Raw chicken and smoked salmon left outside for 4h

[SalmonDreams]

Hi. I went shopping yesterday and bought chilled chicken pieces and a pack of smoked salmon. Then I had to run some other errands before I could go home and put the shopping in the fridge. It was about 16C yesterday. The total time that the xhicken and salmon spent outside a fridge would have been about 4h. Is that ok? Can they still be eaten? Can I still freeze the chicken?

Please don't ask me to do a smell, taste or appearance test. I am a vegetarian and rarely cook chicken so I wouldn't be able to tell if it's gone off. It's for my kids who are 3 and 8 so don't want to take any chances.

Thanks so much for your help. 😊

No I wouldn’t. It’s too warm and bacteria will have grown well. I can almost guarantee you will get loads of replies telling you it’s fine though, mumsnet would eat anything.

I wouldn't. That's just too long unrefrigerated for me

Also if it was Inside your car it was likely warmer than 16 degrees

I wouldn’t.

No, that’s too long outside a fridge in pretty warm temperatures.

Really? I would, the fridge bit is the first bit at my local supermarket it can take me a couple of hours to do a big shop so it'll sit in the trolley that long, then it's a 30 minutes drive home, I'll often stop to run other errands or to pop into another shop on the way home. I put all of the fridge and frozen stuff in one bag one of those insulated ones. It's fine

How warm did it feel? If it still felt cold I would.

If I couldn't taste it / smell it myself then no I wouldn't.

If it was to be fed to young children then no I wouldn't.

For myself, if it looked and smelt and tasted okay when cooked I'd probably eat it, although saying that I'd hate to go to the effort of cooking it and it wasn't good so I'd probably just bin it and replace it.

I wouldn’t 4 hours out of the fridge for either of those.

Blimey how big is your supermarket to take you a few hours to do your shopping?

Couldn't you go back for the cold meats at a later stage? (I am loathe to buy meat or fish knowing its going to be out of the fridge for an extended period. Different as a one off / extenuating circumstances but I wouldn't do it by choice)

Not worth risking. Helpful tip...we began using insulated bags for our cold foods, nothing fancy but they do keep the groceries cold for hours.

Lord I would and wouldn’t think twice about it!

I would just make sure its properly cooked.
But I don't think I'd risk freezing it.

People did survive in the days before fridges.

I'd use it unless it was left in a very hot car. I do this sort of thing all the time and have never been ill.

On Saturday I bought food at 9 am and went on a day out and was out longer than planned. It was about 4 pm when the food went in the fridge and freezer and that which has been already consumed (Saturday night and today) hasn't caused any ill effects nor would I expect it to.