My son’s youth soccer association recently sold food items as a fundraiser. Our family purchased some colorful cookie “play”-dough, which I forgot to put away when we picked up our orders. It was cold when we picked it up and was supposed to be frozen or refrigerated. I realized my mistake 24 hours later when I noticed it sitting on a counter in our basement. It was room-temperature, and my wife wanted to throw it away. I don’t like making rash decisions, however, and put it in the fridge.
Me too – I think that cooking it will kill any potential harmful bugs. But I lived on a boat where we would often make things that we couldn’t refrigerate for days on end and I never got sick.
I said bake it and eat it, and don’t eat any raw dough. But smell it when you open it. If it smells even a little bad, just throw it away. Why take chances with your health for a couple of bucks?
It’s not just the bacteria but the toxins they leave behind that aren’t destroyed by cooking. If it weren’t for the eggs I’d chance it, but there’s no way I’ll eat something with raw egg in it that’s been at room temperature all day. Sure, there’s probably a good chance you’ll be ok, but even a small possibility of food poisoning is too much risk for something as simple and cheap as cookie dough. Food poisoning really, really sucks. Toss it.
I voted for the first option, but then again when I drop food on the floor in a public place I will frequently pick it up and eat it, so you may wish to discount my response :).
Regarding raw eggs, I’m only 25 years old, but I’m old enough to remember the days when it wasn’t considered necessary to refrigerate an opened jar of mayonnaise (unless I am mis-remembering). Surely mayonnaise contains raw egg and would be just as potentially harmful, or is it that the amount of fat in mayonnaise stops it from spoiling? Or something else?
If you bake the cookies, a) you will be the only one willing to eat them, b) your wife will forbid anyone else eating “contaminated” cookies, c) they will flock to the kitchen attracted by the smell and be mightily tempted to eat them, but as the cookies are “contaminated”, this is not to be, and d) everyone will end up mad!
So, you could bake the cookie dough AND another kind of cookie for the rest of the family at the same time, to keep everyone happy.
See, this was my thought. It seems most people agree that eggs don’t require refrigeration, so is the fact that they’re broken out of their shell and mixed with a bunch of other stuff make a difference?
Butter doesn’t need refrigeration either, not that these cookies are likely to contain butter.
I would eat the dough and make the cookies. Especially commercial dough which probably contains pasteurized eggs so no one will sue them if they eat the raw dough and get salmonella.
I’d bake them and eat them. Eggs can be stored at room temperature for a few days and be fine so I don’t see why 24 hours on the counter would hurt. Plus, cookies are are a terrible thing to waste. Now if they had raw chicken in them I would toss them.
I’ve spent nearly three years in Switzerland and they don’t (or anyway didn’t used to) even refrigerate eggs in the market. Even the “Trinkeier” that are intended to be consumed raw.
Now it is different, I will admit, once they are broken and mixed with other ingredients, but even so, you are baking them, not eating them raw.
When we were without power for a week in 1997 (great Montreal ice storm) we were told to discard everything in the freezer. Well, we took all the meat in the freezer and made a monster stew that cooked for hours. No bug is going to survive that. And the stew was delicious.
I have lived in the Republic of Georgia (where eggs don’t even come in egg trays but in plastic bags) and the Czech Republic where it is common to find eggs that have never been refrigerated.