I do this too and I’m still ali…
Eh. We use our crock pot a **lot **and don’t follow every single food safety technique advocated in this thread. I haven’t gotten food poisoning yet. It’s good to be safe, but this level of paranoia (while perhaps factually true) isn’t justified unless you have IBS or something.
Don’t put the crock directly into the fridge anyway. It will crack. I’ve lost two crocks trying that.
Have you tried cooking during the day, eating your dinner and then decanting and refrigerating before you go to bed? If you don’t like the idea of leaving an electric appliance running all day without supervision, you could try using a wonderbag.
It probably does, but this isn’t giving it one. The danger is not the bacteria itself, it’s the toxins, and your immune system won’t do a damned thing to protect you against those.
Thread is a bit TL so I RQ’ed… but it’s a kitchen verity to NEVER put hot foods in the fridge. Besides possible damage to bowls and crocks, and load on the fridge, you are essentially heating up the interior for a time and that’s bad for all foods in there. Always let cooked foods cool to near counter temperature before putting them in the fridge.
Fun fact, related: milk will go bad in a time proportional to the highest temperature it reaches. You can take a 40-degree jug from the store and put it in your 40-degree fridge, but if it reaches 60 degrees in your car it will spoil much faster than if you let it only warm a few degrees on the way home. So putting a big crock of hot soup in the fridge means all the food in there is going to get jacked up 5-10-15 degrees for a time, which can contribute to that rapid spoilage even if the temp returns to normal in an hour or two.
Mine does.
Mmmmmm…toxins.
Several people have mentioned keeping food either under 40F or above 140F and that the danger zone is between those two points. Also, it has been mentioned to never put hot food directly in the fridge because it will raise the temp in there and could cause other things to spoil. This is all very good advice and is what is required of any restaurant or other establishment serving food to the general public.
In the case of the home cook I honestly think you have a little more leeway. I still wouldn’t put hot food in my refrigerator but I also don’t often break things up in smaller containers or leave things sitting in an ice bath to get it from hot to below 40 in an hour on a regular basis. Basically, if what you have been doing hasn’t killed you or made you sick, I would think you are probably okay to continue doing what you have been doing.
As an example, I’ve been leaving butter out on the counter for years so it is easier to spread and it has never been a problem. Clearly that would be a big no-no according to the health department. Food safety standards are set up for commercial food prep situations so they err very much on the side of caution. At home I think there is a bit more leeway.
Butter contains enough natural salt to stave off spoiling at room temp (covered) for a week.
keep it in the crock pot above the safe temperature.
when you want to store it then take it out of the crock pot, transfer it to quart/pint storage jars. set these jars on a raised wire rack or in a cake pan to facilitate rapid cooling. monitor temperature of the jars, transfer into refrigerator when it gets below safe temperature.
Wrong, it is ok to put hot foods into a refrigerator according to the Department of Agriculture. The key is not to put deep containers of hot food into the refirgerator. The key is that you want to cool your food quickly, the quicker it is out of the “danger zone” the better. Letting something cool on the counter is risky (not like super high risk, just riskier).
No, not wrong, just slight difference of detail and differing opinion. Like most official organizations, DOA (heh) would prefer to err on the safe side and not have people have to remember to put food away before it gets to an unsafe point. Food that has been heated above 140 for a goodly time, and is likely high in acid or salt or both, simply will not spoil because of an extra half-hour cooling to 70 degrees or so. Several hours at 65… I’d at least do a full re-heat cycle, yes.
I’m speaking from the advice of and perspective of careful cooks. But then, crockpot cooking is all about 5 minutes of prep and then forget about it until your tummy rumbles, so…
I must remember this thread and switch to “During work” crockpotting instead of “Overnight.”
“I do this all the time and haven’t died” isn’t necessarily information from which we can derive useful guidance. The people who might want to tell us “I did this once and it killed me”, are silent.
I keep a stack of freezer packs ready frozen (this sort of thing) - when I make a large batch of something, I cool it a little, then decant it into flattish containers, or bags, etc, and stack it in the fridge, interleaved and covered with the ice blocks - this gets it down to safe storage temperature rapidly without stressing the fridge.
Put the cooked food into small containers (so that the entire batch can be cooled quickly), put the containers on ice for a few minutes, put in the refrigerator or freezer (depending on how long you want to store them before reheating) after the initial cooking heat has been bled off by the ice.
providing you don’t recharge them all at once.
According to an earlier post,
If I’ve never even gotten food poisoning in the first place, as I said above, that is certainly useful information.
If America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s isn’t a good enough authority, I leave you to it.
The only time I (or anyone in my family) have gotten food poisoning is from restaurants. I’d say my judgment about how to handle home cooking is pretty well vetted.
I’ve never seen it.
I recharge them in my large chest freezer in the garage - it can easily handle this (it also freezes them colder than the fridge-freezer in the kitchen)
I wouldn’t trust it as an authority on food safety. I barely trust it as an authority on recipes, although they have interesting and useful techniques from time to time. That said, my personal view is food that has been left out like that I would not serve to guests, but I would eat it myself without a second thought (and do so regularly.) That doesn’t mean it’s “best practice.”