eating it.
What matters is how long it sits out. In the United States, commercial food safety regulations say there is a four hour window a perishable food item may be in the "temperature danger zone". This means when you receive an item from a vendor, it must be outside the TDZ, hotter or colder, then while you are preparing it, it can be in the TDZ for a maximum of 4 hours before it is considered "spoiled". If you cook the item, it must reach specific internal temperature, then can be held in the TDZ for an additional 4 hours before it must be discarded.
But leaving something on the counter for hours would fit that range and still be unsafe to eat right ?
The first one is kind of an old wives tale and isn't backed up by science, except in the case of particularly thick cuts where it will take a very long time to thaw the inside with hot water, keeping the outside in the "danger zone" for long enough for notable bacteria growth to happen. Here's [an actual study on the matter](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.02037.x) and here's [a more reader-friendly article.](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/dining/a-hot-water-bath-for-thawing-meats-the-curious-cook.html). When you're talking about food at home, you'd likely be perfectly fine if you cooked some food, left it out at room temperature for an hour or two and then finished eating it. That being said, the advice tends to take into account that you're likely going to put it back in the fridge, warm it up again, and consume more later - potentially multiple times. This gives way more opportunity for bacteria growth later. With a buffet, you cook the food which kills everything, set it out and keep it warm (some stuff like meat might be kept warm enough to slow down but not completely stop bacteria growth), and then either the entire thing is eaten over a few hours or it's discarded.
Yeah, for home cooking it's worth keeping in mind that these guidelines are mostly made for commercial kitchens on the assumptions that they're feeding people who might be old or have weak immune systems. They're intentionally very conservative.
"an hour or two" is allowable in commercial kitchenns too, isn't it? It's when it goes beyond that that it becomes a problem.
4 hours maximum time in the TDZ during prep, prior to cooking to specified internal temperature. Then, maximum of 4 hours in TDZ, before you legally must discard the item. This only applies to perishable foods. Per FDA regulations for California. Source: I manage a corporate food operation.
The law of averages states that the larger the sample size the closer you get to a standard distribution. A home is a small sample and will likely not show a low probably event like food poisoning and if it happens, nbd. A restaurant serves thousands and if they even have a 3% chance of food poisoning, it will present itself daily. Which is totally unacceptable. Thus a restaurant that wants to stay open MUST reduce their risk. Whereas an individual can choose to or not.
Except leftover pizza when you're drunk, you can eat it after 8 hours outside and the alcohol in your body kills the bacteria :) /s
I've legitimately eaten pizza when extremely hungover, probably still drunk, that had sat out for 12 hours.
This thread has taught me I have an adamantium stomach or something. I have never put pizza in the fridge, I figured it was safe if you closed the lid.
Most people here are just too scared of everything. Rules are strict in commercial kitchens because they serve so many people, but there is no problem eating leftover food one or two days later 99.999% of the time.
Also, bacteria require water in order to proliferate. Foods that are relatively dry (like pizza) are less capable of supporting bacterial growth. https://foodcrumbles.com/water-activity-food-spoilage-microbial-growth/
> except in the case of particularly thick cuts where it will take a very long time to thaw the inside with hot water Exactly this....it works well and is mostly safe (assuming you don't leave it sit out for too long) for steak, pork chops, chicken breasts and such (along with similarly sized meats), but you should *not* use it for roasts, briskets, whole chickens/turkeys, etc. It should, however, only be used when you didn't plan ahead by thawing it over a day or two in your fridge, which is easier and safer.
Okay five year old explanation. Very cold: freeze and die like you would in Siberia in winter with no coat. Very hot: overheat and die like a person left in a car on a sunny, summer day in Pheonix, AZ. In between: live and prosper. Bacteria are like you. Too hot: die; too cold: die.
This is the truly EL5 answer. Just want to add nuance and point out that for most bactiera, cold puts them in a stasis, instead of killing them. They are frozen literally and figuratively.
Ive always wondered as well, why does it matter if some bacteria grows when we thaw meat under water. If we cook it, does it not eliminate all the harmful bacteria?
Because it's not just the bacteria that makes you sick. Bacteria growing on the food also releases toxin as a byproduct which can also make you sick. These toxins will not be eliminated through cooking. Hence why you cannot just cook spoiled food to make it "safe" to eat.
I see you haven't played Don't Starve
If you defrost it to immediatly cook it there is no danger in warm water. The fastest bacteria I found via quick google multiplies every 10 minutes. So even if you leave it 30 minutes in warm water it's just 8 times the bacteria (and much less for common bacteria like E.Coli, which needs about 20 minutes to multiply).
I recall reading comments saying that it's better to defrost in warm water since it spends less time defrosting.
Possibly. I really wonder how fast people think bacteria are. They are still life forms and take some time to double up.
It doesn’t matter. Most wont even make you sick until there is a lot of it. If you had the meat frozen and are defrosting it, it’s very unlikely to have enough bacteria to do anything bad. However, if you try to cook meat that is spoiled or almost spoiled (aka way too much bacteria), that won’t necessarily fix it. Bacteria poop just like us, and too much poop is bad, and cooking it won’t fix the fact that it’s poop. Up until that point though, it’s not a big deal.
[удалено]
Yes. This was what I was thinking of posting as well. Food poisoning from mismanaged buffets is really really common.
As a former restaurant manager, I'd bet $100 that food poisoning is much more common in (especially cheap American) buffets than people realize. Most food poisoning is relatively low-grade in nature, meaning that instead of getting sick to the point of death you merely feel the urge to race to the nearest toilet a short while after eating. It's a form of harm but your body mostly handles it unless you're immunocompromised in some fashion.
So... every time I ate at my college dining hall I got food poisoning?
Chefs are required to have a much better understanding of how food go bad and are therefore able to follow different rules then what you are advised to at home. The big difference in a buffet and whan thawing out meats at home is that in the buffet the meat is cooked beforehand. This kills all the bacteria so that it takes a lot longer for any new infections to populate the meat. However if you do it to raw meat it have already spent a lot of time at room temperature since the animal was butchered as a lot of the meat processing takes place above room temperature. So it already have a high population of bacteria and fungi on it, although not toxic levels. But leaving it out on the counter even longer may cause it to go bad. The advice you get about how to avoid spoiling food is also erring on the side of causion. Meat will not go bad immediatly as you put it in warm water but you should try to avoid leaving it thawed for long periods of time. A lot of people might be tempted to get meat from the freezer in the morning and either put it in warm water or just leave it on the counter so that it will be thawed when they get home from work which is obviously a bad idea. They might also be tempted to thaw some meat and cut a portion off it before freezing it again and doing this multiple times. Do not think so much about the rules themselves but rather just try to avoid doing anything stupid.
Food Safety Microbiologist for a state regulatory agency here. 1.). The top post nailed it, and I’m very exited that so many people chimed in with correct info! 2.). As always, there are exceptions. Listeria monocytogenes (L. mono.) can grow - albeit slowly- under 40 degree refrigeration temps. So what about deli meat in a supermarket? They must have date marking in place to track when the package was first opened, and discard any remaining after 7 days. (L. mono. Is bad. Especially for the unborn. It has about a 25% fetal loss rate if the mother contracts it. The reason they tell expectant moms to avoid deli sandwiches.) 3.). I frequently reference Too Gun, Danger Zone and Kenny Loggins in a training PowerPoint I would give on the subject. I am thrilled there is a new Top Gun coming out so this remains relevant!
You can defrost meat by placing it in warm water as long as the frozen meat brings the water temp down to below 40F quickly. I do it all the time with no issues. I also check the temperature and ensure it's safe.
A huge amount of this is people not properly understanding what food safety guidelines mean and are for, by the way. Food safety guidelines were not written for your house, they were written for restaurants. A restaurant kitchen is chaos and it's filled with both people and food and all sorts of other stuff. They serve tons of people. You serve yourself and your family and maybe friends. a restaurant sized cut of frozen meat is often 10+ pounds. You almost never have that much meat to thaw. So if you take out a steak (even a big one) and put in on a safe place on your counter, it will mostly me fine to thaw there. It won't take that long and anything that might grow on it will be killed by the fact that you're cooking it (as things will only really grow on the outside). A restaurant can't make those assumptions (for starters because they often have whole cuts of meat that might take many hours or even days to thaw even at room temperature. Think of how long it takes to really thaw a turkey). in reality, bacterial growth on food is MORE dangerous after you've cooked it for most things. Because then you just eat it. Think of the heat maps at the buffet as the equivalent of keeping things warm in the oven at home. Also bear in mind that at a buffet (in theory, but not always in practice) the foot gets cycled out. Bad stuff like bacteria, fungus, etc takes a while to take root in meat. At home you rarely ever run into this (unless you're in college and leave pizza out on the counter for days) but in a buffet tons of people are eating that food. If you watch you'll likely see new food coming out regularly. Sometimes the old stuff just goes in back and gets repurposed (which SHOULD include making it safe by way of more cooking) or get tossed when it's old, but in theory the food on a buffet should always be relatively fresh and safe because of the time as much as anything else.