So how long after the food is done can I leave it on the warm setting in my crock pot? I seem to recall (memory may not be entirely accurate) a family member having the slow cooker on 24/7 and simply adding ingredients to it as it was needed. This means that (if I am correct) food would have been left warming for many days, and eaten at leisure. Then when the pot was getting low, you’d simply check to see what was needed and toss it in there (a can of corn, peas, etc.).
Is that possible, or are we asking for trouble here?
Did a family member of mine keep food in a crock pot 24/7?
i don’t think it would be safe to leave it indefinitely. i’ve kept stuff on warm for a few hours (mashed taters, queso). most other things would start to overcook, i would think. and as soon as it starts to cool, i always make sure to get it refrigerated within a two hour window. too many thingies start growing at a warm, not hot, temperature.
It may or may not be safe, depending on the crock pot:
Some of the newer crockpots seem to cook at a hotter temperature, probably because manufacturers are concerned about food safety. You can check the temperature of your crockpot this way:
Place 2 quarts of water in your crockpot
Cover and heat on low for 8 hours
Lift the lid and immediately check the water temperature with an accurate thermometer
The temperature of the water should be 185 degrees Fahrenheit. If the temperature is higher foods may overcook and you should reduce the overall cooking time. If the temperature is lower your foods will probably not reach a safe temperature quickly enough, and the crockpot should be discarded
From here.
Wow, 8 hours! Seems like you would be able to find out after one hour, maximum. I wonder why that site recommends eight? It is funny that they want you to heat it up for so long, and then immediately check the temperature.
Nitpick, you don’t want to just get it into the fridge in two hours. It needs to go from above 150* to below 40 in two hours. So if you want to be safe, after you put it in the fridge you should stir it from time to time or depending on what you are cooking (chili for example) the center could take several hours to get out of the danger zone.
*Not sure about that upper limit, in fact in changes depending on the specific food.
According to this cite, 140F is the “hot holding temperature” for all hot food, while the minimum internal temperature is 145F for fish, shellfish, lamb, beef, and pork. Ground beef, and poultry are 155F and 165F respectively.
I suspect it is to simulate a fully loaded crock pot, unstirred. If you put cold food into a crock pot and set it on low, how long will it take for the center of the load to reach the set point of the crock pot? My WAG is at least an hour. How this relates to heating plain water is anyone’s guess, due to convection and such.
185F is 85C. Two liters (kilograms) of water (C[sub]p[/sub]=4.18kJ/kg) in a 180 W crock pot would go from 25C to 85C (delta T = 60) in 2,787 seconds, or 46 minutes.
24.1860/180/60
8 hours would make sense for a full load of, say, chili, but certainly not for water, as the natural convection would be much stronger than the resistance due to viscosity (especially since they heat from the bottom.
**This assumes no heat loss to the surroundings.
I’d be willing to bet if you put a crock put full of cold beef stew, in one hour the center of a potato or carrot in the middle of the crock, would still be below 100 degrees. But that’s just my WAG, I’ve never really measured.
As for the danger zone, I’ve always had a question about that. Is the 2 hour limit cumulative? If it takes me 1.5 hours to get it from 135 to 41, do I only get 30 minutes to reheat it?
The more I think about that reccomendation, the less sense it makes. It’s really not very informative if it reaches 185F in eight hours, and water will heat much faster than most things due to conduction and convection. What is important is that the food reaches 140F within and hour and a half to two hours (depending on the source). Once it gets to that temp, as long as it stays there, you’re pretty safe. Thermophiles can grow at that temp, but I’ve never heard of them being harmful.
I can’t imagine the food would taste good cooking constantly for days though. Seems like you’d end up with nasty brown mush no matter what you were cooking.
Because as soon as you lift the lid, the temperature starts dropping. The ‘immediate’ applies to the time between lifting the lid and taking the temp. If you lift the lid and then start asking yourself “where did I leave that thermometer?” you won’t get an accurate measurement, you’ll get a lower one.
Being a Sabbath-observant Jew, there are several recipes that I will leave in the crockpot for up to 24 hours, so that we can have a hot lunch on Saturday that I put up to cook on Friday afternoon. I do this every weekend in the cooler months, as do the majority of the people I know, and we haven’t had a problem yet. Of course, this is not on the ‘warm’ setting, but on a setting high enough that everything is kept cooking-temperature hot.
Yes, that is cumulative. However, it’s not a magic number. It’s not like there is no danger at 1:59, and the food will kill you at 2:01. It’s a guestimate of what is likely safe based on reported cases of food poisoning.
The minimum doubling time for most bacteria is 20 minutes in optimum conditions, so after 2 hours you will have 64x the number of bacteria that you started with. It gets progressively more dangerous the more doubling times the food stays in the danger zone, as growth is logrythmic. Of course, food is seldom optimal for bacterial growth, so the doubling times will be lengthened depending on how far from optimal the food is in terms of salt/sugar content, acidity, nutrient levels, spices, etc. If you’re cooking pickled garlic and lemon soup, you can pretty much ignore the danger zone. (and forget about poisoning your dinner guests, as you won’t have any!)
That makes sense. You know, I’m ServSafe Certified and deal with the local heath inspector 2 to 3 times a year. While they all talk about the danger zone, the 2 hour limit, time and temperature abuse. You’d think they’d talk about that number being cumulative. Especially with soups and other foods that may get heated and cooled every day over the course of a week (or more).