It’s been a busy week for me, and in my rush on Thursday morning I packed up my lunch, and my supper to take with me, and forgot to put the pasta sauce away. It sat in its pot, uncovered and outside the fridge, for about twelve hours before I got home and found it.
Is the sauce a complete loss? It’s homemade; tomatoes, ground beef, spices, and some vegetables. How long can one safely leave things like that out in ~20°C air? I’m trying to avoid both food poisoning and wasting all that sauce, you see.
What about other cooked foods? How long can I leave them out, if, say, my fridge fails?
Mmm, no. And I’m quite liberal about these things. The official food safety rules are that you toss everything that’s been in the temp “danger zone” for more than four hours.
And that meant I had to throw away a perfectly good tuna casserole last week, so I sympathize. But is it worth throwing up?
Put it back on the burner, cook it and eat it. That would be my approach but i don’t have to worry about feeding it to any kids or old people. I also wouldn’t serve it to guests. If it was just me I would eat it.
I’ve mentioned this before, and I really don’t recommend it as food hygiene advice, but when I was at university we sometimes made a big pot of chilli on the stove at the weekend and left it sitting there for a week, heating it up each night (and maybe adding more tomatoes and spices) and eating some till it was gone. We never got sick, but that was probably pure luck.
That said, chilli has a pretty similar composition to pasta sauce - meat, tomatoes, spices - and the acidity probably has some preservative effect.
I tend not to trust tomato sauce that’s been sitting out, but I think it’s mostly at risk for surface contaminants. If it’s covered, or if you ladle off the top layer, it should be OK.
