So I made a potato salad late last night. It contains potatoes boiled in water and a 9% white vinegar mix (about 1/4 cup), and has a nice vinegary smell. For the binder, I used mayo mixed with Miracle Whip, and added in the usual pickles, onion, and celery, and spices. Finished this about 11 pm, and woke at 8 to realize I’d left it (covered) on the stovetop. House is about 68 degrees, potato salad smelled fine. Bunged it in the fridge.
I know that mayo and MW have enough acid to inhibit microbe growth, and plus I had the 9% vinegar thing going on with the potatoes. I’m leaning toward saying it’s A-OK, but wanted to ask y’all if you would have doubts.
Potato salad is one of those foods you should be extra cautious with, but that said, covered for 9ish hours at 68 degrees and I would still eat it. But, even though it’s now in the fridge, you STILL need to eat it ASAP - preferably for lunch.
Oh yeah, it won’t make it past late afternoon. I tend to be very picky about food prep, so I’m not worried about cross contamination. Everything went into the salad “clean,” veggies cleaned, etc. I figure the vinegar gives a little insurance as well.
Health code would say no. 6 hours under 70 f (above 40f) is the limit on potentially hazardous products like that. Boiled potatoes and mayonnaise are both excellent growth medium for unpleasant microbes.
That being said, as long as you are not serving it to the public, go for it, most likely it is fine, and if not, the worst you will experience is a bit of gastro-intestinal issues, as long as you are otherwise healthy, I seriously doubt you would even notice.
Do not feed it to children, elderly, or others who may have weaker immune systems.
So the major concern here is salmonella from the eggs in the mayo. While mayonnaise by itself doesn’t contain enough free water to support bacterial growth, the other ingredients in your salad provide plenty, as well as lots of nutrients, making it a lovely medium for growing bacteria. While I don’t want to take the time to calculate pH levels, my gut reaction is that throwing in a quarter cup of vinegar into the mix is unlikely to make it so acidic as to prevent growth. I think the best thing you can hope for is that there were no (or not very many) salmonella bacteria in the mayo to begin with, and that’s a bit iffy.
I’m generally of the “yeah, that’s probably fine” school of thought, but I’d toss this out without a second thought.
Pure mayonnaise is safe at room temperature because, as I said, the water activity is too low to support microbial growth. Even if the eggs were teeming with salmonella, it couldn’t grow in the mayo. The danger is when you mix bacteria-harboring mayonnaise with some other ingredient that provides the water the bacteria need to grow.
It depends on whether you have immunized yourself against the ordinary household pathogens or not. If you regularly eat things that you find on the floor the next day or two (like I do) you can eat virtually anything and suffer no ill effects. But if you never, ever eat anything that has been left at room temperature for ten minutes, and you put your cutting board in the dishwasher every night, then your digestive system will be taken by surprise, and all hell might break loose in there.
In your case, I’d say no, your body is not safe for anything out of the sterile ordinary.
We have a jar of mayonnaise (and other things) that stays in the car all the time, so it is there if we ever go on a hasty picnic or pick up things to eat along the road (yes, like from dumpsters), and we’ve never suffered any ill effects from year-old mayo at room temp.
That is simply not true. You are not going to immunize yourself against salmonella, no matter what you do. I have explained twice already why it’s safe to eat uncontaminated mayonnaise that has not been refrigerated; it has nothing to do with your long-term eating habits.
As for the OP, I’d still eat the potato salad. I’ve left my share of stuff out on the counter overnight and eaten it later with no ill effects. I try not to make a habit of it, though.
jtur88, that is some of the most potentially dangerous advice I’ve ever heard on here. Don’t go around spreading misinformation like that as fact. Eating random things off the floor that have been sitting around 1 or 2 days does not immunize you against food poisoning.
Not sure that I am going to agree with your reasoning there. The water activity of mayo is plenty high enough to support all sorts of microbial growth. The low pH and high salt (plus some other stuff) is what mostly prevents the growth.
Salmonella is classified as a food pathogen, which is treated quite differently than spoilage organisms. Salmonella issues in mayo are largely prevented by not putting it into the product in the first place. That is why the eggs that go into mayo are pasteurized. I don’t recall how well mayo will kill salmonella that may get into the product, but I think that it is not a friendly place for it to live.
Yes, I used to work for a company that makes some of the most popular mayo brands in the US.
I would think the major concern would be staph aureus. Don’t ask me why . . . all I know is practically every staph-aureus-food-poisoning board exam question involved potato salad that had sat on a picnic table too long.
Yep. Classic exam question for micro. And that leftover rice is always Bacillus!
It’s often Staphylococcus. The bacteria get in there from moving the salad around, leaving it uncovered, and having people jam spoons into it to serve themselves, all while it’s sitting out on a warm table. You may be fine, since you just made it (hope you washed your hands well) and left it there without a whole lot of exposure or poking, but I wouldn’t eat it. Microbiology training makes you a little more wary of food poisoning.
Having worked as a night cleaner in a mayonnaise factory, I’d be iffy about trusting the stuff. It’s four in the morning… eyes are closing… did I remember to put the sterilizing fluid in the water?.. gosh there are eggs all over the place… can’t wait for bed… another two hours to go ?.. can hardly hold this hose… zzz zzzz
That may be true, but the biggest culprit in potato salad food poisonings isn’t Salmonella. It’s Staphylococcus, which is normal skin flora that gets in there during the preparation of the salad, or as people interact with the bowl of food on the picnic table.
Having had salmonella, I can tell you that it’s not fun. I landed in the hospital, and when things really started going bad, I got to spend 3 days in intensive (Either the salmonella itself or some opportunistic bastards decided to make a play for my heart). You get real risk-adverse, real fast.
In case anyone wonders, I did make a full recovery
