Throwing out food in fridge after power cut?

[Icequeen01]

During storm Eunice my area had a power cut from midday until 5am the next morning. When the power came back I checked the food in the freezer and it still felt frozen so I think we are ok with the frozen stuff.

However, in my fridge I had prawns, bacon, fresh chicken breasts and yoghurts. DH thinks we should take no chances and bin it all but I'm not convinced. The fridge door was only opened a couple of times during the day when we boiled up some water on the gas hob to make a hot drink and the temperature in the house was pretty chilly due to no heating.

What would you do?

I would use them.

I'd use the look & smell to determine what was still OK.

Try and use them sooner rather than later and snifff before you cook. They really should be OK unless they were already on the turn.

I would throw the prawns out. I would cook and eat the bacon and chicken today. I think the yogurt will be fine, after all we take that in pack lunches in the hot summer.

Definitely wouldn't bin the bacon or the yoghurts. Bacon is cured anyway.

I would also eat the chicken but I know a lot of people are more cautious than me about chicken.

The only thing I would consider binning would be the prawns but again not definitely, depends on how cold the house was.

Bacon for breakfast, prawn sandwiches for lunch and chicken for tea or cooked and sliced for sandwiches over the next few days.

I wouldn’t eat prawns or chicken that hasn’t been stored at the correct temperature. Life is too short to spend hours sat on the loo.

Have you got a thermometer?

I'd be wary about the prawns. Bit less wary about chicken. Not as worried about yoghurt and bacon (used to live abroad where the yoghurt were on a shelf in the supermarket!)

Your DH is right.

www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-during-power-outage

Keep the bacon bin the chicken and the prawns

I wouldn't bin everything if the fridge was shut in a cold house for a few hours.

Prawns are the only thing I might not take a (hypothetical, I'm veggie!) risk with but bacon and yogurt are preserved products anyway- bacon through salt curing and yogurt by fermentation- so should be fine. To be cautious, you could cook the chicken today and ensure its fully cooked through. Reheat if not eating today.

Bizarrely we had exactly the same in our fridge and haven’t had electric since Friday so it’s all been binned.
The only thing I kept was cheese and milk.

I’d bin the prawns, eat the chicken well cooked and not worry about the bacon at all.

I'd bin the prawns maybe the chicken if you are feeling iffy about it, everything else will be fine.

Modern fridges keep stuff cold for longer than 4 hours, as long as you keep the door shut.

I wouldn't risk the prawns. Sniff test on the chicken and yoghurt but use ASAP, even if it means cooking the chicken for another day. Bacon should be fine for a few days if it's well in date though, again, inspect and sniff before cooking.

@PastMyBestBeforeDate

Bacon for breakfast, prawn sandwiches for lunch and chicken for tea or cooked and sliced for sandwiches over the next few days.

This.

The fridge would have taken hours to increase in temperature and was probably at a low 'room temperature' at worst. After all, your heating was probably off too?

Food doesn't instantly become poisonous if it's not refrigerated for a few hours. When I worked in an office, I'd leave my lunch on the shelf in my office for 5-7 hours before eating it and if sometimes included prawns and I was never ill. The only time I ever bothered with the fridge was in high summer.

If the prawns smell OK, they'll almost certainly be fine to eat today.

@PickAChew

Modern fridges keep stuff cold for longer than 4 hours, as long as you keep the door shut.

I wouldn't risk the prawns. Sniff test on the chicken and yoghurt but use ASAP, even if it means cooking the chicken for another day. Bacon should be fine for a few days if it's well in date though, again, inspect and sniff before cooking.

It wasn't 4 hours it was from midday until 5am the following day, so 17 hours.

I am going to go with the majority I think. I will bin the prawns and chicken and keep the bacon and yoghurts.

[quote Shellingbynight]Your DH is right.

www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-during-power-outage[/quote]
What, because he agrees with ridiculously cautious advice?

I've probably broken at least one of those rules every single day of my adult life and I've had food poisoning once in the last 30 years and that was due to a prawn sandwich from the work canteen that was almost certainly kept in food safety compliant conditions.

I'd eat the lot. And that link above is absolutely ridiculous.

I’d throw out the prawns, but use everything else, use the chicken first. The bacon & yoghurt will be perfectly alright to use over the coming days.

If you followed the link's advice you'd never survive a packed lunch ffs.

If the yoghurt and the chicken smell ok use them. I would cook the chicken sooner rather than later though.

The bacon will be fine.

The prawns I am not sure about as I don't really eat seafood but off fish tends to be pretty obvious.

I wouldn't bin stuff arbitrarily, that is wasteful. Fridges stay very cold when the power is cut so the risk is low.

id throw out the prawns.

I've just realised I left out one vital piece of info 🤦🏻‍♀️ So the powercut happened on Friday/Saturday morning and I couldn't do anything about the food yesterday as we had a long planned trip to London for the day (which I must say was lovely!) so I'm only now addressing this problem!

We're told 14 hours here in the subtropics and that's without opening the fridge at all. I'd biff the prawns and chicken, do a sniff test on the bacon and yoghurt.