I’m trying not to waste food (especially in these troubled times.)
I’m in the UK (if that helps) and have a pint of milk which is:
It’s unopened and has been kept in the refrigerator.
The use-by date is May 1.
Is it safe to drink today?
I don’t want to waste it, but I definitely don’t want a stomach upset as I’m ‘self isolating’ and live on my own.
Almost certainly safe and I wouldn’t think twice but a sniff test will tell you. Off milk is pretty distinctive.
If you want to err on the side of caution then make a custard, a rice pudding or some yoghurt.
Unopened and only two days over the “use by” date, it is most certainly good to drink. I wouldn’t even give it a second thought. But as always in this kind of threads, the advice is: smell it, and if it smells fine, take a little sip. You’d smell and taste it if the milk was bad and sour.
You’ll probably need to use it up quickly, but even if it’s started to go over it won’t kill you. You could try using it to make cottage cheese
https://www.allotment-garden.org/recipe/home-dairy/cheese-making/make-curd-cheese-home/
Is there any “mode of failure” here that produces anything worse than bad-tasting milk?
IOW, isn’t recently out-of-date milk pretty much certain to be safe?
This
I’m sure there’s some low-probability event where the milk could make him ill without tasting horrible, but it’s damn rare. I wouldn’t give it a second thought, personally.
(I do usually cautiously sniff and sip old milk. I’ve ruined food I wanted to eat by pouring old milk on it.)
The only time you should ever pay any attention at all to those dates printed on food is if you’re in the store, and they have packages with different dates on them. In that case, go ahead and buy the one with the later date.
But once you get it home, ignore the dates entirely. If it looks or smells wrong, don’t use it. If it looks and smells OK but tastes wrong, don’t use it. Otherwise, go ahead and use it. That’s all you need to know.
That’s my understanding. With milk, going bad means means unpalatable, not unsafe.
There’s a huge market for bad milk called sour cream, yogurt, and cheese.
You can’t make cultured milk products from bad milk. You need to inoculate fresh milk with a specific culture and keep it at a specific temperature. Bad milk is just bad, and is pig swill. It will definitely taste bad, even before it smells bad. Bitter, back of the throat taste. If it doesn’t have that taste, go ahead and drink it. Unopened pasteurized milk lasts a fairly long time past its use date if kept cold.
Yup. We make yogurt, and the better the milk we start with, the better the yogurt.
You don’t make cheese, yogurt, and sour cream from bad milk. They are milk that’s turned bad in a good way.
With milk, a lot can depend on the supply chain. If e milkman left it on your doorstep at 4 am on a sunny morning a week ago and it sat there until you rolled out at midday, then it may be a bit sus (but okay if it smells okay).
I am currently drinking coffee made with full cream milk that I bought two weeks ago in Tesco. I know that Wisemans deliver daily, direct to the supermarket in refrigerated lorries. Tesco keeps it in temperature-controlled conditions and the only time it’s out of a fridge is when I am driving it home. My fridge is set at 3 degrees C.
In any case, sour milk will (probably) not kill you. I imagine that you eat cheese and butter?
I’m in the US and milk is expected to last 5-7 days past the expiration date if properly stored. So yes, I’d drink it and enjoy it.
You have a milkman?
There are still a lot of them. You just need a small local dairy. My neighbors get milk delivered, but not often now with their kids grown. When I was a kid you just left a note for the milkman in the milkbox if you wanted something besides your usual order.
I’m not sure why these places keep going with household deliveries, maybe they are doing commercial deliveries already and the houses are just a few extra stops. But the current situation with the virus might generate new home delivery business for them.
Got a cite for this?
I’ve had milk go bad (in the sense of not tasting right, and starting to get a little bit"chunky") before the date stamped on the jug.
I’ve also had milk that seemed perfectly fine a couple of days after the date stamped on the jug, but any longer than that, I’ll toss it, just to be safe, not so much because I’m worried it’ll make me sick as that I’m worried it won’t taste right.
I expect that a container of milk’s useful lifetime depends, not only on the expiration date, but also on how long it’s been since it was first opened, how many times it’s been opened since then, and how much time it’s spent sitting out of the refrigerator.
Depending on how long the milk sat out on the way home from the store, the temperature of your fridge, etc, the expiration date is just a guideline. In some states, the expiration date rules are very different from other states. Luckily, with milk, if it smells okay, then it’s okay. If it smells bad, it’s bad.
Is it traditional glass bottles, or modern plastic jugs/cartons? Is it delivered cold?
Delivered cold in plastic jugs. Haven’t seen any glass in a long time. They give you a milkbox because they’re delivering very early in the morning.