Is it safe to bring leftover salmon in my lunchbox? Should I use a coldpack or an insulated bag? I regularly eat unrefrigerated roast beast or turkey sandwiches, but I don’t know if fish is inherently more fragile w/r/t food poisoning.
Thanks,
Yersinia
I don’t know about food poisoning, but I sure know what I’m naming my next band.
jarbaby
Roast Beast? Cool idea.
My experience with unrefrigerated food is that this is one of those two-kinds-of-people issues: On group of people have never had a problem and think paranoid people are nuts. The other type of people have gotten so sick they practically puked up their toenails.
I guess there’s a third kind here, the people who have talked to the second group and said, “you know, those cold packs are darn cheap…”
When I worked at a salmon hatchery, we all got free salmon. I often cooked some at night and brought it to work the next day in a plastic bowl with lid and left it in the cupboard until lunchtime; no problems. Trouble is I’d pig out and it would all be gone within a day, so I don’t know how many days unrefrigerated you should trust salmon… I’d say to be safe no more than one day. If it’s smoked salmon, you’re safe for several days as it has been salted and is somewhat dryer than regular baked salmon. Slightly off-topic, the most questionable thing I saw there was that they’d leave fish (guts still inside) out on the ground overnight and fillet them the next day - they were too lazy to finish it that evening. Next day it was obvious the birds and insects had been picking away, and there were bears in the area. These people thought nothing of it… yikes!