So, I made cole slaw to have with our holiday dinner tomorrow, the recipe called for 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, I put it in and made a big pile of cole slaw. A few hours later, I noticed that the expiration date on the lemon juice was 8/01. Does this mean that I’ll be making my family sick if I serve it or does it mean that the slaw just won’t taste all that great ?
Thanks
The expiration date is probably a “sell by” date – if the juice was kept refrigerated, and the container is intact, you’ll probably be OK.
Anyway, you shouldn’t be using the bottled stuff; fresh from the lemon tastes much better 
I didn’t have it refridgerated, but the cap was on.
Lemon juice is too acidic to allow much of anything to grow in it. Over time it will react with oxygen in the air and turn a brownish color, but that’s not likely to hurt you.
I noticed that lemon juice will “go bad” after a while - we have a couple glass bottles of it in the cupboard (previously opened but capped), and I saw that they went a brownish color and had some sort of precipitate in the bottom. It still tasted like sour, but not very good at all. Not bacterially dangerous I think, but just tastes bad.
Under no circumstances should you tell any of you relatives that you didn’t use real lemons. :rolleyes: