I don’t do “batch cooking” per se, but often cook something larger on saturday/sunday so I have leftover, either for Monday/thuesday lunch or for when coming back from sport, keeping food 2-3 in the fridge doesn’t worry me (Obviously, I am not gonna keep a tartare so long in the frige, and don’t even cook meat). Things start to be more worrysome when I still have leftover on Wednesday/Thursday. yesterday night I threw away some beans from Saturday I started to have a doubt.
So my question is basically
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How to optimize food preservation in the fridge (I have a small fridge with a very small freezer compartment, in winter when the temperature doesn’t get above 5 degree I can use my balcony for extra space, but it’s already over)
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Is there a guideline on how long which kind of food can last in a regular fridge ?
Wait what?
You consider food that has been properly refrigerated for 3 days a health risk?
If all ingredients have been properly heated in the cooking process and cooled down quickly (letting it cool down in room temperature is not “quickly” it should be good for a much longer time. Put the food in an airtight container. If it’s cold outside, like below 4°C, you can put it outside to cool. Otherwise, put the container in cold water. Make sure to change the water if it gets luke warm. When the food is luke warm/room tempered you move the container to the fridge (cooling capacity of your fridge determines how warm food you can cook down in the fridge. The cooler food, the better).
If kept below 8°C (I prefer a temperature of 1°C to 4°C in my fridge) it should be good for at least a week. Up to 2-3-4 weeks depending on how poor, courageous and/or stupid you are.
Always: Use your nose and if it smells a bit unusual, not just “off”, you should consider throwing it away. The smell receptors you have have by evolution been calibrated towards smelling “spoiled”. Especially spoiled meats, most likely since the micro organisms and the toxins they produce are among the most dangerous to us compared to what’s in spoiled vegetables. If a piece of meat is really off, you most likely won’t even be able to breath normally within 4-5 inches of it.
Look for color change, tiny tiny dots of something that doesn’t seem to belong in the food. (It doesn’t have to be “hairy”. Bacterias doesn’t create “hairy dots”). If it does have dots or after coloring, then throw it away. If you see “hairy” it’s most likely mold. Not mold actually, but the fruiting body of mold, which is just the tip of the iceberg. What you don’t see if the actual mold which continues det down in the food. So never just cut away the bad parts and eat what looks ok. It’s everywhere, even in parts that looks good.
But if you wouldn’t be able to eat one week old properly refrigerated food, all of our ancestors 100 years ago would have died of food poisoning. I mean “all” as all of them and not just the large amount of people that actually died from botulism, salmonella and all the other food related fun ways to die.