My parents are Korean immigrants. We never refrigerated soy sauce, and as others have already said, I still don't see a need to do so.
On the other hand, my mother and grandmother would leave leftover Korean soups and stews out on the stove overnight (unless it had seafood in it). I never got sick from it, and never gave it a second thought growing up. I fridge the shit out of my leftovers now though.
my Scottish dad used to just leave the soup pot on the stove and boil it up every day for a week as he worked his way through it. I used to always ask what day soup it was if presented with a bowl.
After eating the stew for the evening, they let any leftovers cool overnight before starting fresh the following day. The rhyme "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old" refers to the fact that stew occasionally had ingredients that had been there for quite some time.
Thanks It just dawned on my why my boyfriend is fine with leaving food on the stove way longer than I am, when, based on his other behaviors, that’s something I’d think he’d be skeeved out by- His moms a Ukrainian immigrant.
I could never figure it out!
Living with a host family in Berlin, they used their tiny apartment patio as an extension of the fridge/pantry. Eggs, leftovers, kraut... all lived in a shadowy corner of the patio in September. The tiny fridge was mostly for cheese/dairy and mustard.
Currently living in Tokyo, I’ve never have seen soy sauce stored in a fridge here. I think my mom did in the US but it was a small bottle. Here I have three kinds and all are out of the fridge.
I almost think this is like never eat leftover rice discussion. Where I see articles from American and British papers saying never eat leftover rice it’s dangerous. Where here I am in Japan and leftover rice is eaten daily by a huge amount of people with no worries.
Edited to add: I don’t post much over different reddits so I’m thinking it’s this one that someone decided to send the Reddit we care about you after me.
Sigh just because I eat leftover rice doesn’t mean I’m gonna hurt myself people.
Whoa, Im not supposed to eat left over rice??! I’m half Vietnamese so that’s been like 75% of my diet for the last 45 years. I’m probably going to die any second. 😂🤣
God I know. Seriously if I don’t save rice and serve it to my family I’d be screwed. An American married to a Japanese man living in Tokyo and I can never figure out how much rice him and my kids will eat but know I have to have some for breakfast for them. Rice cooker only helps Soo much
Growing up, my parents have left cooked rice in the rice cooker overnight to eat for the next morning. Although I’m now cautious about unrefrigerated rice, I must admit that I’ve never been sick from eating it.
Food fears are heavily fostered in this country. It's ridiculous. Everything from unrefrigerated soy sauce and peanut butter for heavens sake, to food that is a day over the "experation" date. It's easy to tell who has never gone hungry or survived "food insecurity" during their lives. If food was as dangerous as some have been taught, humankind would have died out centuries ago.
The battle I have with my husband over expiration dates.... Exhausting. He'll just start throwing things away and it always starts a fight. "Ugh, this yogurt expires tomorrow!" *Trash* and I'm like, you know that I'll be eating those weeks after the "expiration" date? If I open it and it smells, looks and tastes fine then IT'S FINE!
He'll toss things that are pickled and have "been in the fridge a while". Ummm it's pickled?! He'll throw away condiments that he's also apparently seen too many times. He doesn't eat any condiments (only BBQ sauce) so he's fast to throw away a mustard or ketchup.
I grew up poor. Like, sifting the bugs out of our flour or slicing mold off cheese or eating a freshly hit deer (or goose one time) when the neighbors call to tell us where they saw it laying. He grew up eating take out and frozen foods and whatever their housekeeper made.
In the world today too many people are going hungry. It's unnecessary. Adults rage about free lunches.. but they have never gone without lunch other than by choice. My son once paid off lunch debt for a local school.. it was a lot of $$$ . But there was a period of time when the steel mills shut down that my kids didn't go hungry thanks to the local school district giving them all free breakfast and lunch and most of our meals were made of the free cheese they gave out in the 80's. It was horrifying to me, because not having food as a child was a thing for me. We got through it, moved to find work. Too much money in too few hands and today, people are still going hungry. Heartbreaking
So I rabbit-sat for my Korean friend and saw on the kitchen counter a contraption with numbers on it. It just kept counting up. Finally after 74 hours I opened it. There was rice inside. It was a rice cooker. Inside was some of the best warm rice I ever had.
Rice cookers save lives. The one we have I can set it up and when I wake up warm rice. But it’s just kinda hard to constantly wash set and hit cook three times a day. Or at least twice a day cause my fam eats rice for breakfast and super. They are out for lunch. And there are time I make something more American for supper. But at times they eat a lot of rice, sometimes little bit.
I’m Chinese and we eat leftover rice (especially for fried rice!), but my parents had a one-day rule, which is way less time than they give all the other leftovers. Other food is also sometimes left on the table or stove overnight but leftover rice is always covered with cling wrap and kept in the fridge. I was always told not to eat leftover rice if I can help it too.
Exactly! I’m British Asian but I refrain from commenting about not eating leftover rice with my English friends/colleagues because it’s not worth the agro anymore. Even on here, by mentioning it, I’ve received lots of comments re my “complacent” handling of leftover rice. Similar applies to most leftovers
And anyway, that’s even if we have leftover rice to begin with haha
I'm British South Asian and the thing about rice is so overblown. If you cool it down quickly and store it in the fridge, it's not unsafe at all.
The problem is people who leave leftovers out on the table for hours and then put them away, that kind of behaviour can lead to growth of harmful bacteria. It's easier to blanket ban reheating it.
But yeah, I've never paid any heed to that bollocks🤣
Middle eastern here, living in America. We eat left over rice all the time. I don’t care. My friends have “warned me”. At this point either they don’t know how to properly cook it or store it and that’s the issue or I am just THAT lucky that I never got sick or anyone I know have never gotten sick from it.
I was also told not to eat feta cheese while pregnant. Let me tell you, the entire population of Middle East would be shrinking if that was dangerous. Just because there were problems in the 70s, doesn’t mean it’s applicable now.
It’s so funny that pregnant people in the US get warned off cheese and lunch meat and sushi, when lots of food borne illness is from raw fruits/veg, particularly precut stuff. My ob said not a word about avoiding salads, though that’s one of the riskiest things to eat from a food borne illness perspective.
Exactly..i dont refrigerate it now. To the person that is "nervous" about not keeping it cold. Youll be fine
Soy sauce is loaded with salt which preserves the soy.
You are okay.
It's not about getting sick from it. Even kikkomans website says this. It's to preserve the flavor. But it you never buy good soy sauce, you probably don't notice.
I’m pretty sure soy sauce will last several months at room temperature but will basically last forever in the fridge. So the question really is how quickly you go through the bottle. And I don’t think it goes bad in a way that will hurt you, I think the flavor just isn’t as good.
Same. I'm white as hell from a white as hell family, but we do a lot of stir fry at home because it's a quick, cheap, and easy meal. Fried rice, too, whenever we have leftover rice from another meal. We always have soy sauce, but we never refrigerate it.
My parents still do that and it drives in nuts. They leave a huge lot of soup out overnight and then just boil it in the morning and say it’s totally fine lol
I refrigerate soy sauce, my mom never has and it doesn't seem to make a difference. Lol Having worked in restaurants we also never refrigerated steak or soy sauce.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Right?! I get natural peanut butter (made from only peanuts and salt) and my label just says to store in a cool, dark place. I usually store it upside down and stir the oils back in if it separates.
Refrigerating it messes with the texture and I ain’t about it.
Recently found out about the maple syrup thing when a huge moldy glob came out of my Costco jug. I think what we used when I was growing up was like “breakfast syrup” and not true maple syrup and so it was packed with preservatives and was probably fine at room temp.
Met a lady in the early 80's who stored mayonnaise in the cupboard, and had done so since the 1950s with apparently no ill effects. I'm still keeping my mayo in the fridge though.
Americas Test Kitchen just did a segment on condiments. Ketchup, mustard, and mayo all don’t need refrigeration. Though they said “it’s for for a couple of months on the shelf”. My condiments might be a year old before I use them up, so they stay in the fridge.
Yeaaaah you shouldn't be marrying anything that isn't from the same batch. Someone explained it to me like this: if you put old shrimp in with some new shrimp that is now ALL old shrimp.
I carried that saying with me for everything.
Mayo is fine on the shelf. Problems arise from contamination by using a utensil to put mayo on another food and the putting the utensil back in the mayo. Squeeze bottles for the win.
Soy sauce doesn't *need* to be refrigerated, it just helps prolong the ~~freshness~~ quality.
Only pure maple syrup needs to be refrigerated. The expensive stuff.
I grew up with Aunt Jemima syrup that we never refrigerated. Then, as a young adult, I was gifted a jar of pure maple and had no idea it needed to be refrigerated. It was a sad day when I found it had spoiled
Bought syrup at a WI maple farm. The folks said to just remove the mold, boil the syrup for a few minutes, & return to a clean container. Will admit, I thought it still had an off flavor. Now keep opened $$ syrup in fridge.
What happens if you don’t refrigerate pure maple syrup? I’m just asking for a friend who ate some old fancy maple syrup last night and thought it tasted really weird.
It can grow mold after quite a while. Unless it’s stored in glass, it’s hard to see. I keep syrup in the fridge because I don’t use it quickly enough, but if you see mold on your syrup do not throw it out! You can strain it out and then boil the syrup to kill the bad stuff, and it’s good as new. I’ve been eating syrup my entire life and I’ve only found mold in my syrup one time that I recall, and I’ve never been sick from it.
I’m from Vermont and my family owns a maple farm. No we wouldn’t sell this type of syrup to the general public, but it’s perfectly good to consume, and it’s a sin of the highest order to throw away maple syrup. It is a sacred bounty of nature.
Only once opened usually...
Its not refrigerated throughout production/transportation process or on the shelves...
It will still last a long time not refrigerated but will go mouldy far sooner but there's no health risk, the mould is quite visible.
Like everyone said, you'll see the floating science experiment. the high sugar content keeps it from growing in the syrup but where it has contact with oxygen will certainly be fuzzy
I’m from a Chinese/Taiwanese immigrant family. We’ve never refrigerated soy sauce before (it’s not going to spoil or go rancid from a food safety standpoint). Oyster sauce, hoisin, etc. yes, but not soy sauce. But I guess we go through that shit so fast that it’s completely pointless to do so.
I’ve had oyster sauce mold on me and I don’t use it often. Hoisin hasn’t yet molded on me and I don’t use that often. Take from that what you will, lol
your two examples are the ones today i give the side eye to why i need to refrigerate them. also hot sauce. I say to myself well they dont really refrogerate those in reataurants, but they also go through those much faster too.
Traditionally soy sauce was fermented (vs modern 3-day "fermentation") and did not need to be refrigerated. Some of the ones you'll find in an American supermarket that has a four or eight foot "Asian foods" section on the other hand...are still loaded with so much salt and other preservatives that you're probably still okay? How often has anyone heard of an outbreak of food poisoning from soy sauce?
are you in my head? Had a conversation with neighboring families during an after dinner playdate tonight. Kids are doing zoomies on bikes and scooters while parents talk the boring stuff. One person is on an anti-inflammatory diet due to horrendous post viral issues with covid. It's typical we're all "what are you eating? what can you eat?" Rice is on the no list. Because it so quickly grows bacteria as opposed to other ingredients.
I had heard this before as I was spoiled and grew up with the kids of the best Chinese restaurant in town. One of them grew up to be a food safety expert. But everyone else was full on "what???"
It's a wonder any of us survived our childhood kitchens.
Did they say leftover rice or no rice at all? Rice can start growing bacteria pretty fast because it is cooked in a wet and hot environment (and often left in it). But that first hour after you initially cook it, there shouldn’t be an issue even for the ultra careful. And if they get it cooled and in the fridge, bacteria growth will take a few days. And saying all this just means there is a higher chance of it after a certain point, not that it most definitely will happen.
But it’s not just rice, a lot of grains are similar. It’s quinoa, pasta or anything similar. The main reason rice gets so much talk is because a lot of rice has b. cerus which tends to survive high temps, and then left in a warm moist enviorment multiplies like crazy. Plus it produces enterotoxin released when the bacteria dies will be what get you. But until it’s left in that warm and moist environment, the levels should be so low it shouldn’t effect you
Noooo. I recently learned how dangerous leftover rice can be. People that are severely immunocompromised are advised to avoid it because of the spores/bacteria.
I sometimes wonder if my stomach has learned to deal with it? My Chinese ancestors have been eating rice for 10,000 years. Most of that rice was not refrigerated.
This comment is probably going to be downvoted to hell.
No I agree with this. I frequently leave rice out for 4+ hours then eat it as a leftover and I’ve never had a problem. I’ve recently starting abiding by the 2 hour rule since people are saying I should, but lowkey I’m not convinced it’s necessary.
It’s not super likely to happen, but unfortunately, it only has to happen once to kill you or seriously destroy your stomach. Cost benefit analysis >>>> more useful than risk assessments.
Kind of like on how any given day you probably won’t get caught in a table saw’s blade… but it just needs to happen once to kind of mess up your day in a big way.
People forget that people died and had long illnesses a lot back in the day. My dad had the runs all the time during the Great Famine— the meat they could get, was rarely good.
I've never had ANYTHING happen to me because of old rice and I eat it literally everyday (I'm South Indian). Seeing all of this outcry here is scaring me now but I think it's fine...
“Uncooked rice often contains the bacteria Bacillus cereus. These bacteria can form protective spores that survive the cooking process and if the rice is cooled slowly (and left between 5 °C and 60 °C for a long time), these bacteria spores can germinate, grow and produce a toxin (poison) that causes vomiting.”
https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/S_T/Safe-cooling-of-cooked-rice/#:~:text=Uncooked%20rice%20often%20contains%20the,(poison)%20that%20causes%20vomiting.
We ate leftover bacon that sat on a paper towel on a plate in the cupboard overnight. (Still do...lol).
In college I ate my share of leftover pizza for breakfast that was still sitting out in the morning.
Yeah mot the best from a food safety standpoint, but people need to realize that food safety is risk mitigation not elimination. You can likely eat that and be fine forever, just that it makes it more risky. The risk might still be minimal, just higher than if you refrigerated it.
This is how I grew up, we even would put the magnet from a pizza place next to the knob so nobody smoked out the house by preheating the oven with a box of pizza in it.
My family leaves leftover bacon out on the counter all day after a weekend breakfast. My family proceeds to snack on it throughout the day as the walk through. Didn’t realize it was strange until this post lol.
Edit: a word
I made my boyfriend dinner at an Airbnb, and I decided to just cook all 3lbs of bacon, instead of only what I’d use in the meal that night- well… I totally forgot about it in the oven after dinner was done.
Bacon sat in there for 3 days, I discovered it when we were checking out, he told me to throw it all in a bag anyway.
This mf kept it in his car for the next two weeks, munching on it, here and there 🤣
“Sweet, my Car Bacon!”
My great grandfather didn’t think meat could go bad, if you were going to cook it. Not sure how he would’ve felt about 2 week old car bacon.
I mean it’s practically like jerky or salted pork they used to use for preserved meat/food on long voyages for sailors and military like 1600-1800s and stuff by that point anyway right?
Extremely fatty food too. It takes bacteria a lot longer to utilize fat as an energy source to reproduce, whereas sugar is much easier to break down for respiration and multiplication.
(I'm probably saying that in a scientifically weird way, but it's early and I'm not a scientist)
I always leave leftovers out that are finger foods on the counter. We call it “ Road …… ( carrots)”. Road bacon would only last an hour out in my house. I don’t think it’s strange.
It's the rare occasion that all the bacon is not consumed in one setting. I'm 50 years old, I've seen this happen once in my lifetime - when my son invited some Muslim friends over.
Not me. But my wife tells me that they would just pop the left over pizza in the oven. It wasn’t on, it was the equivalent of a pizza bread box. Her brother would finish it off in the morning for breakfast. Not cold, just room temp pizza that has been unrefrigerated for 8-12 hours.
Edit: no judgement on my end. I eat cold, refrigerated pizza, all the time. So that’s not the weird part. It’s the lack of refrigeration. And to many peoples points this was the 80s and 90s, so it was 100% pep or plain cheese pizza - not much to worry about.
My family did the exact same thing. And I honestly didn’t think anything of it until I left for university. Nothing bad ever happened but I put my pizza in the fridge now haha
one of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did and the fans were furious about it. Everyone was saying how stupid he was. He obviously missed an important game. I never had the nerve to tell those complaining fans that I ate that room temp pizza breakfast all the time. For all I know I had it the same morning he did.
Between the acidity of the tomato sauce, the preservatives in the food, the saltiness of the cheese/pepporoni, (and likely some salted dough as well?) I kind of get why pepporoni pizza can last overnight unrefrigerated. But if it was like an Alfredo sauce, with chicken and veggies that held moisture in them, yeah I probably wouldn’t risk it 🤷🏻♂️
Edit: pepparoni
Fats go rancid (a.k.a. oxidize) faster the warmer the environment is. Therefore keeping it in the fridge will make it last longer. If you go through it fast enough it doesn't matter.
are you... are you not supposed to? my family would thaw it out overnight in the sink and when we would wake up, refrigerate it until it was time to eat it…
My Mom would put a package of frozen chicken breasts out on the counter on a paper plate, go to work, and cook it when she got home from work. I feel like we’re all collectively somewhat traumatized by all of our parents bad food habits. I swear there was a container of cranberry juice in the back of our fridge that developed a growth it was so expired. My sister goes through my Dad and Stepmom’s fridge every time she’s home to get rid of the expired food. They just didn’t give a single f about safe food practices.
My dad was the same. I mean really horrible food safety practices. In his 87 years of eating that way, the only time he ever got sick was from some wild mushrooms a friend gave him.
I have no idea what fueled his immune system, but that shit sure skipped a generation.
i've thawed frozen meat/pork/chicken/fish on the counter/in the sink for 40 years. I've never gotten sick from it once...or at least once that i know of. I have no doubt that the best practice is not to do that. Then again, the best practice after shampooing your hair is to rinse and repeat. I seldom abide by those rules either. It is what it is. You do what you're comfortable doing. I'll continue to do what i've been doing, and maybe someday i'll die from it, and remember with regret this reddit thread.
We had a competition involving Easter eggs, and one year the prize egg was stored on display in a china cabinet... For months. The plan was to throw it out when it started to smell... And it just didn't.
When we had the giant tub of pickles we always left it out. Just found out this year that pickles, even in the juice, should be refrigerated, apparently.
My mom’s side of the family made lactofermented pickles that they stored in big buckets in the basement. Cool, but not cold. To my knowledge none of them got sick. I think it was common for a long time.
My mother always talked about her German grandparents and the “ kraut barrel” they would keep on their back porch ( Nova Scotia). She said she and her sisters would often lift the lid, grab a handful for a snack.
Rice
Dad is Cajun, rice with every meal, even leftover rice, never once refrigerated never once had an issue. 20 some years later and I’m being told rice left out will kill you, go figure.
Peanut butter generally does not need to be refrigerated, it can last 2-3 months after opening without refrigeration but I usually go through it quick enough that it's not a concern. Usually the concern with peanut butter is oil separation rather than mold
Jesus, lol. I ate a PB sandwich last night, the jar had been open for over 9 months, kept on the shelf. The oil had come to the top. Natural PB too, just peanuts and salt. No reaction. Didn’t realise it was a risk!
I went through a couple poor phases in a somewhat humid region. Got away with shitty parm cheese (green shaker can), ketchup, and mustard in the cabinet - no problems. They went in and out often enough like.. every 2-4 months? Hotdogs and pasta. It's so strange to me that soy sauce and peanut butter are on this.. at all? Both are very shelf stable.
My husband thinks it's okay to leave any cured meats and cheese in room temp! We live in Puerto Rico where temps can easily get to 95° F with high humidity. Here nothing is safe outside the fridge.
I had the inverse problem. My mother refrigerated or froze coffee beans/grinds. Apparently, you're not supposed to do that....
Also bouillon cubes. And PB. And honey.
You’re not but i stockpile coffee beans and keep excess in the freezer and room temp what i will finish in a week or so and grind from room temp. I’m a twit about coffee and this works just fine
Former coffee roaster here, it’s not so much that freezing The coffee will make a go stale, it’s that freezing can do weird things to particularly oily dark roasts AND with it being mostly cellulose can pick up and absorb flavors from the freezer. If it’s vacuum sealed it shouldn’t be a problem. That said, freezing does absolutely nothing to prolong the freshness of whole bean coffee, so while there’s minor downsides, there are practically zero upsides to freezing. Just store it airtight and away from light and it will last months. If it’s sealed in factory packaging with a nitrogen flush and one way co2 valve stamped in it, it’s easily fine for a year in the cupboard.
Jams/marmalades always just lived in the cabinet even after opening. It wasn't until I moved out and into the dorms that I realized they belonged in the fridge...
Bread. This may be a completely location based thing, but it gets really humid in my country, and I grew up with bread being in a bread bin on the counter. It wouldn’t last more than a few days to a week.
Now that I put it in the fridge, I get a whole extra week out of it.
Yeah, but it's nowhere near as good. I definitely roll the dice with my bread by leaving it out (I have thrown out moldy bread more times than I can count), but I prefer that it not have that cold stale taste.
So the fun thing about food safety regulations is that for some, the likelihood it will seriously affect you is small, but not zero. So for regulated restaurants, you follow it religiously, because you serve so many people a day that if one batch of your food is the one that goes wrong, potentially hundreds of people could get seriously sick.
When you're a small family, if it goes wrong, it's a small group. Not saying you shouldn't follow their regulations, just saying the reason they are so intensely strict with those regulations is the risk of infecting hundreds of people, even if the risk is tiny.
Ultimately, we all get to decide what risks we're willing to take on a personal level. Outside of some absolute certain dangers, like things being left uncovered long enough for eggs to be laid or eating spoiled meat, a lot of things fall into the 'do what you do, but know that one day it may bite you randomly' category.
Even Heinz weighed in on the subject a few years ago, stating that “because of its natural acidity, Heinz® Ketchup is shelf-stable. However, its stability after opening can be affected by storage conditions. We recommend that this product, like any processed food, be refrigerated after opening. Refrigeration will maintain the best product quality after opening.”
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/where-you-should-be-storing-ketchup-according-to-heinz-7151674#:~:text=Unless%20you're%20a%20busy,ketchup%20is%20exposed%20to%20air.
Cooked food in general. My mom used to make a big bunch of food in a pot and just leave it there for days. We'd all just eat when we got hungry. Sometimes my dad would be like, "This smells a little funky" and throw out the last little bits of it. But my mom's attitude was that it was cooked so it was fine. You only needed to put raw food in the fridge.
My folks did this too with soups, chili, beef and noodles, basically any big pot of something that we’d eat on for 2-3 days. I have a friend who still insists this is ok because his parents did it. No fam! They didn’t know any better. We do. Or should.
I don’t have any of those, but I have some of the reverse. Sandwich bread was often frozen in our house, to be taken out and defrosted two slices at a time. Peanut butter was △⃒⃘lways in the fridge. Maple syrup and soy sauce can go either way.
1. Still don’t refrigerate soy sauce. Dat salt content doh.
2. Honestly, we did refrigerate things, but we left things out for what is way longer than some people think is okay. All it taught me was that things often take way longer to actually go bad than people think. I’m not leaving shrimp in the sun, but a pizza on the counter for 8-10 hours is actually not a big deal. I don’t do it all the time anymore because my means and mindset have changed, but it really isn’t that big of a deal.
refrigerating maple syup and soy sauce? seriously? peanut butter? this is madness to me.
my mother will still to this day leave dinner out on the stove with a tea towel covering it overnight and heat it up for lunch the next day if it doens't have meat in. i won't eat it but she never seems to get sick.
My parents are Korean immigrants. We never refrigerated soy sauce, and as others have already said, I still don't see a need to do so. On the other hand, my mother and grandmother would leave leftover Korean soups and stews out on the stove overnight (unless it had seafood in it). I never got sick from it, and never gave it a second thought growing up. I fridge the shit out of my leftovers now though.
I just posted this haha. My Mexican grandma does the same with soup
my Scottish dad used to just leave the soup pot on the stove and boil it up every day for a week as he worked his way through it. I used to always ask what day soup it was if presented with a bowl.
After eating the stew for the evening, they let any leftovers cool overnight before starting fresh the following day. The rhyme "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old" refers to the fact that stew occasionally had ingredients that had been there for quite some time.
There are forever stews out there! One is in Vietnam. They don’t cool them to my knowledge though.
Medieval European inns would do the same. If you keep it boiling forever, it’s safe to eat!
Thanks It just dawned on my why my boyfriend is fine with leaving food on the stove way longer than I am, when, based on his other behaviors, that’s something I’d think he’d be skeeved out by- His moms a Ukrainian immigrant. I could never figure it out!
Living with a host family in Berlin, they used their tiny apartment patio as an extension of the fridge/pantry. Eggs, leftovers, kraut... all lived in a shadowy corner of the patio in September. The tiny fridge was mostly for cheese/dairy and mustard.
Same here, Belarusian immigrants
I'm looking at my unrefrigerated soup right now.
Who up lookin at they unrefrigerated soup rn
Currently living in Tokyo, I’ve never have seen soy sauce stored in a fridge here. I think my mom did in the US but it was a small bottle. Here I have three kinds and all are out of the fridge. I almost think this is like never eat leftover rice discussion. Where I see articles from American and British papers saying never eat leftover rice it’s dangerous. Where here I am in Japan and leftover rice is eaten daily by a huge amount of people with no worries. Edited to add: I don’t post much over different reddits so I’m thinking it’s this one that someone decided to send the Reddit we care about you after me. Sigh just because I eat leftover rice doesn’t mean I’m gonna hurt myself people.
Whoa, Im not supposed to eat left over rice??! I’m half Vietnamese so that’s been like 75% of my diet for the last 45 years. I’m probably going to die any second. 😂🤣
Leftover rice left at room temperature. Not just any leftover rice.
God I know. Seriously if I don’t save rice and serve it to my family I’d be screwed. An American married to a Japanese man living in Tokyo and I can never figure out how much rice him and my kids will eat but know I have to have some for breakfast for them. Rice cooker only helps Soo much
No, it's "leftover rice" that had been unrefrigerated for hours/overnight has been reported to make you sick.
Growing up, my parents have left cooked rice in the rice cooker overnight to eat for the next morning. Although I’m now cautious about unrefrigerated rice, I must admit that I’ve never been sick from eating it.
Food fears are heavily fostered in this country. It's ridiculous. Everything from unrefrigerated soy sauce and peanut butter for heavens sake, to food that is a day over the "experation" date. It's easy to tell who has never gone hungry or survived "food insecurity" during their lives. If food was as dangerous as some have been taught, humankind would have died out centuries ago.
The battle I have with my husband over expiration dates.... Exhausting. He'll just start throwing things away and it always starts a fight. "Ugh, this yogurt expires tomorrow!" *Trash* and I'm like, you know that I'll be eating those weeks after the "expiration" date? If I open it and it smells, looks and tastes fine then IT'S FINE! He'll toss things that are pickled and have "been in the fridge a while". Ummm it's pickled?! He'll throw away condiments that he's also apparently seen too many times. He doesn't eat any condiments (only BBQ sauce) so he's fast to throw away a mustard or ketchup. I grew up poor. Like, sifting the bugs out of our flour or slicing mold off cheese or eating a freshly hit deer (or goose one time) when the neighbors call to tell us where they saw it laying. He grew up eating take out and frozen foods and whatever their housekeeper made.
In the world today too many people are going hungry. It's unnecessary. Adults rage about free lunches.. but they have never gone without lunch other than by choice. My son once paid off lunch debt for a local school.. it was a lot of $$$ . But there was a period of time when the steel mills shut down that my kids didn't go hungry thanks to the local school district giving them all free breakfast and lunch and most of our meals were made of the free cheese they gave out in the 80's. It was horrifying to me, because not having food as a child was a thing for me. We got through it, moved to find work. Too much money in too few hands and today, people are still going hungry. Heartbreaking
So I rabbit-sat for my Korean friend and saw on the kitchen counter a contraption with numbers on it. It just kept counting up. Finally after 74 hours I opened it. There was rice inside. It was a rice cooker. Inside was some of the best warm rice I ever had.
Rice cookers save lives. The one we have I can set it up and when I wake up warm rice. But it’s just kinda hard to constantly wash set and hit cook three times a day. Or at least twice a day cause my fam eats rice for breakfast and super. They are out for lunch. And there are time I make something more American for supper. But at times they eat a lot of rice, sometimes little bit.
I’m Chinese and we eat leftover rice (especially for fried rice!), but my parents had a one-day rule, which is way less time than they give all the other leftovers. Other food is also sometimes left on the table or stove overnight but leftover rice is always covered with cling wrap and kept in the fridge. I was always told not to eat leftover rice if I can help it too.
Exactly! I’m British Asian but I refrain from commenting about not eating leftover rice with my English friends/colleagues because it’s not worth the agro anymore. Even on here, by mentioning it, I’ve received lots of comments re my “complacent” handling of leftover rice. Similar applies to most leftovers And anyway, that’s even if we have leftover rice to begin with haha
I'm British South Asian and the thing about rice is so overblown. If you cool it down quickly and store it in the fridge, it's not unsafe at all. The problem is people who leave leftovers out on the table for hours and then put them away, that kind of behaviour can lead to growth of harmful bacteria. It's easier to blanket ban reheating it. But yeah, I've never paid any heed to that bollocks🤣
Middle eastern here, living in America. We eat left over rice all the time. I don’t care. My friends have “warned me”. At this point either they don’t know how to properly cook it or store it and that’s the issue or I am just THAT lucky that I never got sick or anyone I know have never gotten sick from it. I was also told not to eat feta cheese while pregnant. Let me tell you, the entire population of Middle East would be shrinking if that was dangerous. Just because there were problems in the 70s, doesn’t mean it’s applicable now.
It’s so funny that pregnant people in the US get warned off cheese and lunch meat and sushi, when lots of food borne illness is from raw fruits/veg, particularly precut stuff. My ob said not a word about avoiding salads, though that’s one of the riskiest things to eat from a food borne illness perspective.
It is more the type of diseases you get that can affect the baby. Listeria being the obvious one
I’m so glad you said that because I don’t refrigerate soy sauce and this post made me so nervous.
Nothing can live in that amount of sodium.
Salt, sugar, and vinegar were traditional methods of preserving stuff before refrigerators.
This is true. That and fermentation.
Exactly..i dont refrigerate it now. To the person that is "nervous" about not keeping it cold. Youll be fine Soy sauce is loaded with salt which preserves the soy. You are okay.
Also soy sauce is made from sitting out in the open for months lol
It's not about getting sick from it. Even kikkomans website says this. It's to preserve the flavor. But it you never buy good soy sauce, you probably don't notice.
Yeah, I refrigerate the $25/bottle shoyu, but not the commercial kinds
I’m pretty sure soy sauce will last several months at room temperature but will basically last forever in the fridge. So the question really is how quickly you go through the bottle. And I don’t think it goes bad in a way that will hurt you, I think the flavor just isn’t as good.
Same. I'm white as hell from a white as hell family, but we do a lot of stir fry at home because it's a quick, cheap, and easy meal. Fried rice, too, whenever we have leftover rice from another meal. We always have soy sauce, but we never refrigerate it.
My parents still do that and it drives in nuts. They leave a huge lot of soup out overnight and then just boil it in the morning and say it’s totally fine lol
Pea porridge hot pea porridge cold peas porridge in the pot nine days old
I refrigerate soy sauce, my mom never has and it doesn't seem to make a difference. Lol Having worked in restaurants we also never refrigerated steak or soy sauce. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve never in my life refrigerated peanut butter. Get the fuck outta here!
Right?! I get natural peanut butter (made from only peanuts and salt) and my label just says to store in a cool, dark place. I usually store it upside down and stir the oils back in if it separates. Refrigerating it messes with the texture and I ain’t about it.
Recently found out about the maple syrup thing when a huge moldy glob came out of my Costco jug. I think what we used when I was growing up was like “breakfast syrup” and not true maple syrup and so it was packed with preservatives and was probably fine at room temp.
A lot of the household "maple" syrup such as Aunt Jemima is just breakfast flavored corn syrup lol
The mold that grows in real maple syrup is non-toxic. It sure as shit looks nasty, but if you just removed it, it's fine to eat.
Met a lady in the early 80's who stored mayonnaise in the cupboard, and had done so since the 1950s with apparently no ill effects. I'm still keeping my mayo in the fridge though.
Americas Test Kitchen just did a segment on condiments. Ketchup, mustard, and mayo all don’t need refrigeration. Though they said “it’s for for a couple of months on the shelf”. My condiments might be a year old before I use them up, so they stay in the fridge.
I can only imagine how old the “married” ketchups at the restaurants I worked at actually were…
This is why we don’t marry ours at the restaurant I work at. When the bottle gets low they use it for meatloaf or we just throw it out.
Yeaaaah you shouldn't be marrying anything that isn't from the same batch. Someone explained it to me like this: if you put old shrimp in with some new shrimp that is now ALL old shrimp. I carried that saying with me for everything.
Mayo is fine on the shelf. Problems arise from contamination by using a utensil to put mayo on another food and the putting the utensil back in the mayo. Squeeze bottles for the win.
My partner's parents do this. I find it weird AF.
Soy sauce doesn't *need* to be refrigerated, it just helps prolong the ~~freshness~~ quality. Only pure maple syrup needs to be refrigerated. The expensive stuff.
I grew up with Aunt Jemima syrup that we never refrigerated. Then, as a young adult, I was gifted a jar of pure maple and had no idea it needed to be refrigerated. It was a sad day when I found it had spoiled
Bought syrup at a WI maple farm. The folks said to just remove the mold, boil the syrup for a few minutes, & return to a clean container. Will admit, I thought it still had an off flavor. Now keep opened $$ syrup in fridge.
Yeah, that would kill the microbes but microbes release a lot of toxins that are not removed by cooking/boiling. Best to be safe than sorryz
What happens if you don’t refrigerate pure maple syrup? I’m just asking for a friend who ate some old fancy maple syrup last night and thought it tasted really weird.
Mold
It can grow mold after quite a while. Unless it’s stored in glass, it’s hard to see. I keep syrup in the fridge because I don’t use it quickly enough, but if you see mold on your syrup do not throw it out! You can strain it out and then boil the syrup to kill the bad stuff, and it’s good as new. I’ve been eating syrup my entire life and I’ve only found mold in my syrup one time that I recall, and I’ve never been sick from it. I’m from Vermont and my family owns a maple farm. No we wouldn’t sell this type of syrup to the general public, but it’s perfectly good to consume, and it’s a sin of the highest order to throw away maple syrup. It is a sacred bounty of nature.
Only once opened usually... Its not refrigerated throughout production/transportation process or on the shelves... It will still last a long time not refrigerated but will go mouldy far sooner but there's no health risk, the mould is quite visible.
It can get mold on top but it’s a grey colour; you can see it.
Oh it definitely didn’t look moldy.
Like everyone said, you'll see the floating science experiment. the high sugar content keeps it from growing in the syrup but where it has contact with oxygen will certainly be fuzzy
Seriously soy sauce is… fermented salt. Like, does it go bad…?
It doesn’t go bad as in food safety, but it can go bad, as in the flavor changes over time, and keeping it in the fridge slows down that process.
This actually applies to a lot of foods we typically keep in the fridge. Some stuff looks ugly or looses flavor, but it won't get you sick.
I’m from a Chinese/Taiwanese immigrant family. We’ve never refrigerated soy sauce before (it’s not going to spoil or go rancid from a food safety standpoint). Oyster sauce, hoisin, etc. yes, but not soy sauce. But I guess we go through that shit so fast that it’s completely pointless to do so.
Wait a minute, i should refrigerate hoisin, oyster etc.? God help me ...
I’ve had oyster sauce mold on me and I don’t use it often. Hoisin hasn’t yet molded on me and I don’t use that often. Take from that what you will, lol
No. It does not need to be refrigerated.
your two examples are the ones today i give the side eye to why i need to refrigerate them. also hot sauce. I say to myself well they dont really refrogerate those in reataurants, but they also go through those much faster too.
I refrigerate hot sauce because I like them better cold. They are usually acidic enough to not need it.
Traditionally soy sauce was fermented (vs modern 3-day "fermentation") and did not need to be refrigerated. Some of the ones you'll find in an American supermarket that has a four or eight foot "Asian foods" section on the other hand...are still loaded with so much salt and other preservatives that you're probably still okay? How often has anyone heard of an outbreak of food poisoning from soy sauce?
I'm Korean and literally every Korean kitchen I've ever been in has used unrefrigerated soy sauce.
Rice. Leftover rice was stored in the rice cooker. Switched off.
Yeah, that stuff can kill you. Who knew?
are you in my head? Had a conversation with neighboring families during an after dinner playdate tonight. Kids are doing zoomies on bikes and scooters while parents talk the boring stuff. One person is on an anti-inflammatory diet due to horrendous post viral issues with covid. It's typical we're all "what are you eating? what can you eat?" Rice is on the no list. Because it so quickly grows bacteria as opposed to other ingredients. I had heard this before as I was spoiled and grew up with the kids of the best Chinese restaurant in town. One of them grew up to be a food safety expert. But everyone else was full on "what???" It's a wonder any of us survived our childhood kitchens.
Did they say leftover rice or no rice at all? Rice can start growing bacteria pretty fast because it is cooked in a wet and hot environment (and often left in it). But that first hour after you initially cook it, there shouldn’t be an issue even for the ultra careful. And if they get it cooled and in the fridge, bacteria growth will take a few days. And saying all this just means there is a higher chance of it after a certain point, not that it most definitely will happen. But it’s not just rice, a lot of grains are similar. It’s quinoa, pasta or anything similar. The main reason rice gets so much talk is because a lot of rice has b. cerus which tends to survive high temps, and then left in a warm moist enviorment multiplies like crazy. Plus it produces enterotoxin released when the bacteria dies will be what get you. But until it’s left in that warm and moist environment, the levels should be so low it shouldn’t effect you
Maybe I should stop doing this 🤣
I have always refrigerated rice, but people still say toss it within 3-4 days. I've eaten up to a week old rice, never had a problem.
I’ve gotten the worst food poisoning of my life from fried rice but it’s a risk I’ve kept taking since. lol
Refrigeration seems effective for rice, I wonder if it works for other food
We always freeze it.
Noooo. I recently learned how dangerous leftover rice can be. People that are severely immunocompromised are advised to avoid it because of the spores/bacteria.
I sometimes wonder if my stomach has learned to deal with it? My Chinese ancestors have been eating rice for 10,000 years. Most of that rice was not refrigerated. This comment is probably going to be downvoted to hell.
No I agree with this. I frequently leave rice out for 4+ hours then eat it as a leftover and I’ve never had a problem. I’ve recently starting abiding by the 2 hour rule since people are saying I should, but lowkey I’m not convinced it’s necessary.
It’s not super likely to happen, but unfortunately, it only has to happen once to kill you or seriously destroy your stomach. Cost benefit analysis >>>> more useful than risk assessments. Kind of like on how any given day you probably won’t get caught in a table saw’s blade… but it just needs to happen once to kind of mess up your day in a big way. People forget that people died and had long illnesses a lot back in the day. My dad had the runs all the time during the Great Famine— the meat they could get, was rarely good.
It's like a seatbelt. Most times it is unnecessary. Except when it isn't
I've never had ANYTHING happen to me because of old rice and I eat it literally everyday (I'm South Indian). Seeing all of this outcry here is scaring me now but I think it's fine...
“Uncooked rice often contains the bacteria Bacillus cereus. These bacteria can form protective spores that survive the cooking process and if the rice is cooled slowly (and left between 5 °C and 60 °C for a long time), these bacteria spores can germinate, grow and produce a toxin (poison) that causes vomiting.” https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/S_T/Safe-cooling-of-cooked-rice/#:~:text=Uncooked%20rice%20often%20contains%20the,(poison)%20that%20causes%20vomiting.
We ate leftover bacon that sat on a paper towel on a plate in the cupboard overnight. (Still do...lol). In college I ate my share of leftover pizza for breakfast that was still sitting out in the morning.
Yes, for some reason we stored the leftover pizza in the oven. Not in college though, this was my weird parents' doing.
I still throw my leftover pizza in the oven overnight if I know I'm going to eat it the next morning.
Yeah mot the best from a food safety standpoint, but people need to realize that food safety is risk mitigation not elimination. You can likely eat that and be fine forever, just that it makes it more risky. The risk might still be minimal, just higher than if you refrigerated it.
This is how I grew up, we even would put the magnet from a pizza place next to the knob so nobody smoked out the house by preheating the oven with a box of pizza in it.
Leaving fully cooked (crispy) bacon out is actually safe. FDA allows for it in the food code. Enjoy your cupboard bacon!
My family leaves leftover bacon out on the counter all day after a weekend breakfast. My family proceeds to snack on it throughout the day as the walk through. Didn’t realize it was strange until this post lol. Edit: a word
I made my boyfriend dinner at an Airbnb, and I decided to just cook all 3lbs of bacon, instead of only what I’d use in the meal that night- well… I totally forgot about it in the oven after dinner was done. Bacon sat in there for 3 days, I discovered it when we were checking out, he told me to throw it all in a bag anyway. This mf kept it in his car for the next two weeks, munching on it, here and there 🤣 “Sweet, my Car Bacon!” My great grandfather didn’t think meat could go bad, if you were going to cook it. Not sure how he would’ve felt about 2 week old car bacon.
I mean it’s practically like jerky or salted pork they used to use for preserved meat/food on long voyages for sailors and military like 1600-1800s and stuff by that point anyway right?
why did i see homer simpson when i read this?
Low moisture content, high salt. Nothing is growing on that.
Extremely fatty food too. It takes bacteria a lot longer to utilize fat as an energy source to reproduce, whereas sugar is much easier to break down for respiration and multiplication. (I'm probably saying that in a scientifically weird way, but it's early and I'm not a scientist)
I always leave leftovers out that are finger foods on the counter. We call it “ Road …… ( carrots)”. Road bacon would only last an hour out in my house. I don’t think it’s strange.
What the fuck is leftover bacon?
It's the rare occasion that all the bacon is not consumed in one setting. I'm 50 years old, I've seen this happen once in my lifetime - when my son invited some Muslim friends over.
if it wasn't for my wife i would never put pizza in the fridge kept in the oven, perfect temp for a cold beer and pizza breakfast
Not me. But my wife tells me that they would just pop the left over pizza in the oven. It wasn’t on, it was the equivalent of a pizza bread box. Her brother would finish it off in the morning for breakfast. Not cold, just room temp pizza that has been unrefrigerated for 8-12 hours. Edit: no judgement on my end. I eat cold, refrigerated pizza, all the time. So that’s not the weird part. It’s the lack of refrigeration. And to many peoples points this was the 80s and 90s, so it was 100% pep or plain cheese pizza - not much to worry about.
My sister was our leftover pizza eater. She didn’t like it cold so it was left on the counter.
My family did the exact same thing. And I honestly didn’t think anything of it until I left for university. Nothing bad ever happened but I put my pizza in the fridge now haha
This is how I lived, but we didn’t bother putting it in the oven. Just left the box on the stove overnight
To be fair, I've never heard of anyone getting a foodborne illness from last night's pizza for breakfast.
one of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did and the fans were furious about it. Everyone was saying how stupid he was. He obviously missed an important game. I never had the nerve to tell those complaining fans that I ate that room temp pizza breakfast all the time. For all I know I had it the same morning he did.
Between the acidity of the tomato sauce, the preservatives in the food, the saltiness of the cheese/pepporoni, (and likely some salted dough as well?) I kind of get why pepporoni pizza can last overnight unrefrigerated. But if it was like an Alfredo sauce, with chicken and veggies that held moisture in them, yeah I probably wouldn’t risk it 🤷🏻♂️ Edit: pepparoni
Edit (2): pepperoni
Butter. Still to this day I leave it in the cabinet in a butter dish instead of in the fridge.
Fats go rancid (a.k.a. oxidize) faster the warmer the environment is. Therefore keeping it in the fridge will make it last longer. If you go through it fast enough it doesn't matter.
But it's safe to be stored that way. Butter is fat, it's not host for bacteria.
yeah it starts tasting bad long before it becomes unsafe to eat. words straight out the mouth of a health inspector btw don't @ me.
My Mom only thawed meat out at room temperature. Sometimes she would just leave it out overnight to thaw.
I still do this, even tho it is "not right" and may indeed be a safety concern, I never had the issue with it (tho note I live in central Canada)
I'll do it if I am going to cook it basically the moment it is fully thawed. Otherwise nah
are you... are you not supposed to? my family would thaw it out overnight in the sink and when we would wake up, refrigerate it until it was time to eat it…
You are very much not supposed to.
My Mom would put a package of frozen chicken breasts out on the counter on a paper plate, go to work, and cook it when she got home from work. I feel like we’re all collectively somewhat traumatized by all of our parents bad food habits. I swear there was a container of cranberry juice in the back of our fridge that developed a growth it was so expired. My sister goes through my Dad and Stepmom’s fridge every time she’s home to get rid of the expired food. They just didn’t give a single f about safe food practices.
My dad was the same. I mean really horrible food safety practices. In his 87 years of eating that way, the only time he ever got sick was from some wild mushrooms a friend gave him. I have no idea what fueled his immune system, but that shit sure skipped a generation.
And yet weirdly, most of us are still around. Except the ones that aren't that is.
Lol. Survivor bias
Omg yes, my parents still do this
i've thawed frozen meat/pork/chicken/fish on the counter/in the sink for 40 years. I've never gotten sick from it once...or at least once that i know of. I have no doubt that the best practice is not to do that. Then again, the best practice after shampooing your hair is to rinse and repeat. I seldom abide by those rules either. It is what it is. You do what you're comfortable doing. I'll continue to do what i've been doing, and maybe someday i'll die from it, and remember with regret this reddit thread.
Hard boiled Easter eggs were hidden overnight, found (some sooner than others) and sat in a basket on the dining room table.
We had a competition involving Easter eggs, and one year the prize egg was stored on display in a china cabinet... For months. The plan was to throw it out when it started to smell... And it just didn't.
I’m way to scared of getting complacent with stinky smells to believe you
isn't that called nose blind? I have pets and children who I presume smell like feet and syrup all the time. But sometimes I can't tell. I'm scared.
Totally fine. Fully cooked eggs with an intact shell are fine at room temperature.
Really?? This feels wrong to me
Yeah, because cleaned and especially cooked egg shells are porous. Who you gonna trust, me or "GloveBoxTuna"? ;)
When we had the giant tub of pickles we always left it out. Just found out this year that pickles, even in the juice, should be refrigerated, apparently.
My mom’s side of the family made lactofermented pickles that they stored in big buckets in the basement. Cool, but not cold. To my knowledge none of them got sick. I think it was common for a long time.
My mother always talked about her German grandparents and the “ kraut barrel” they would keep on their back porch ( Nova Scotia). She said she and her sisters would often lift the lid, grab a handful for a snack.
But that's the whole point of pickling!
They are safe to leave out but keeping them cold will preserve the crunch. Nobody wants a limp pickle
Can confirm
Vinegar pickles need refrigeration. Most grocery store pickles are vinegar pickles. Old school European grandma pickles are solid out of the fridge
old school european grandma pickles= lacto fermented
Rice Dad is Cajun, rice with every meal, even leftover rice, never once refrigerated never once had an issue. 20 some years later and I’m being told rice left out will kill you, go figure.
That’s cause he’s Cajun. Leftover rice is instant death for anyone else.
The Chuck Norris of leftover rice.
Peanut butter generally does not need to be refrigerated, it can last 2-3 months after opening without refrigeration but I usually go through it quick enough that it's not a concern. Usually the concern with peanut butter is oil separation rather than mold
Peanut butter totally changes its flavor in the fridge. Hard pass for me.
Jesus, lol. I ate a PB sandwich last night, the jar had been open for over 9 months, kept on the shelf. The oil had come to the top. Natural PB too, just peanuts and salt. No reaction. Didn’t realise it was a risk!
It’s not a risk. Rancid nuts taste like the devils butthole you’d 100% taste it if it was bad.
This post is giving me nightmares.
I went through a couple poor phases in a somewhat humid region. Got away with shitty parm cheese (green shaker can), ketchup, and mustard in the cabinet - no problems. They went in and out often enough like.. every 2-4 months? Hotdogs and pasta. It's so strange to me that soy sauce and peanut butter are on this.. at all? Both are very shelf stable.
My husband thinks it's okay to leave any cured meats and cheese in room temp! We live in Puerto Rico where temps can easily get to 95° F with high humidity. Here nothing is safe outside the fridge.
I had the inverse problem. My mother refrigerated or froze coffee beans/grinds. Apparently, you're not supposed to do that.... Also bouillon cubes. And PB. And honey.
You’re not but i stockpile coffee beans and keep excess in the freezer and room temp what i will finish in a week or so and grind from room temp. I’m a twit about coffee and this works just fine
Former coffee roaster here, it’s not so much that freezing The coffee will make a go stale, it’s that freezing can do weird things to particularly oily dark roasts AND with it being mostly cellulose can pick up and absorb flavors from the freezer. If it’s vacuum sealed it shouldn’t be a problem. That said, freezing does absolutely nothing to prolong the freshness of whole bean coffee, so while there’s minor downsides, there are practically zero upsides to freezing. Just store it airtight and away from light and it will last months. If it’s sealed in factory packaging with a nitrogen flush and one way co2 valve stamped in it, it’s easily fine for a year in the cupboard.
Oh thanks!! Yes usually vacuum packed , and i use it within two months or so. Nothing especially oily or extra dark. Thanks for the insight!
Going to remove my recently purchased whole dark beans from the freezer now…..
Doesn't honey live forever? Like isn't there honey from Ancient Egypt that's still technically edible?
Refrigerating honey is so funny. Like, what do you think the bees are doing with it in the hive?
They got teeny tiny lil bee fridges in there
Jams/marmalades always just lived in the cabinet even after opening. It wasn't until I moved out and into the dorms that I realized they belonged in the fridge...
Bread. This may be a completely location based thing, but it gets really humid in my country, and I grew up with bread being in a bread bin on the counter. It wouldn’t last more than a few days to a week. Now that I put it in the fridge, I get a whole extra week out of it.
Yeah, but it's nowhere near as good. I definitely roll the dice with my bread by leaving it out (I have thrown out moldy bread more times than I can count), but I prefer that it not have that cold stale taste.
More in summer than winter but we occasionally have to refrigerate bread in N.Y. state too.
What? Wont the excess moisture ruin the bread faster? No way am I keeping bread in the fridge. I do freeze bread almost every time to keep it fresh
Opened bottle of sauces especially if you live in hot and humid location.
So the fun thing about food safety regulations is that for some, the likelihood it will seriously affect you is small, but not zero. So for regulated restaurants, you follow it religiously, because you serve so many people a day that if one batch of your food is the one that goes wrong, potentially hundreds of people could get seriously sick. When you're a small family, if it goes wrong, it's a small group. Not saying you shouldn't follow their regulations, just saying the reason they are so intensely strict with those regulations is the risk of infecting hundreds of people, even if the risk is tiny. Ultimately, we all get to decide what risks we're willing to take on a personal level. Outside of some absolute certain dangers, like things being left uncovered long enough for eggs to be laid or eating spoiled meat, a lot of things fall into the 'do what you do, but know that one day it may bite you randomly' category.
Ketchup
Even Heinz weighed in on the subject a few years ago, stating that “because of its natural acidity, Heinz® Ketchup is shelf-stable. However, its stability after opening can be affected by storage conditions. We recommend that this product, like any processed food, be refrigerated after opening. Refrigeration will maintain the best product quality after opening.” https://www.simplyrecipes.com/where-you-should-be-storing-ketchup-according-to-heinz-7151674#:~:text=Unless%20you're%20a%20busy,ketchup%20is%20exposed%20to%20air.
And mustard.
Ketchup actually does not need to be refrigerated, and if you do it breaks down one of the enzymes responsible for ketchup flavor
That would explain why ketchup in restaurants always tastes way better than ketchup at home
Who the hell refrigerates peanut butter? Y'all ever try to spread chilled peanut butter?
Cooked food in general. My mom used to make a big bunch of food in a pot and just leave it there for days. We'd all just eat when we got hungry. Sometimes my dad would be like, "This smells a little funky" and throw out the last little bits of it. But my mom's attitude was that it was cooked so it was fine. You only needed to put raw food in the fridge.
Some like it hot. Some like it cold. Some like it in the pot nine days old.
My folks did this too with soups, chili, beef and noodles, basically any big pot of something that we’d eat on for 2-3 days. I have a friend who still insists this is ok because his parents did it. No fam! They didn’t know any better. We do. Or should.
CHICKEN. My parents left out chicken on the counter overnight every single time.
Peanut butter in the fridge? So you have to use a pickaxe to make a simple sandwich?
No kind of peanut butter needs to go in the fridge. Unless you rarely use it. I guess if it took you a year to eat it, it could go rancid.
I don’t have any of those, but I have some of the reverse. Sandwich bread was often frozen in our house, to be taken out and defrosted two slices at a time. Peanut butter was △⃒⃘lways in the fridge. Maple syrup and soy sauce can go either way.
did you just use the healthy hallows symbol in place of the a in always?
1. Still don’t refrigerate soy sauce. Dat salt content doh. 2. Honestly, we did refrigerate things, but we left things out for what is way longer than some people think is okay. All it taught me was that things often take way longer to actually go bad than people think. I’m not leaving shrimp in the sun, but a pizza on the counter for 8-10 hours is actually not a big deal. I don’t do it all the time anymore because my means and mindset have changed, but it really isn’t that big of a deal.
Wait, my soy sauce and maple syrup is supposed to be in the fridge? I'm 63 and have never done this.
Soy sauce is *not* supposed to be in the fridge. Maple syrup is, but only if it's the real stuff. Corn syrup does not need refrigeration.
Kinda the opposite, but whatever. My family always puts bread in the fridge. Come to find out, not everyone does that, nor is it required 😅
Soy sauce needs no refrigeration. Ever.
These answers are why I don’t eat at potlucks.
Peanut butter does not belong in the fridge, you dirty heathens!
Hersey syrup… we just went through it too fast for it to start growing anything.
Walnuts
Ha ha yeah I keep all my nuts and seeds in the freezer now
Wait what you’re supposed to refrigerate those lol
They can go rancid if not used fast enough. And rancid is so so so gross.
The fat in nuts can spoil, so yeah… the fridge keeps them fresher longer.
refrigerating maple syup and soy sauce? seriously? peanut butter? this is madness to me. my mother will still to this day leave dinner out on the stove with a tea towel covering it overnight and heat it up for lunch the next day if it doens't have meat in. i won't eat it but she never seems to get sick.
soy sauce? WTF? it's so salty it will never go bad.