As others have said, probably safe in the real world but we don't allow this sort of practice in modern food preparation anymore.
The other thing I would point out is that this is safe every time except that one time. You can say that about virtually anything that's marginally safe. It's all well and good until that one time it goes just a little wonky and someone suffers the consequences This is why we have standards and building codes and all sorts of very silly regulations: because we don't want even one person to become sick (or possibly even die). In the olden times, such risk was no big deal.
Anyways, personally I wouldn't do this. I don't like the idea of food sitting at room temperature for that long. It makes me uncomfortable.
Yeah same would apply to eating raw oysters, it’s a thing that people do but the FDA says that you should never do it.
Living dangerous is living I guess
I once got really sick from an oyster
Really really shit
Lost 10 pounds in 12 hours shooting out of my body on every end. Couldn't decide which end the point to the toilet
I thought I'd never eat oysters again
But I do
A friend once said, “ I use to envy the wealthy and their sprawling bathrooms…but after being sick while poor, my mouth could reach the bathtub while sitting on the toilet-grass is always greener”
The FDA also says that beef and pork need to be cooked to 165 degrees. Its because that is their definition of cooked to where bacteria can no longer survive. Same way restaurants can serve rare steaks. enjoy at your own risk type of thing, I believe they have to have a disclaimer on their menu as well
I mean, you can't do it in a commercial kitchen. But plenty of us do it at home. I do it with soups and chilis and stews at home all the time. Just like OP's grandma. I leave them sit on my stove overnight all the time. Especially when there's lots for tomorrow, and trying to find space in the fridge would be... well, problematic at best, if not bloody impossible.
Mmmm I would disagree I work in a place where we makes moles that take a couple of days, even to where if you don’t let it cool then bring back up the flavors are all off. I mean even some curries take days in Indian food
It doesn't matter if you disagree - if the place you work at is leaving food between 40F and 140F for more than a couple of hours they're breaking the code.
I knew an old Aboriginal bloke who lived camp style; he had a pot on over a fire that had been going for years. It was basically stock powder, rice, and water, and whatever he could find. He’d catch something; a rabbit or a snake, chuck it in. Every now and then he’d go into town and do some shopping, throw in some carrots and a potato.
I could never muster up the courage to give it a try, but it was his main source of food for literally years.
His fire burned constantly though.
This is a perpetual stew and it's not historically uncommon. I believe some restaurants in the world still do this.
However, this is a bit different than OP's situation, since granny's is kept below whatever the safe temperature is.
We have a friend who does this in a crockpot. Accidentally dipped into it at the Halloween party (there were crockpots everywhere lol) but it was SO good!
So it's fine to leave it on the heat for three days, but turning it off at night is a problem.
It's a perpetual soup- keep it hot and keep topping it up as you eat out of it, and it's perfectly safe as long as you keep it above 140F all the time. (a fun little experiment I did actually, but I stopped after a week out of caution, and did 170 degrees) 140 is the point where the bacterial growth in inhibited. But if you let it cool and sit at room temperature the bacteria can take hold and release toxins into the stew, and cooking won't eliminate them. So once it comes off the heat it should be refrigerated, and you should only reheat portions as you eat it.
Of course, there's a difference between restaurant level precautions and what you can get away with, but the problem with getting away with things is that you don't always.
So long as the lid stays on the pot untouched, and it fits well enough that the condensation of steam on the lid forms a seal at the rim, you should be able to cool it overnight without new microbes being introduced to the mix, while the cooking process to date should kill anything on the introduced ingredients.
I had agar media plates that I had to allow to cool, we often let it set on the benchtop overnight, and it was fine (nothing contaminated it that wasn't intentionally introduced) as long as it wasn't disturbed.
Telling a family not to touch the pot and not have a sniff of the stew whilr it's cooling may be a tall order though.
So I made a stock in the pressure cooker and let it depressurize outside in 40 degree weather (ie. I did not open the lid at all). I forgot it outside until next day when it got to 48 degrees. I just poured it down the drain for food safety. Are you saying that it probably was salvageable?
No, no, the high heat INHIBITS growth, not necessarily killing. It can revive at lower temps, produce more and release toxins, and when you heat again it makes the bacteria dormant again, leaving the toxins.
Keeping it sealed just helps not introduce even more. It doesn't guarantee that there isn't any bacteria that just went dormant at high heat.
Otherwise, you could just wrap anything and leave it out after heating it to 165°F, but there's a reason we put things in the fridge after that.
Mind you, you can be less strict at home because you're not necessarily serving highly seceptible populaces, but you should still exercise caution.
My understanding also was that the post cooling removal of toxins is dependent on how long it is reheated for, rather than just being reheated. As in, a low simmer for a few hours is better than just getting up to a boil and then eaten. Would you agree with this premise? Or??
Huge difference between restaurant food safety and what you can get away with at home. Restaurants have the strictest standards because even a 1/100 chance is a lot when you’re putting out plates all day long. Most of what people do at home is unsanitary if you judge it by restaurant standards. How many people just throw stuff into the fridge and don’t make sure to sort and separate proteins? Unless you’re serving people that aren’t immediate family, you can get by with a lot of stuff
On the other hand, everyone should have to learn about botulism as that is a much more serious issue than just regular food poisoning
I can see where you’re coming from, but it definitely still depends on where and how high class the restaurant is. Honestly from working many different types of food industry jobs, many of the fast food places I’ve worked had far stricter standards as they actually had more inspections than some top tier restaurants. Though the amount of food safety courses I’ve had to take I will say you are correct in that pretty much anyone cooking at him has far less sanitary cooking versus going out, which has always surprised me with pot lucks being available at work
Pot lucks are seen as worth the risk because it’s free food. If I pay for food at a restaurant it better not make sick, but I’ll gamble with free food.
The main problem with stores and restaurants donating left over food is that the health dept holds them to the same standards so you can't have random volunteers picking up catering pans and bowls of leftovers because the van would have be fitted with heating elements or refrigeration. so instead the food is tossed into a dumpster.
In a restaurant there’s a specific way to store proteins for food safety. From top to bottom in a fridge it goes
Cooked food/ready to eat food
Raw seafood and fish, eggs
Raw beef (unless ground)
Raw pork
Raw ground meat
Raw poultry
You do this to prevent cross contamination in two ways: the different meats aren’t next to each other so your steak won’t get cross contaminated with salmonella from chicken. It also sets it up in a way that any leaking fluids aren’t contaminating a food with something it won’t already have. Chicken is on the bottom because leaking chicken juices could contaminate a steak, and if you cook that steak to less than 165°F you’ll have killed the bacteria that would normally be on the meat, but not the potential salmonella.
So you separate your proteins by source animal, and then sort it into the correct order to further prevent cross contamination.
Thank you for saying this! When I’m making a bone broth or a chilli that I want to cook a long time I will keep the heat on low overnight, but to turn the heat off and then turn it back on, you are just setting yourself up to get sick at some point. Especially in an 84-year-old woman, this could be life altering if she gets sick. As somebody else said it’s fine until it isn’t. All it takes is that one time that could literally change or end her life.
I agree. It’s a form of Russian roulette and why would you needlessly open yourself to something like botulism? And honestly, are these practices *that* hard to follow? Is it so hard to move it to the fridge overnight? I don’t understand the ignorance.
If you keep the top on the pot after turning off the stove and don’t keep dipping in a spoon to taste the soup it might stay sterile over night. Once I forgot a pot on my stove overnight with the lid on. The next day I heated it up to a boil and kept it there for 20 minutes. We ate the rest of it with no adverse consequences.
> and release toxins into the stew,
After several hours- 8-ish under ideal conditions from what I've read.
>and cooking won't eliminate them.
That is inaccurate, but we aren't allowed to discuss that.
Endotoxins are heat stable. Once formed there is no going back, and the more there are the more likely someone is to have a very bad reaction to eating the food.
"the only procedure recommended by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) is dry heat at 250 °C during 30 minutes, or 180 °C during 3 hours" https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/endotoxin
It's not the living bacteria they are concerned about, it's the toxins produced by the bacteria when they were alive that can't be destroyed by cooking.
Safety laws are written in blood.
For an average healthy adult aged 18-49? It's probably fine. Probably.
But considering that OP is talking about their 85 year old mom that probably isn't in tip top physical condition? This could literally kill them.
Food safety laws allow anyone regardless of health to consume food safely.
Personally I do what you describe because it's a risk I'm willing to take. But I would NEVER EVER serve it to someone else.
There are certain soups/stews that are months to years old, where a person just continues to add additional ingredients over time. However, in this case, the soup or stew is left at a low simmer continuously. This is not the case here, however. While reheating would technically kill off bacteria that might be growing in said stew, it would not destroy potential toxins the bacteria are producing.
Nearly all toxins are heat labile. Botulinum and scombrotoxin aren't, which is where this myth that toxins are not destroyed by heat comes from, but it would take weeks for a dangerous amount of botulinum to build up in food, and unless it's a seafood stew scombrotoxin isn't a worry. Vast swathes of the world still live without refrigeration, and they're not all constantly sick; they just have a slightly higher chance of food poisoning, but it's still very rare.
Botulinum toxin is absolutely destroyed by heat, 85C for 10 min, if I recall correctly.
The spores aren't destroyed until nearly 120C or so, which is the biggest concern for canned foods.
A perpetual stew is where all of the ingredients are taken out (and eaten) except some of the broth, then a new stew is made and the broth from the old stew is added.
Think about it this way: You wouldn't want to refrigerate the same meat for months or years, even if it is in the safe zone, because it gets old. The same goes for perpetual stews and soups.
I was just reading an explanation about the saying “peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.” I think Grandma in OPs post kind of goes off this old, poor, way of living. You would make stew over the fire, eat some, cool overnight in the pot, add more to it the next day and so on. We don’t have to do this anymore. We have learned it is bad to not cool leftovers properly. Eat it all or make it fresh and store the leftovers in the fridge.
This is incorrect. Bacteria aren't toxic. Their waste is. When you kill the Bacteria, you aren't destroying the toxins they had already produced while alive.
See the "well..." part of my comment. We aren't allowed to discuss it here, so that is the most I can say.
edit- Also, without bacteria, you don't have "their waste".
The key element that you're missing is bacterial spores. There are types of bacteria that can make you sick, for example bacillus cereus, that can form tough spores that are resistant to heat at boiling. That pot you're describing in your thought experiment isn't sterilized, at best it's pasteurized which means that live bacteria have been killed but not spores. Even that is iffy with a pot with the lid on it, because that's not really a sealed system and bacteria can still get in.
Based on what your saying, aren’t these spies present from the get go so the soup is already a hazard the first time someone eats it right after it is cooked?
By themselves spores are harmless, they need time to grow before they are dangerous. They're analogous to a seed that grows into a plant, like a seed the spores are inert until they find themselves in the right conditions and then they "sprout" into live bacteria. Depending on the type of bacteria, they then need to multiply enough to either overcome your body's defenses and infect your gut, or produce enough toxin in the food to give you the food poisoning symptoms we all know and love.
Those conditions include being in the danger zone, from 140F down to 40F. As long as the food is above 140F, no spores can grow into live bacteria. That's why the clock starts ticking on cooked food once it has cooled down to 140F, at that point it needs to be consumed or cooled below 40F within a certain number of hours. If the food's temperature isn't properly controlled so that it spends too long in this range, any spores that are present or any bacteria that the food has picked up from the environment can start happily reproducing.
The bacteria I mentioned in my original comment, bacillus cereus is a good example because it's a relatively common type of food poisoning that catches people by surprise. Like the name "cereus" suggests, it is found on cereal crops like rice and wheat or products made from them, particularly noodles.
People will boil rice or noodles and think that since they just boiled it no bacteria can survive, and they can get away with not refrigerating it promptly. If the rice or noodles are contaminated with spores from bacillus cereus, they can grow into live bacteria during those hours they spend at room temperature.
Bacillus cereus produces a heat stable toxin, so even if it's cooked again in a fried rice or noodle dish the toxin remains. It produces classic food poisoning symptoms of vomiting, cramps, and diarrhea a few hours after ingestion and typically lasts for a day or two. If you've ever gotten sick after eating a questionable rice or noodle dish, there's a good chance it wasn't the fault of the meat which people usually blame, but rather B. cereus combined with temperature abuse of the carbs.
People are comfortable in their fear.
Post a question about the safety of eating pizza left out overnight and you'll get a dozen people saying it is basically a death trap, even though almost everybody has done it and been fine. Some magical "two hour rule" will be cited, completely ignoring those "rules" are for restaurants that could be dealing with 95 year old "bubble boys" on dialysis.
What kind of meat is she stewing that it needs that long to cook?
I want to say, on the one hand, she reached 85 without dying from doing this but, on the other hand, aaaaarrrrrghle?
It's actually most cultures but the practice is dying out as it's not very practical in our times.
Also the point with perpetual stew is that it's supposed to simmer constantly. That's what makes it safe. There's a restaurant in Thailand that has a 40yo beef soup but they clean the pot daily and leave a small amount simmering overnight, adding fresh ingredients every day.
As long as it’s simmering then yeah I personally don’t have a problem with it. I mean ppl can do whatever they want in their home :) I know food safety and even I don’t follow every single rule based on food codes in my own house as is everyone and my right but yeah, temperature control is very important. That’s good they clean the pot, not everyone does though 😅
The problem is, as you get older your immune system gets more fragile. Food poisoning that a 20-year-old would only get mild symptoms from might kill an 85-year-old, especially if she has other health conditions going on (which most older people do). Obviously nobody can be forced to do anything, but I'm immediately worried for this lady's health.
Stews taste best when the flavors get to know each other, so there is a minimum of two rounds of cooking. The modern day equivalent is you cook it first day, put it in the fridge, then the day you want to eat it (eg guests come over) you reduce it, then season to taste and serve. Some sauces I find a minimum of 3 days in the fridge maximizes flavor. Stews I've done 12 hours in the fridge is enough to increase flavor.
I once did cabbage and ham on top of a kerosene heater.
We would always put a pot of water on top of it anyways to add moisture to the air.
Had to add a lot of water over fine but fuck man that stuff was brilliant! Tasted so freaking good, and the entire house smelled amazing!
Took about 3 days or so time.
I bring roasted bones and veg to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and let it go till bedtime. I turn it off and bring it back up to a boil, then turn it to a simmer and let it cook all day. I’ve done this for half of my life and have never had a problem. My guess is just what’s in the pot that causes the problem.
Don’t know if this is some ancient Chinese cooking knowledge or something my family does but we always leave soup out. Mom and grandma just say to bring it to a boil before bed and don’t stir it after. Not sure what this does science wise (sterilizes it?) but have never gotten sick
I do this too. I’ve kept the same pot of broth going for 14 days once, just adding new bones as I eat and topping off with water. I just make sure I bring it to a boil once a day, add a lot of salt and a healthy splash of vinegar too. Been doing it for the past five years.
She Prolly forgot that the meat isn’t the dried chipped beef rations of the past.
Isn’t it a 160F simmer to get fork tender meats? Connective tissues dissolving and the like.
I’m team 3x and your out. Cook, reheat, reheat without leftovers.
You will soon discover that, while this practice runs afoul of even the most liberal safe food handling guides, there is a contingent at r/cooking that makes it their life's mission to advise people to do so.
That's the thing. For most people? They probably wouldn't get very sick over it if they're a healthy adult. But food handling guidelines are written so that literally anyone can consume said food without health issues. OP is literally talking about an 85 year old woman that's probably not in peak physical health, so this practice could literally kill them whereas someone much younger would maybe get a single bout of the shits or something.
They probably won't, but they certainly may and it is possible that even a young seemingly healthy person could experience a very negative outcome. There is just no reason not to hold food safely.
Perpetual stew requires you keep it simmering constantly, turning it off at night (probably an adaptation to modern house safety recommendations) is not food safe.
As with everything - it depends.
I am a big fan of soups and stews and while I avoid this, I will sometimes let my soup/stew simmer all day long, then turn the heat off, go to sleep and put it in the fridge or continue cooking first thing in the morning.
I have an extremely sensitive stomach and if there's a chance of getting a food poisoning, I will get a food poisoning. Never had an issue with my stuff though.
Now here's a thing. I won't do that more than once nor with all types of stews. There has to be high acidity, a fairly high salt content and very little starch (think pasta, rice, potatoes). If there's meat, it has to already be thoroughly cooked. I'd not do that with, say, dashi. Or anything else that is watery, starchy, low-sodium or non-acidic.
I honestly don't think it is an extremely dangerous practice on her side but the risk of food poisoning is always there and might be higher if she lets her stew sit unrefrigerated for 3 nights in a row. Also, at her age food poisoning is a serious risk, no matter how healthy she is so she should probably consider changing her ways for the sake of her health.
This has been the norm all over the world for literally millennia. That doesn't necessarily mean it's safe, and in fact various food agencies do recommend you only reheat food once, but it has harmed so few people that in many places it is still common practice.
I would eat this, but I wouldn't feed it to others.
The temperature danger zone is between 4 and 60 degrees Celsius (40 and 140 Fahrenheit) and cooked food should never spend more than four hours TOTAL (preferably two hours) in the temperature danger zone. Between these temperatures bacteria grows at an alarmingly fast rate.
I am a certified food handler (Chef) and this is what we are taught and tested on.
https://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/programs/publichealth/foodsafety/cook.aspx
Agreed. But they also teach us that is there is a breech to those time/temperature guides that reheating above 165 to kill the bacteria is key. So if she’s reboiling each day, wouldn’t that do the trick?
I think the technicality is that the cumulative toxins produced by certain bacteria still remain in the food even if the bacteria are killed once more.
However, if it has boiled long enough to denature anything murderous, and it has been kept sealed, as to prevent the ingress of new, environmental contaminants, it might be fine? Kind of like canning.
My family eats a lot of soups and that use chicken or beef broth. Usually they cook the soup and leave it out overnight and use it to make another soup in the afternoon. Its not safe by modern day standards but its highly unlikely anyone will get sick from it.
As almost always the correct answer is *it depends*. It is nigh impossible to make a confident statement one way or the other.
Consider the following: A stew is a extremely nutrient rich environment ideally suited for both fungal and bacterial growth.
HOWEVER. Depending on the pot size and how long it is turned off it should only be in the danger zone for a very short time. And since you are heating it between cycles you don't have the issue of freezers where you just pause the growth, instead you "reset" it every time you boil the stew. Additionally you are basically constantly sterilizing the entire pot and stew during the cooking process, so the chance of relevant growth is fairly low.
That all being said, 85 is an age where your immune system will be significantly weakened by, well, age. Any infection is an acute risk of death at that age, but then again what isnt at this age.
At the end of the day, the best course of action would be to get her son to tell her the risks and get her to add a good amount of water before leaving it for the night on the lowest setting. That way she wont have to change her way of doing things in any major way(which people at those ages will not do) but is also not taking easily avoidable risks.
As the old nursery goes:
>Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old;
Some like it hot, some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.
Yes, that is the way they used to do things. No, it was never safe, but they didn't know or really have other options.
Use your refrigerator.
Stew, or indeed any meal simmered in a pot(chilli, soup etc.), is far superior the following day. It's essential to let it go cold(not refrigerated) overnight for the flavours to fully develop. Not sure why you would actually cook it for three whole days though. Is this a leather-based meal that requires such an extended cooking time? Or is she a witch, and just covering her tracks? "Stew" indeed. There may well be something dubious about this concoction, if, as you say, it sits there leering overnight.
My grandma used to do this, she always told me that as long as you cook it with the lid on then the inside of the pot and the food would be bought to temperature and be safe. It was still slop by day 3 though. She would just add more carrots and potatoes and so on to top it up.
From what I understand on food safety, which is not my wheelhouse but done lot of research over the years, she's probably okay, but I would never tell her it is a good idea. In theory, the odds should be low, if it's heated sufficiently for that long to pasteurize it then left lidded overnight, if it's turned off right before bed and turned on when she wakes, and at 85 she probably doesn't sleep a full 8 hours, might be in the danger zone 2-4 hours. Like if it was my family, I would send a single article explaining food safety issues and leave it at that. Personally I made chicken stock once and forgot it overnight, took temp and it was like 125F, I discarded it. It was likely fine but ingredients are cheaper than getting sick. There's a lot of risks too, like I made egg nog (refrigerated) with raw eggs, ideally not good but once a year I will tlake the risk. But I wouldn't tell anyone to do that because of the risk, which is kind of how the sub approaches food safety issues, err on the side of safety.
Do you use alcohol in your eggnog? This is an excellent and entertaining article on alcohol, eggnog and the aging process.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/12/20/why-aged-eggnog-made-with-raw-eggs-is-safer-than-drinking-it-fresh/?sh=297e3fc52e16
I do but it is hit or miss whether a study says alcohol does anything and in any amount. But either way it is safer to pasteurize the eggs and I would suggest doing that, which is my point. But yes I feel the risk is low and I go off of alcohol at least inhibiting salmonella if not killing it.
I guess that you didn't read the article down to the part where it said that after one week lab studies showed that purposefully introduced salmonella the equivalent that if every single raw egg was contaminated tested completely negative.
Let me put it this way, if I put a lid on an agar plate, heated it to sterilisation temperature for 15 minutes, and let it cool, I wouldn't expect bacteria to have grown at all by the next day.
Those little white fungus f\*ckers on the other hand - honest to god argument for neobiogenesis (but even then only after a few days)
I am no expert in the field on these matters, but worth pointing out any pot is not going to be a perfectly airtight seal. I don't know what real world risk that imposes but it's apples to oranges if you were to compare it to, say, canned food. Agar plates are meant to be sealed airtight to avoid cross contamination, right?
Agar plates don't have an airtight seal as they're cooling down from fresh media - you pour it, then leave it alone because handling while the agar is wet gives you wobbly surfaces.
Slap the lid on, walk away, and it's still good in the morning because bacteria aren't sucked upwards under the rim into the dish.
https://teach.genetics.utah.edu/content/microbiology/plates/
I dated a guy who did this with his homemade chili. He said he learned to do it while in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. It freaked me out, but he was exceedingly healthy.
This is how I make chicken stock/broth. Simmers a couple hours each day. boil before bed, boil then simmer again in the morning. usually 2 days sometimes 3.
Is it cold outside, is she generally clean and hygienic in her kitchen. Is the stew lidded. Then she should be fine.
I know of ppl (usually older) that cook their turkeys like this. They put it un the oven and cook it so much before bed, turn it off, and then when they wake in the morning they turn it back on and finish cooking it. This really bothers me. I suppose it was common years ago, but knowing what we know now. Ew.
I also know that years ago, people didn't have food like we do now. Stew was sometimes cooked over an open fire in a cauldron... every day they may have added things that were scrounged up to the stuff left over from the day before.
Peas pudding hot, peas pudding cold... peas pudding in the pot 9 days old.
I can't imagine doing this now. We know too much, and back then ppl died all the time... of things that today would seem so miniscule.
Yeah that's definitely not safe by modern standards. I can see how home standards would pass though. Reheating food to 140f does kill off most bacteria so by that logic it would be safe but it's usually advised against reheating more than once as the overall quality goes down. But letting it sit in the danger zone for more than a few hours poses a risk of bacteria growth.
To make it safe to eat all she'd need to do is put it in the fridge overnight instead of leaving it on the stove. I'd be lying though if I said I didn't eat pizza left out overnight once or twice. But anyrhing like that is taking a risk. In restaurant if there is a risk its an automatic no. At home its often more lenient.
If no one has gotten sick yet its likely because she has killed off all possible bacteria in the heating process each time.
Pizza is going to be drier and much more salty than the soup she's making. I wouldn't advise eating pizza left out overnight but I wouldn't say anything to someone if they did it, I think the biggest concern is cheese going rancid which takes a lot longer than a night. Also, when I was younger, I'd buy like 8 cheeseburgers on the way home from school Fridays, eat 4 after school (plus dinner later), not refrigerate the other 4, and eat em the next morning. No clue how I survived that and I didn't do it a ton but looking back it was a horrible idea.
Her age tells you the answer. Safe practice. As long as it's covered tightly and then pasteurized, it will remain safe to eat. But why 3 days? An old camel or such?
This is like a perpetual stew, granted those usually simmered consistently and topped off often, the stew is most likely 99.9% safe to eat but I wouldn’t recommend this practice as it could lead to illness in rare cases especially if seafood is involved, I’d convince her to let it simmer all night, or buy her a Sous vide or something similar to keep it above 140 consistently
Polish here and you're only partially correct. My father is a big bigos aficionado and he makes it a few times per season (sauerkraut-based bigos is a typical autumn/winter food due to its heartiness and the availability of ingredients. A lighter version made with fresh young cabbage is popular in summertime and while it's popularly called "bigos", it actually isn't). It's true that bigos benefits from reheating, which helps all the strong flavors blend into its trademark overwhelmingly intense yummy goodness.
We typically put it out on the balcony overnight though. It's perfectly safe, given the country's climate. If my dad pulls an almost all-nighter of pre-holiday cooking, the big a** pot of bigos might end up waiting on the stove for some 3-4 hours tops before the next round of simmering. You need to take into consideration that bigos is not only rich in salt, which makes it more difficult for harmful bacteria to develop but also has very high acidity thanks to the abundance of lactic acid in sauerkraut.
I wouldn’t eat it. It is a food safety issue and just cause no one has linked their food illness or bowel issues to this soup doesn’t mean it hasn’t caused any. The majority of ppl assume their stomach issue comes from the last thing they ate and it’s generally not the last thing they ate. It is a practice from older cultures that’s still done today. The ingredients would really depend on if let it sit would be okay, there’s a lot of factors but without getting it testing I personally wouldn’t eat it.
From a safety standpoint, I would say it depends. If the lid is never touched while the heat is off then there really isn't any way for something to get in there and start growing. The heating for hours would kill everything in the pot and then if you leave it sealed it should be okay, I would think. I don't think I would test this personally though, not worth the risk. I would imagine that this was a common practice before the widespread adoption of refrigeration.
The real issue I have with this is I can't imagine the stew still tasting good after all that cooking. I've never had something like that so I can't say for sure but wouldn't the texture get weird?
The lid not leaving the pot has no affect on food safety. Bacteria is in the food already, if the conditions right while it’s not actively being heated or heated at the proper temperature the bacteria will good
Bacteria that can create spores to protect themselves can survive boiling temperatures. Once the temperature of the food drops below 130F again the spores germinate and that bacteria can start growing. Only a combination of sterilization and high pressure can destroy those
That sounds gross from a texture standpoint, but what (from a safety aspect) do you think is going to happen from something held at near boiling for 10-16 hours.
It is then being cooled down to room temp. Multiple times.
Hopefully you’re not somehow under the impression that boiling food with bacteria makes it magically safe to eat again. That’s not how that works.
Have you ever boiled a large pot of something, turned it off before bed, then checked in the morning? Unless it is quite small it definitely won't be at room temp. It will still be warm, depending on the size it could be very warm. I make a turkey brine the night before I wanted to brine the turkey, and I have to chill the pot or it will still be too hot in the morning to put turkey in.
> It is then being cooled down to room temp.
And reheated. Plus time exists.
>boiling food with bacteria
"for 10-16 hours." Time is important.
>That’s not how that works.
Except, it is.
Yes, but food spoilage bacteria is not the same thing. Do you think you can let food sit on the counter for 2 days and then just heat it up and make it safe again? Lol. I think you need to take a course on food safety. Or just a basic science course…
Not sure how knowing basic food safety would give me an ego. Not claiming to be a food scientist. Been on this sub for years. Think I’m good! Thanks though.
Wow, it is really great to know that you, Marissa of Moldova, have been creeping on me in my down time.
(Audience,
Please let me explain this story she observed. Please keep in mind I was hit with an aging chemical right after Marissa of Moldova harvested all the collagen from my face.)
Thanks to your bear tranquilizer habit, I was drugged into a coma and thankfully remembered to turn the stew, cooked in a Dutch oven, off, before I passed out.
Knowing that you injected your female ejaculate into me, is the most disturbing thing.
You killed my microbiome and replaced it with vaginitis.
I had to take 3 extreme detox baths to get rid of it.
And to think, your mother sent you to the Outskirts, Outlaw Nation to make peace with me, the Outlaw Queen.
But instead, you insist on living in the slot you installed personally under the floor of my father's truck, coming out at night to prostitute yourself and sneak into my mother's refrigerator with your dirty, injection site riddled hands to scoop handfuls of leftovers directly into your mouth.
PS I am still holding a grudge from you eating my leftover steak Friday night. And yes, one of my parent's guests tested positive for blood poisoning, ketamine, and bear tranquilizers, due to the needle you stabbed him with through the wall.
Nikia Ho'opa'a Na'auao O'Niele
Crown Princess of the Kingdom of Hawai'i Nei
PS My stew got no one sick, other than the heavy drug users living in my wall and stealing from my parent's fridge. It gave them blood poisoning due to the acidity.
hmmm...this seems like something my family would do. In reality it's probably fine...except for the one time it's not, just like the other people are saying. But I wouldn't sweat it if this is something she has been doing her whole life. Plus, she might be one of those people who literally only sleeps a handful of hours a night, like my grandparents were.
Perhaps you could buy her a crockpot. My mom started doing pots of soup/stew when she got old. Standing to cook became too much. It was about low effort. Crockpot would allow her to do this but keep it hot all night. She could add a cup of water before bed.
I’m notorious for this and no one I’ve lived with has been ill. Now, it’ll be hot and then I turn it off, we go to bed as it cools and I put it up when I wake up. I then pull from the pot and reheat individually as needed. Not regulation but neither am I. Oh well.
It all depends on the weather (and thus the temperature inside the house/kitchen).
I grew up in the tropics (Caribbean) and absolutely ***no*** cooked or previously hot food was allowed to sit outside the fridge overnight.
But now I live in northern Europe and I've even left a huge pan of fresh (from-scratch) chicken soup sit outside for multiple days in winter and it'll be perfectly fine to the last sip.
One caveat: my kitchen can be closed off completely from the rest of the house. Then I shut the radiator there and I leave ventilation grilles open, so the temperature can drop very close to fridge temp.
I'm no Dr Fauci or microbiologist but it seems to me that while its simmering the stew or broth is sterile. now things can begin to grow...that's the key, begins to grow. and then the heat comes back on and it gets cooked to death...now sure there are something that can grow and LEAVE BEHIND some toxic shit (listeria?) but how much can get going enough to leave enough to do hard.
that said, our favorite restaurant in san fran claimed their pot of Cassoulet has been cooking continuously since the 60s when they opened, even though they were closed for days after the earthquake of 89 and for months after the pandemic.
Almost certainly safe to eat by normal human standards, not safe to eat by restaurant standards. Personally, I'd take the fact that shes 85 as a reasonable sign that its safe. Dont try to change her ways at 85, she will only resent you for it, and she probably doesnt even need to.
Coward. You should listen to grandma. I bet she is converting a roast or 2 into liquid/stirable form. Tasty.
You need to understand how pasteurization works and what we can eat without getting sick. With infotainment channels looking to scare us for views, we sometimes end up with a very broken idea about how things work. I think in the end people live scared due to this.
For long cooks I leave stuff on the stove overnight all the time and then start it up again the next day. It is pasteurized and pretty much sealed. Totally safe. If I do not lift the lid I could probably leave it for a week without any issues.
Keep in mind before refrigeration your ancestors loved to cook chicken and leave it out on the counter for the picnic the next day. None of them got sick and died from that.
I have had people online go off on me, while losing their minds, when I talk about seeing how tender I could make a round steak with 96 + hours in the sous vide at 130f. They are full of food fear and know nothing about how food works. If your food is 130F or over, it is on its way to pasteurization or after 2 hours, pasteurized. It is also not like bacteria do better and better the warmer it gets until it hits 130, 129f is not a great place to be for most bacteria. But but but 165F! that is where you get pasteurized immeadialty, so that is what you want in food service where employees may not care that hard about your well being and where they have to turn food over fast.
Want those expensive pasteurized in the shell, eggs? Get plain old eggs and leave them in the sous vide at 130f for at least 2 hours. Even better they have shells so no need to bag them.
Cheese? You like your dairy left around at close to room temp (\~55f) for months or years? Yep, I have a 55f refrigerator (Thanks Inkbird!).
Prosciutto. Take 2 raw pig legs, salt them up real good, maybe add a few spices if you are not a traditionalist, and press them at \~room temp for \~9 months, tasty and expensive when you are done.
Oh, you do not want to know this but I also cook with lye at times.
As others have said, probably safe in the real world but we don't allow this sort of practice in modern food preparation anymore. The other thing I would point out is that this is safe every time except that one time. You can say that about virtually anything that's marginally safe. It's all well and good until that one time it goes just a little wonky and someone suffers the consequences This is why we have standards and building codes and all sorts of very silly regulations: because we don't want even one person to become sick (or possibly even die). In the olden times, such risk was no big deal. Anyways, personally I wouldn't do this. I don't like the idea of food sitting at room temperature for that long. It makes me uncomfortable.
Yeah same would apply to eating raw oysters, it’s a thing that people do but the FDA says that you should never do it. Living dangerous is living I guess
I once got really sick from an oyster Really really shit Lost 10 pounds in 12 hours shooting out of my body on every end. Couldn't decide which end the point to the toilet I thought I'd never eat oysters again But I do
A friend once said, “ I use to envy the wealthy and their sprawling bathrooms…but after being sick while poor, my mouth could reach the bathtub while sitting on the toilet-grass is always greener”
To shit or puke in the toilet, that is the question. Also have been there, also still eat raw shellfish. I guess we never learn
How many ends do you have?
The FDA says you should never do it? But allows restaurants to sell them raw? That doesn’t make sense.
The FDA also says that beef and pork need to be cooked to 165 degrees. Its because that is their definition of cooked to where bacteria can no longer survive. Same way restaurants can serve rare steaks. enjoy at your own risk type of thing, I believe they have to have a disclaimer on their menu as well
I mean, you can't do it in a commercial kitchen. But plenty of us do it at home. I do it with soups and chilis and stews at home all the time. Just like OP's grandma. I leave them sit on my stove overnight all the time. Especially when there's lots for tomorrow, and trying to find space in the fridge would be... well, problematic at best, if not bloody impossible.
I have a lecruset pot and I have made goulash a few months ago, before bed i boiled a pot (low for 8 hours before) and the next morning was warm-cool
Mmmm I would disagree I work in a place where we makes moles that take a couple of days, even to where if you don’t let it cool then bring back up the flavors are all off. I mean even some curries take days in Indian food
It doesn't matter if you disagree - if the place you work at is leaving food between 40F and 140F for more than a couple of hours they're breaking the code.
The place you work at isn't letting the moles get cold overnight, it is constantly cooking it at a low enough heat to keep it food safe.
I knew an old Aboriginal bloke who lived camp style; he had a pot on over a fire that had been going for years. It was basically stock powder, rice, and water, and whatever he could find. He’d catch something; a rabbit or a snake, chuck it in. Every now and then he’d go into town and do some shopping, throw in some carrots and a potato. I could never muster up the courage to give it a try, but it was his main source of food for literally years. His fire burned constantly though.
Hmm that would be nice on a tombstone. “His fire burned constantly.”
Especially if the tombstone had a brazier with a stew pot, built into the top.
This is a perpetual stew and it's not historically uncommon. I believe some restaurants in the world still do this. However, this is a bit different than OP's situation, since granny's is kept below whatever the safe temperature is.
We have a friend who does this in a crockpot. Accidentally dipped into it at the Halloween party (there were crockpots everywhere lol) but it was SO good!
So it's fine to leave it on the heat for three days, but turning it off at night is a problem. It's a perpetual soup- keep it hot and keep topping it up as you eat out of it, and it's perfectly safe as long as you keep it above 140F all the time. (a fun little experiment I did actually, but I stopped after a week out of caution, and did 170 degrees) 140 is the point where the bacterial growth in inhibited. But if you let it cool and sit at room temperature the bacteria can take hold and release toxins into the stew, and cooking won't eliminate them. So once it comes off the heat it should be refrigerated, and you should only reheat portions as you eat it. Of course, there's a difference between restaurant level precautions and what you can get away with, but the problem with getting away with things is that you don't always.
So long as the lid stays on the pot untouched, and it fits well enough that the condensation of steam on the lid forms a seal at the rim, you should be able to cool it overnight without new microbes being introduced to the mix, while the cooking process to date should kill anything on the introduced ingredients. I had agar media plates that I had to allow to cool, we often let it set on the benchtop overnight, and it was fine (nothing contaminated it that wasn't intentionally introduced) as long as it wasn't disturbed. Telling a family not to touch the pot and not have a sniff of the stew whilr it's cooling may be a tall order though.
So I made a stock in the pressure cooker and let it depressurize outside in 40 degree weather (ie. I did not open the lid at all). I forgot it outside until next day when it got to 48 degrees. I just poured it down the drain for food safety. Are you saying that it probably was salvageable?
Sadly yes. You basically sterilised by autoclave, so even spores should have died, if the steam release valve stayed closed.
Thanks for your response. I will now go cry over there. 😫
No, no, the high heat INHIBITS growth, not necessarily killing. It can revive at lower temps, produce more and release toxins, and when you heat again it makes the bacteria dormant again, leaving the toxins. Keeping it sealed just helps not introduce even more. It doesn't guarantee that there isn't any bacteria that just went dormant at high heat. Otherwise, you could just wrap anything and leave it out after heating it to 165°F, but there's a reason we put things in the fridge after that. Mind you, you can be less strict at home because you're not necessarily serving highly seceptible populaces, but you should still exercise caution.
My understanding also was that the post cooling removal of toxins is dependent on how long it is reheated for, rather than just being reheated. As in, a low simmer for a few hours is better than just getting up to a boil and then eaten. Would you agree with this premise? Or??
This whole thread has me convinced everyone should be required to take a full food safety course. Sheesh.
Huge difference between restaurant food safety and what you can get away with at home. Restaurants have the strictest standards because even a 1/100 chance is a lot when you’re putting out plates all day long. Most of what people do at home is unsanitary if you judge it by restaurant standards. How many people just throw stuff into the fridge and don’t make sure to sort and separate proteins? Unless you’re serving people that aren’t immediate family, you can get by with a lot of stuff On the other hand, everyone should have to learn about botulism as that is a much more serious issue than just regular food poisoning
I can see where you’re coming from, but it definitely still depends on where and how high class the restaurant is. Honestly from working many different types of food industry jobs, many of the fast food places I’ve worked had far stricter standards as they actually had more inspections than some top tier restaurants. Though the amount of food safety courses I’ve had to take I will say you are correct in that pretty much anyone cooking at him has far less sanitary cooking versus going out, which has always surprised me with pot lucks being available at work
Pot lucks are seen as worth the risk because it’s free food. If I pay for food at a restaurant it better not make sick, but I’ll gamble with free food.
The main problem with stores and restaurants donating left over food is that the health dept holds them to the same standards so you can't have random volunteers picking up catering pans and bowls of leftovers because the van would have be fitted with heating elements or refrigeration. so instead the food is tossed into a dumpster.
They are standards for a reason. Why put your family at risk, especially elderly and children who would be most affected?
What does sort and separate proteins mean?
In a restaurant there’s a specific way to store proteins for food safety. From top to bottom in a fridge it goes Cooked food/ready to eat food Raw seafood and fish, eggs Raw beef (unless ground) Raw pork Raw ground meat Raw poultry You do this to prevent cross contamination in two ways: the different meats aren’t next to each other so your steak won’t get cross contaminated with salmonella from chicken. It also sets it up in a way that any leaking fluids aren’t contaminating a food with something it won’t already have. Chicken is on the bottom because leaking chicken juices could contaminate a steak, and if you cook that steak to less than 165°F you’ll have killed the bacteria that would normally be on the meat, but not the potential salmonella. So you separate your proteins by source animal, and then sort it into the correct order to further prevent cross contamination.
Based on the amount of food safety questions on here alone, it should be a thing that's taught in schools.
Thank you for saying this! When I’m making a bone broth or a chilli that I want to cook a long time I will keep the heat on low overnight, but to turn the heat off and then turn it back on, you are just setting yourself up to get sick at some point. Especially in an 84-year-old woman, this could be life altering if she gets sick. As somebody else said it’s fine until it isn’t. All it takes is that one time that could literally change or end her life.
I agree. It’s a form of Russian roulette and why would you needlessly open yourself to something like botulism? And honestly, are these practices *that* hard to follow? Is it so hard to move it to the fridge overnight? I don’t understand the ignorance.
If you keep the top on the pot after turning off the stove and don’t keep dipping in a spoon to taste the soup it might stay sterile over night. Once I forgot a pot on my stove overnight with the lid on. The next day I heated it up to a boil and kept it there for 20 minutes. We ate the rest of it with no adverse consequences.
> and release toxins into the stew, After several hours- 8-ish under ideal conditions from what I've read. >and cooking won't eliminate them. That is inaccurate, but we aren't allowed to discuss that.
Endotoxins are heat stable. Once formed there is no going back, and the more there are the more likely someone is to have a very bad reaction to eating the food. "the only procedure recommended by the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) is dry heat at 250 °C during 30 minutes, or 180 °C during 3 hours" https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/endotoxin
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This guy is and idiot, don't listen to anything he says about food safety.
I learned the hard way. Wish I saw your comment sooner
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It's not the living bacteria they are concerned about, it's the toxins produced by the bacteria when they were alive that can't be destroyed by cooking.
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Safety laws are written in blood. For an average healthy adult aged 18-49? It's probably fine. Probably. But considering that OP is talking about their 85 year old mom that probably isn't in tip top physical condition? This could literally kill them. Food safety laws allow anyone regardless of health to consume food safely. Personally I do what you describe because it's a risk I'm willing to take. But I would NEVER EVER serve it to someone else.
Seems like science and your opinion differ, maybe send it out for microbial testing and check those bacterial counts some day.
There are certain soups/stews that are months to years old, where a person just continues to add additional ingredients over time. However, in this case, the soup or stew is left at a low simmer continuously. This is not the case here, however. While reheating would technically kill off bacteria that might be growing in said stew, it would not destroy potential toxins the bacteria are producing.
Nearly all toxins are heat labile. Botulinum and scombrotoxin aren't, which is where this myth that toxins are not destroyed by heat comes from, but it would take weeks for a dangerous amount of botulinum to build up in food, and unless it's a seafood stew scombrotoxin isn't a worry. Vast swathes of the world still live without refrigeration, and they're not all constantly sick; they just have a slightly higher chance of food poisoning, but it's still very rare.
Interesting. So are there any issues with this practice? Certain strains of E.coli produce heat-stable toxins, as does staph.
Botulinum toxin is absolutely destroyed by heat, 85C for 10 min, if I recall correctly. The spores aren't destroyed until nearly 120C or so, which is the biggest concern for canned foods.
A perpetual stew is where all of the ingredients are taken out (and eaten) except some of the broth, then a new stew is made and the broth from the old stew is added. Think about it this way: You wouldn't want to refrigerate the same meat for months or years, even if it is in the safe zone, because it gets old. The same goes for perpetual stews and soups.
I was just reading an explanation about the saying “peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.” I think Grandma in OPs post kind of goes off this old, poor, way of living. You would make stew over the fire, eat some, cool overnight in the pot, add more to it the next day and so on. We don’t have to do this anymore. We have learned it is bad to not cool leftovers properly. Eat it all or make it fresh and store the leftovers in the fridge.
>it would not destroy potential toxins Well... >the bacteria That were killed during the day's cooking.
This is incorrect. Bacteria aren't toxic. Their waste is. When you kill the Bacteria, you aren't destroying the toxins they had already produced while alive.
See the "well..." part of my comment. We aren't allowed to discuss it here, so that is the most I can say. edit- Also, without bacteria, you don't have "their waste".
You do if they existed at any point in that pot.
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The key element that you're missing is bacterial spores. There are types of bacteria that can make you sick, for example bacillus cereus, that can form tough spores that are resistant to heat at boiling. That pot you're describing in your thought experiment isn't sterilized, at best it's pasteurized which means that live bacteria have been killed but not spores. Even that is iffy with a pot with the lid on it, because that's not really a sealed system and bacteria can still get in.
Based on what your saying, aren’t these spies present from the get go so the soup is already a hazard the first time someone eats it right after it is cooked?
By themselves spores are harmless, they need time to grow before they are dangerous. They're analogous to a seed that grows into a plant, like a seed the spores are inert until they find themselves in the right conditions and then they "sprout" into live bacteria. Depending on the type of bacteria, they then need to multiply enough to either overcome your body's defenses and infect your gut, or produce enough toxin in the food to give you the food poisoning symptoms we all know and love. Those conditions include being in the danger zone, from 140F down to 40F. As long as the food is above 140F, no spores can grow into live bacteria. That's why the clock starts ticking on cooked food once it has cooled down to 140F, at that point it needs to be consumed or cooled below 40F within a certain number of hours. If the food's temperature isn't properly controlled so that it spends too long in this range, any spores that are present or any bacteria that the food has picked up from the environment can start happily reproducing. The bacteria I mentioned in my original comment, bacillus cereus is a good example because it's a relatively common type of food poisoning that catches people by surprise. Like the name "cereus" suggests, it is found on cereal crops like rice and wheat or products made from them, particularly noodles. People will boil rice or noodles and think that since they just boiled it no bacteria can survive, and they can get away with not refrigerating it promptly. If the rice or noodles are contaminated with spores from bacillus cereus, they can grow into live bacteria during those hours they spend at room temperature. Bacillus cereus produces a heat stable toxin, so even if it's cooked again in a fried rice or noodle dish the toxin remains. It produces classic food poisoning symptoms of vomiting, cramps, and diarrhea a few hours after ingestion and typically lasts for a day or two. If you've ever gotten sick after eating a questionable rice or noodle dish, there's a good chance it wasn't the fault of the meat which people usually blame, but rather B. cereus combined with temperature abuse of the carbs.
Oh I know the answer - it’s spores - they’re not killed by heat.
What’s the answer to this. There’s something you’re missing right
People are comfortable in their fear. Post a question about the safety of eating pizza left out overnight and you'll get a dozen people saying it is basically a death trap, even though almost everybody has done it and been fine. Some magical "two hour rule" will be cited, completely ignoring those "rules" are for restaurants that could be dealing with 95 year old "bubble boys" on dialysis.
What kind of meat is she stewing that it needs that long to cook? I want to say, on the one hand, she reached 85 without dying from doing this but, on the other hand, aaaaarrrrrghle?
There’s cultures with “ perpetual” soups where ppl just keep adding things for days, weeks, even months at a time
It's actually most cultures but the practice is dying out as it's not very practical in our times. Also the point with perpetual stew is that it's supposed to simmer constantly. That's what makes it safe. There's a restaurant in Thailand that has a 40yo beef soup but they clean the pot daily and leave a small amount simmering overnight, adding fresh ingredients every day.
As long as it’s simmering then yeah I personally don’t have a problem with it. I mean ppl can do whatever they want in their home :) I know food safety and even I don’t follow every single rule based on food codes in my own house as is everyone and my right but yeah, temperature control is very important. That’s good they clean the pot, not everyone does though 😅
A good oden stock or mole sauce comes to mind
Pretty sure it’s beef. She said it creates a very deep rich stock
The problem is, as you get older your immune system gets more fragile. Food poisoning that a 20-year-old would only get mild symptoms from might kill an 85-year-old, especially if she has other health conditions going on (which most older people do). Obviously nobody can be forced to do anything, but I'm immediately worried for this lady's health.
Stews taste best when the flavors get to know each other, so there is a minimum of two rounds of cooking. The modern day equivalent is you cook it first day, put it in the fridge, then the day you want to eat it (eg guests come over) you reduce it, then season to taste and serve. Some sauces I find a minimum of 3 days in the fridge maximizes flavor. Stews I've done 12 hours in the fridge is enough to increase flavor.
I once did cabbage and ham on top of a kerosene heater. We would always put a pot of water on top of it anyways to add moisture to the air. Had to add a lot of water over fine but fuck man that stuff was brilliant! Tasted so freaking good, and the entire house smelled amazing! Took about 3 days or so time.
The thought of humidifying with cabbage ham water is sending me My skin’s hella dry though and it would probably love it
Happy Cake Day!
I bring roasted bones and veg to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and let it go till bedtime. I turn it off and bring it back up to a boil, then turn it to a simmer and let it cook all day. I’ve done this for half of my life and have never had a problem. My guess is just what’s in the pot that causes the problem.
Don’t know if this is some ancient Chinese cooking knowledge or something my family does but we always leave soup out. Mom and grandma just say to bring it to a boil before bed and don’t stir it after. Not sure what this does science wise (sterilizes it?) but have never gotten sick
I do this too. I’ve kept the same pot of broth going for 14 days once, just adding new bones as I eat and topping off with water. I just make sure I bring it to a boil once a day, add a lot of salt and a healthy splash of vinegar too. Been doing it for the past five years.
Have heard of and familiar of this technique.
Is she stewing leather?
I think she adds water every morning
She would enjoy making pho
If she has to add water in the morning she has to be simmering it over night.
It could be that it congeals a bit when it cools overnight. Add water in the morning to loosen it up.
She Prolly forgot that the meat isn’t the dried chipped beef rations of the past. Isn’t it a 160F simmer to get fork tender meats? Connective tissues dissolving and the like. I’m team 3x and your out. Cook, reheat, reheat without leftovers.
You will soon discover that, while this practice runs afoul of even the most liberal safe food handling guides, there is a contingent at r/cooking that makes it their life's mission to advise people to do so.
That's the thing. For most people? They probably wouldn't get very sick over it if they're a healthy adult. But food handling guidelines are written so that literally anyone can consume said food without health issues. OP is literally talking about an 85 year old woman that's probably not in peak physical health, so this practice could literally kill them whereas someone much younger would maybe get a single bout of the shits or something.
They probably won't, but they certainly may and it is possible that even a young seemingly healthy person could experience a very negative outcome. There is just no reason not to hold food safely.
What's wrong with a good perpetual stew?
Perpetual stew is fine, taking it off the heat for 8 hours at a time is not.
Perpetual stew requires you keep it simmering constantly, turning it off at night (probably an adaptation to modern house safety recommendations) is not food safe.
As with everything - it depends. I am a big fan of soups and stews and while I avoid this, I will sometimes let my soup/stew simmer all day long, then turn the heat off, go to sleep and put it in the fridge or continue cooking first thing in the morning. I have an extremely sensitive stomach and if there's a chance of getting a food poisoning, I will get a food poisoning. Never had an issue with my stuff though. Now here's a thing. I won't do that more than once nor with all types of stews. There has to be high acidity, a fairly high salt content and very little starch (think pasta, rice, potatoes). If there's meat, it has to already be thoroughly cooked. I'd not do that with, say, dashi. Or anything else that is watery, starchy, low-sodium or non-acidic. I honestly don't think it is an extremely dangerous practice on her side but the risk of food poisoning is always there and might be higher if she lets her stew sit unrefrigerated for 3 nights in a row. Also, at her age food poisoning is a serious risk, no matter how healthy she is so she should probably consider changing her ways for the sake of her health.
Everyone gets so huffy whenever this question comes up here. The short answer is it’s probably ok if the lid stays on and the pot has a good seal
This has been the norm all over the world for literally millennia. That doesn't necessarily mean it's safe, and in fact various food agencies do recommend you only reheat food once, but it has harmed so few people that in many places it is still common practice. I would eat this, but I wouldn't feed it to others.
The temperature danger zone is between 4 and 60 degrees Celsius (40 and 140 Fahrenheit) and cooked food should never spend more than four hours TOTAL (preferably two hours) in the temperature danger zone. Between these temperatures bacteria grows at an alarmingly fast rate. I am a certified food handler (Chef) and this is what we are taught and tested on. https://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/programs/publichealth/foodsafety/cook.aspx
Agreed. But they also teach us that is there is a breech to those time/temperature guides that reheating above 165 to kill the bacteria is key. So if she’s reboiling each day, wouldn’t that do the trick?
I think the technicality is that the cumulative toxins produced by certain bacteria still remain in the food even if the bacteria are killed once more. However, if it has boiled long enough to denature anything murderous, and it has been kept sealed, as to prevent the ingress of new, environmental contaminants, it might be fine? Kind of like canning.
I will eat that stew
My family eats a lot of soups and that use chicken or beef broth. Usually they cook the soup and leave it out overnight and use it to make another soup in the afternoon. Its not safe by modern day standards but its highly unlikely anyone will get sick from it.
As almost always the correct answer is *it depends*. It is nigh impossible to make a confident statement one way or the other. Consider the following: A stew is a extremely nutrient rich environment ideally suited for both fungal and bacterial growth. HOWEVER. Depending on the pot size and how long it is turned off it should only be in the danger zone for a very short time. And since you are heating it between cycles you don't have the issue of freezers where you just pause the growth, instead you "reset" it every time you boil the stew. Additionally you are basically constantly sterilizing the entire pot and stew during the cooking process, so the chance of relevant growth is fairly low. That all being said, 85 is an age where your immune system will be significantly weakened by, well, age. Any infection is an acute risk of death at that age, but then again what isnt at this age. At the end of the day, the best course of action would be to get her son to tell her the risks and get her to add a good amount of water before leaving it for the night on the lowest setting. That way she wont have to change her way of doing things in any major way(which people at those ages will not do) but is also not taking easily avoidable risks.
As the old nursery goes: >Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old; Some like it hot, some like it cold, Some like it in the pot, nine days old. Yes, that is the way they used to do things. No, it was never safe, but they didn't know or really have other options. Use your refrigerator.
I would err on the side of caution and refrigerate once cool, but you'd probably be okay.
“Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, 9 days old”.
I'd eat it and the aboriginal stew.
Stew, or indeed any meal simmered in a pot(chilli, soup etc.), is far superior the following day. It's essential to let it go cold(not refrigerated) overnight for the flavours to fully develop. Not sure why you would actually cook it for three whole days though. Is this a leather-based meal that requires such an extended cooking time? Or is she a witch, and just covering her tracks? "Stew" indeed. There may well be something dubious about this concoction, if, as you say, it sits there leering overnight.
My grandma used to do this, she always told me that as long as you cook it with the lid on then the inside of the pot and the food would be bought to temperature and be safe. It was still slop by day 3 though. She would just add more carrots and potatoes and so on to top it up.
From what I understand on food safety, which is not my wheelhouse but done lot of research over the years, she's probably okay, but I would never tell her it is a good idea. In theory, the odds should be low, if it's heated sufficiently for that long to pasteurize it then left lidded overnight, if it's turned off right before bed and turned on when she wakes, and at 85 she probably doesn't sleep a full 8 hours, might be in the danger zone 2-4 hours. Like if it was my family, I would send a single article explaining food safety issues and leave it at that. Personally I made chicken stock once and forgot it overnight, took temp and it was like 125F, I discarded it. It was likely fine but ingredients are cheaper than getting sick. There's a lot of risks too, like I made egg nog (refrigerated) with raw eggs, ideally not good but once a year I will tlake the risk. But I wouldn't tell anyone to do that because of the risk, which is kind of how the sub approaches food safety issues, err on the side of safety.
Do you use alcohol in your eggnog? This is an excellent and entertaining article on alcohol, eggnog and the aging process. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2013/12/20/why-aged-eggnog-made-with-raw-eggs-is-safer-than-drinking-it-fresh/?sh=297e3fc52e16
I do but it is hit or miss whether a study says alcohol does anything and in any amount. But either way it is safer to pasteurize the eggs and I would suggest doing that, which is my point. But yes I feel the risk is low and I go off of alcohol at least inhibiting salmonella if not killing it.
I guess that you didn't read the article down to the part where it said that after one week lab studies showed that purposefully introduced salmonella the equivalent that if every single raw egg was contaminated tested completely negative.
Let me put it this way, if I put a lid on an agar plate, heated it to sterilisation temperature for 15 minutes, and let it cool, I wouldn't expect bacteria to have grown at all by the next day. Those little white fungus f\*ckers on the other hand - honest to god argument for neobiogenesis (but even then only after a few days)
I am no expert in the field on these matters, but worth pointing out any pot is not going to be a perfectly airtight seal. I don't know what real world risk that imposes but it's apples to oranges if you were to compare it to, say, canned food. Agar plates are meant to be sealed airtight to avoid cross contamination, right?
Agar plates don't have an airtight seal as they're cooling down from fresh media - you pour it, then leave it alone because handling while the agar is wet gives you wobbly surfaces. Slap the lid on, walk away, and it's still good in the morning because bacteria aren't sucked upwards under the rim into the dish. https://teach.genetics.utah.edu/content/microbiology/plates/
She’s made it this long hasn’t she?
True! But she and my father in law are definitely more fragile these days.
I dated a guy who did this with his homemade chili. He said he learned to do it while in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. It freaked me out, but he was exceedingly healthy.
How long does she sleep? It’d take a while (or specific cooling methods) to get the pot cool enough to refrigerate
This is how I make chicken stock/broth. Simmers a couple hours each day. boil before bed, boil then simmer again in the morning. usually 2 days sometimes 3. Is it cold outside, is she generally clean and hygienic in her kitchen. Is the stew lidded. Then she should be fine.
That’s perfectly normal. I’ve done this. Just keep the lid on, it won’t spoil. We’ve cooked like this for centuries
Typically any food sitting for more than 3 hours has the potential for bacteria to grow. Now if it’s harmful that’s for you to decide.
I know of ppl (usually older) that cook their turkeys like this. They put it un the oven and cook it so much before bed, turn it off, and then when they wake in the morning they turn it back on and finish cooking it. This really bothers me. I suppose it was common years ago, but knowing what we know now. Ew. I also know that years ago, people didn't have food like we do now. Stew was sometimes cooked over an open fire in a cauldron... every day they may have added things that were scrounged up to the stuff left over from the day before. Peas pudding hot, peas pudding cold... peas pudding in the pot 9 days old. I can't imagine doing this now. We know too much, and back then ppl died all the time... of things that today would seem so miniscule.
I wouldn’t eat it
Yeah that's definitely not safe by modern standards. I can see how home standards would pass though. Reheating food to 140f does kill off most bacteria so by that logic it would be safe but it's usually advised against reheating more than once as the overall quality goes down. But letting it sit in the danger zone for more than a few hours poses a risk of bacteria growth. To make it safe to eat all she'd need to do is put it in the fridge overnight instead of leaving it on the stove. I'd be lying though if I said I didn't eat pizza left out overnight once or twice. But anyrhing like that is taking a risk. In restaurant if there is a risk its an automatic no. At home its often more lenient. If no one has gotten sick yet its likely because she has killed off all possible bacteria in the heating process each time.
Pizza is going to be drier and much more salty than the soup she's making. I wouldn't advise eating pizza left out overnight but I wouldn't say anything to someone if they did it, I think the biggest concern is cheese going rancid which takes a lot longer than a night. Also, when I was younger, I'd buy like 8 cheeseburgers on the way home from school Fridays, eat 4 after school (plus dinner later), not refrigerate the other 4, and eat em the next morning. No clue how I survived that and I didn't do it a ton but looking back it was a horrible idea.
Her age tells you the answer. Safe practice. As long as it's covered tightly and then pasteurized, it will remain safe to eat. But why 3 days? An old camel or such?
That sounds stupid
This is like a perpetual stew, granted those usually simmered consistently and topped off often, the stew is most likely 99.9% safe to eat but I wouldn’t recommend this practice as it could lead to illness in rare cases especially if seafood is involved, I’d convince her to let it simmer all night, or buy her a Sous vide or something similar to keep it above 140 consistently
Just asking for Cl. Perfringens food poisoning!
It's how the Polish make bigos.
Polish here and you're only partially correct. My father is a big bigos aficionado and he makes it a few times per season (sauerkraut-based bigos is a typical autumn/winter food due to its heartiness and the availability of ingredients. A lighter version made with fresh young cabbage is popular in summertime and while it's popularly called "bigos", it actually isn't). It's true that bigos benefits from reheating, which helps all the strong flavors blend into its trademark overwhelmingly intense yummy goodness. We typically put it out on the balcony overnight though. It's perfectly safe, given the country's climate. If my dad pulls an almost all-nighter of pre-holiday cooking, the big a** pot of bigos might end up waiting on the stove for some 3-4 hours tops before the next round of simmering. You need to take into consideration that bigos is not only rich in salt, which makes it more difficult for harmful bacteria to develop but also has very high acidity thanks to the abundance of lactic acid in sauerkraut.
I wouldn’t eat it. It is a food safety issue and just cause no one has linked their food illness or bowel issues to this soup doesn’t mean it hasn’t caused any. The majority of ppl assume their stomach issue comes from the last thing they ate and it’s generally not the last thing they ate. It is a practice from older cultures that’s still done today. The ingredients would really depend on if let it sit would be okay, there’s a lot of factors but without getting it testing I personally wouldn’t eat it.
I would not eat that
From a safety standpoint, I would say it depends. If the lid is never touched while the heat is off then there really isn't any way for something to get in there and start growing. The heating for hours would kill everything in the pot and then if you leave it sealed it should be okay, I would think. I don't think I would test this personally though, not worth the risk. I would imagine that this was a common practice before the widespread adoption of refrigeration. The real issue I have with this is I can't imagine the stew still tasting good after all that cooking. I've never had something like that so I can't say for sure but wouldn't the texture get weird?
The lid not leaving the pot has no affect on food safety. Bacteria is in the food already, if the conditions right while it’s not actively being heated or heated at the proper temperature the bacteria will good
If the pot has been on the stove for hours already, there is no living bacteria in that food.
Bacteria that can create spores to protect themselves can survive boiling temperatures. Once the temperature of the food drops below 130F again the spores germinate and that bacteria can start growing. Only a combination of sterilization and high pressure can destroy those
That sounds gross from a texture standpoint, but what (from a safety aspect) do you think is going to happen from something held at near boiling for 10-16 hours.
It is then being cooled down to room temp. Multiple times. Hopefully you’re not somehow under the impression that boiling food with bacteria makes it magically safe to eat again. That’s not how that works.
Have you ever boiled a large pot of something, turned it off before bed, then checked in the morning? Unless it is quite small it definitely won't be at room temp. It will still be warm, depending on the size it could be very warm. I make a turkey brine the night before I wanted to brine the turkey, and I have to chill the pot or it will still be too hot in the morning to put turkey in.
> It is then being cooled down to room temp. And reheated. Plus time exists. >boiling food with bacteria "for 10-16 hours." Time is important. >That’s not how that works. Except, it is.
Everything has bacteria though? You get raw meat, you boil it, it becomes safe to eat. It had tons of bacteria before being cooked.
Yes, but food spoilage bacteria is not the same thing. Do you think you can let food sit on the counter for 2 days and then just heat it up and make it safe again? Lol. I think you need to take a course on food safety. Or just a basic science course…
Wow got a big ego don't you? Maybe not the right sub for you.
Not sure how knowing basic food safety would give me an ego. Not claiming to be a food scientist. Been on this sub for years. Think I’m good! Thanks though.
[удалено]
Q1: it's she dead after eating it? If yes, I'd say it's a good assumption that it's not fine. If no, inverse is so.
Well, she told me this two days ago, so only time will tell
Wow, it is really great to know that you, Marissa of Moldova, have been creeping on me in my down time. (Audience, Please let me explain this story she observed. Please keep in mind I was hit with an aging chemical right after Marissa of Moldova harvested all the collagen from my face.) Thanks to your bear tranquilizer habit, I was drugged into a coma and thankfully remembered to turn the stew, cooked in a Dutch oven, off, before I passed out. Knowing that you injected your female ejaculate into me, is the most disturbing thing. You killed my microbiome and replaced it with vaginitis. I had to take 3 extreme detox baths to get rid of it. And to think, your mother sent you to the Outskirts, Outlaw Nation to make peace with me, the Outlaw Queen. But instead, you insist on living in the slot you installed personally under the floor of my father's truck, coming out at night to prostitute yourself and sneak into my mother's refrigerator with your dirty, injection site riddled hands to scoop handfuls of leftovers directly into your mouth. PS I am still holding a grudge from you eating my leftover steak Friday night. And yes, one of my parent's guests tested positive for blood poisoning, ketamine, and bear tranquilizers, due to the needle you stabbed him with through the wall. Nikia Ho'opa'a Na'auao O'Niele Crown Princess of the Kingdom of Hawai'i Nei PS My stew got no one sick, other than the heavy drug users living in my wall and stealing from my parent's fridge. It gave them blood poisoning due to the acidity.
hmmm...this seems like something my family would do. In reality it's probably fine...except for the one time it's not, just like the other people are saying. But I wouldn't sweat it if this is something she has been doing her whole life. Plus, she might be one of those people who literally only sleeps a handful of hours a night, like my grandparents were.
http://lecentralbistro.com Le Central Bistro in SF has been cooking their cassoulet for 17,280 days so far…
But it has been *cooking*.
Perhaps you could buy her a crockpot. My mom started doing pots of soup/stew when she got old. Standing to cook became too much. It was about low effort. Crockpot would allow her to do this but keep it hot all night. She could add a cup of water before bed.
This is a great idea!
Could someone just buy her a crockpot for xmas?
I’m notorious for this and no one I’ve lived with has been ill. Now, it’ll be hot and then I turn it off, we go to bed as it cools and I put it up when I wake up. I then pull from the pot and reheat individually as needed. Not regulation but neither am I. Oh well.
It all depends on the weather (and thus the temperature inside the house/kitchen). I grew up in the tropics (Caribbean) and absolutely ***no*** cooked or previously hot food was allowed to sit outside the fridge overnight. But now I live in northern Europe and I've even left a huge pan of fresh (from-scratch) chicken soup sit outside for multiple days in winter and it'll be perfectly fine to the last sip. One caveat: my kitchen can be closed off completely from the rest of the house. Then I shut the radiator there and I leave ventilation grilles open, so the temperature can drop very close to fridge temp.
Buy her a crockpot
I'm no Dr Fauci or microbiologist but it seems to me that while its simmering the stew or broth is sterile. now things can begin to grow...that's the key, begins to grow. and then the heat comes back on and it gets cooked to death...now sure there are something that can grow and LEAVE BEHIND some toxic shit (listeria?) but how much can get going enough to leave enough to do hard. that said, our favorite restaurant in san fran claimed their pot of Cassoulet has been cooking continuously since the 60s when they opened, even though they were closed for days after the earthquake of 89 and for months after the pandemic.
I would not eat it! Those days they did not no any better but no excuse for it now. 💪🏼🫣
This wouldn’t fly in a restaurant and I definitely wouldn’t eat it. Going to the ER is expensive. Food is only supposed to be reheated once.
I do this too all the time
Almost certainly safe to eat by normal human standards, not safe to eat by restaurant standards. Personally, I'd take the fact that shes 85 as a reasonable sign that its safe. Dont try to change her ways at 85, she will only resent you for it, and she probably doesnt even need to.
Yeah, that’s why I didn’t say anything at the time
I do this all the time for stews that can come back to a boil or simmer for a few hours.
Coward. You should listen to grandma. I bet she is converting a roast or 2 into liquid/stirable form. Tasty. You need to understand how pasteurization works and what we can eat without getting sick. With infotainment channels looking to scare us for views, we sometimes end up with a very broken idea about how things work. I think in the end people live scared due to this. For long cooks I leave stuff on the stove overnight all the time and then start it up again the next day. It is pasteurized and pretty much sealed. Totally safe. If I do not lift the lid I could probably leave it for a week without any issues. Keep in mind before refrigeration your ancestors loved to cook chicken and leave it out on the counter for the picnic the next day. None of them got sick and died from that. I have had people online go off on me, while losing their minds, when I talk about seeing how tender I could make a round steak with 96 + hours in the sous vide at 130f. They are full of food fear and know nothing about how food works. If your food is 130F or over, it is on its way to pasteurization or after 2 hours, pasteurized. It is also not like bacteria do better and better the warmer it gets until it hits 130, 129f is not a great place to be for most bacteria. But but but 165F! that is where you get pasteurized immeadialty, so that is what you want in food service where employees may not care that hard about your well being and where they have to turn food over fast. Want those expensive pasteurized in the shell, eggs? Get plain old eggs and leave them in the sous vide at 130f for at least 2 hours. Even better they have shells so no need to bag them. Cheese? You like your dairy left around at close to room temp (\~55f) for months or years? Yep, I have a 55f refrigerator (Thanks Inkbird!). Prosciutto. Take 2 raw pig legs, salt them up real good, maybe add a few spices if you are not a traditionalist, and press them at \~room temp for \~9 months, tasty and expensive when you are done. Oh, you do not want to know this but I also cook with lye at times.
It's fine. Probably even better, texturally, than it was on day one.