Huge row with DH over food safety - who is BU?

Igneococcus SharonEllis
I will not be eating at your house ever you have an understandable but worrying lack of knowledge of bacteriology. The scenarios you paint are unsafe if you ran a restaurant or commercial food premises it would only be a matter of time before you were being fined or prosecution for unsafe food handling practices " Scary as hell. this quote "It would have been fine to cool down on the side under foil overnight and then go in the fridge when you got up."

Well, luckily UK, New Zealand and Australia food safety regulations have no say over what I do in my own kitchen.
These rules were written to provide a simple and easy framework for commmercial kitchens, that everybody follows and everyone knows what to do without having to rely on their own or their colleagues judgement. And if something does go wrong and there is an outbreak of food poisoning, they can show that regulations were followed. In my own kitchen, where I know how something was prepared, covered and stored, I make my own decisions based on this knowledge.

Presuming this is in relation to food produced in commercial premises. It is certainly not 'illegal' to eat food that has been out of the fridge overnight in your own home.

Practices being promoted or mentioned as low risks here are illegal under food safety regulations in the UK New Zealand Australia. The regs formulated as a result of the work of the UK Public Health Laboratory Service and pretty much adopted as detailed above in those countries. It does appear to me they should have posted on Mumsnet and with the expertise I am seeing here could have avoided adopting such silly regulations.

Yes, refrigerate in the morning and thoroughly reheat. No drama. And in your 60s is not old, frail, immuno-compromised..... (speaking as a 63 Yr old)

YABU. For talking about serving to his parents who are in their 60’s like that makes them aged and more prone to gastro illness. They are not old.
Unless they are unwell with some immunocompromise that you haven’t disclosed then they are at no greater risk than you and DH. I would have thrown the food out because food safety affects all.

I read that as: Was there a reason you were not cooking him?

I don’t think it would have been fully cooled anyway to go in the fridge at night so I think it will be fine.
have u thought of getting a slow cooker at all?
this way you can prep everything and it cooks whilst you are working ready to serve when u get home from work

I never said anything about spontaneous generation. I said in a previous post that as long as the dish was left covered and untouched then there wouldn't be anything to grow. I was referring to the posters saying things like this:

Even if microorganisms did waft onto the surface of the food after it cooled down - hours later, they are highly unlikely to be pathogenic and equally unlikely over-night to have undergone enough cell division /toxin production to cause problems.

Rosscameasdoody
So basically before fridges we were taking our lives in our hands every time we sat down to dinner !!
The explanations were many. Ptomaine poisoning was a fun one because the food was off. Yes people die from gastro the number of children especially in Africa who died from so called gastro, dysentery was massive so your point is not well thought out. My background would be regarded as v/knowledgeable as I investigated many outbreaks and published some and some were used in training health officers doing their degrees. I was also a speaker in courses in public health in a major hospital for many years. So your point is misleading.

Raising the temperature of the fridge would potentially render everything in it risky to eat, so yes. The food was freshly cooked and hot. It was cooked late at night and would have taken hours to cool down properly. Put in the fridge early next morning it would have been fine. No wonder we have so much food waste if peopled are willing to throw a freshly cooked meal away a few hours after taking it out of the oven.

So basically before fridges we were taking our lives in our hands every time we sat down to dinner !!

OP, I often see both people’s point of view, but not this time. He was behaving appallingly the whole time. I can hardly believe his grande finale was to tell his parents not to come— what a tantrum!

Are you sure you want to have children with this man?

Incidentally, as an over-60, I am pretty fit and active, but I have nowhere near the same resistance to bugs that I had in my 30s. A bout of food-poisoning would be dangerous as well as horrible.

but just because it's nicer to cook something fresh - otherwise you might as well give them a ready meal.

You seem to not 'get' cooking. So many dishes are better prepared in advance.

Possibly curry/stew but I would still rather give guests something freshly made!

Totally depends on the recipe. Loads of dishes are better the next day.

YABVU. I would never put freshly cooked hot food into the fridge! It would have been fine to cool down on the side under foil overnight and then go in the fridge when you got up. And people on their 60s are not frail or "elderly" - what rubbish.

I don't understand why you cooked the day before anyway. I wouldn't serve any guests reheated food, not for food hygiene reasons but just because it's nicer to cook something fresh - otherwise you might as well give them a ready meal. You could have prepped something quicker to cook from the fridge/freezer on the day.

Where are all these pathogens coming from in a fully cooked (practically sterile) and covered dish? @gregaliara

Well the pork isn't the issue no more risky than any other protein. The time this meal was left out is very excessive. The 2 hour 4 hour rule of the PHLS was based on solid bacteriology. The organisms that could have grown include Salmonella many types, Clostridium perfringens, Bacillus cereus, Camplylobacter and others. Salmonella, Camplylobacter are easily killed if the reheat was thorough and exceeded 70 Celsius. The others are toxin producers and spore formers and Bacillus cerus toxin, if my memory serves me correct can survive temperatures as high as 180 Celsius hence . This meal would be a food poisoning risk pretty much in line with the comments made by others. It would be effective if you want to lose a lot of weight rapidly, unfortunately you may end up in the hands of the NHS.

Sheesh ! You dont need his DM to visit.....she's already living in your house with her mental imprints steering his behaviour :o/ " how long is that going to stay on the counter for ?" How enraging ......and how ironic that was what blew the whole deal - how long the pork dish stayed on the counter for - deep sympathy OP

Exactly this. Honestly. I've never had food poisoning in my life from food cooked in my home or my Mum's.

You shouldnt need to tell an adult to put it in the fridge. Both of you should have thought that needs to go in the fridge before bed....but, as you had cooked all night he should have done the locking up before going to bed & spotted it. That said, it would have been totally fine to eat if reheated properly (reading these replies I dread to think how much food is wasted). The food is a separate issue to his idiotic behaviour.

It’s ironic people are worried about raising the temperature of the fridge a few degrees but not worried about leaving food out in much higher temperatures.

Look, Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation sometimes back in the 1850s. A long cooked dish is basically sterile when it comes out of the oven and unless the husband opened the lid/foil and sneezed into it there was no microbial cell in there to grow, and if there were any the numbers would have been too small to grow to sufficient concentration to cause issue in the time available, and it all would be reheated and microbes killed/(some) toxins deactivated anyway. In a fridge, however, there is plenty of food that doesn't get reheated and maybe never has been heated, so carries a higher microbial load to start with, and if you increase their temperature, things will start to grow.

You poor soul! He was horrible to you when you were putting so much love and effort into something, he was selfish, lazy, then blamed you for it all. You’d think he’d care about his parents as well, but evidently not. I’m so glad you do!