Okay, so this isn’t the most exotic of questions. On a whim, I bought some tinned herring at the grocery store. I don’t know if I’ll like it, but I try new food whenever I can. Anyway, the tin doesn’t say anything about cooking or heating. Can I just eat it chilled, out of the tin, or is that like begging the food poisoning fairy to visit me?
it is extrememly unlikely to be raw inside the tin, as the canning method of preservation nearly always* includes the sterilisation of the contents by heating, incidentally cooking the food.
*perhaps ‘always’, but if I say that, some smartypants is going to find some obscure method of non-cooked canning.
There’s no need to cook anything you buy in a tin – either they have to cook it before they put it in the tin (meat, fish, soup etc.) or its safe to eat uncooked.
Thanks.