My power went out yesterday afternoon around 7pm and came on again around 3am. I have an older model refrigerator, probably several years old. Once the power went out it was only opened once, at the very begining of the outage. Essentially, which of my perishables are, if any, still edible? The only things I’m truely concerned about is the milk and a 1lb ribeye steak. Are either still fit for human consumption, or are they both infested with foul bacteria that would make me sick for years on end?
In such circumstances, I’d probably feel pretty safe with any of it; milk typically smells bad before it is dangerous to consume; the same is not necessarily true of other foodstuffs, including meat, but you’re going to cook that before you eat it and this ought to destroy any pathogens lurking there.
I would imagine the interior of the fridge would have remained quite cold for those few hours; perhaps not as cold as is normally desired, but it shouldn’t have ended up right in the middle of the danger zone.
In fact I’d say the milk is your litmus test here; if the milk is still palatable, everything else should be OK, especially if it is cooked throroughly before eating. If the milk has turned to yoghurt, then I’d err on the side of caution and throw out the other perishables.
