To think that this is dangerous, and a home economics teacher should know better?

[SaggyOldClothCatPuss]

DD had food tech first lesson this morning. She made chilli con carne, with rice. It has spent the whole day, in a tupperware container, on the worktop in the classroom, and she wasnt allowed to collect it until the end of the day.
Now, having been to catering college, and studied food science, it seems to me that having cooked rice sitting out the whole day is really stupid, not to mention dangerous, and is not a good thing to be teaching anybody?
And owing to the fact that DD was unable to acess the chilli at lunchtime, when it would have probably have been safe to eat, it has now gone in the bin, therefore wasting the £7+ that the ingredients cost me!
Factoring in the other lessons, where I have paid for ingredients, and then on the day the teacher has been absent, causing the meat and dairy ingredients that she needed to end up in the bin, I have half a mind to contact the school, and tell them that DD wont be participating in future!

Gosh you do learn something new every day. I have not practised "safe rice" for years and never been ill, but this is what Tilda have to say..........

The 10 Commandments of Safe Rice Handling

1. Always keep dry rice in cool, dry conditions off the floor.
2. Do not expose dry rice to moisture as this can encourage mould growth.
3. Never leave cooked rice to cool on its own. Always chill it quickly either under running cold water or spread thinly on trays in a blast chiller.
4. If cooked rice is to be kept hot e.g. on a serving counter, ensure it is always above 63°C.
5. Avoid keeping rice hot for more than 2 hours and throw away any leftovers.
6. If cooked rice had been chilled or frozen ensure that it is thoroughly reheated and is piping hot throughout.
7. Cold rice salads should be kept chilled. If part of a buffet, they should not be kept at room temperature for longer than 1 hour.
8. Never re-chill once it has been kept at room temperature ? throw it away. 9. Never keep rice chilled for longer than 3 days or frozen for longer than 1 month. 10. Once cooked rice has been re-heated, throw away any leftovers. Never re-heat rice more than once.

Where are the huge fridges of yesteryear? And where could they put them now?

I spend a fortune on ingredients and never eat the end result. (Apart from cakes and biscuits). I look on it as a lesson on HOW to cook. There's no cold storage at dd3's school and it's just tough on us if HE is in the morning I think. The students often eat the end result at lunchtime to save wasting it al.

Well, this is yet another thing that mumsnet has taught me, I didn't know that about rice!

Thank you!

I wonder how I haven't had food poisoning, alway store last night Chinese in the oven (special fried rice) and haven't been ill

It would be the meat that would worry me, not so much the rice. Imagine all that bacteria multiplying in the mince, eww yanbu. £7 wasted as it's now inedible

YANBU. The lack of awareness about food hygiene amongst the general public never fails to shock me. And then people come on with 'anecdata' saying it never did them any harm, food safety professionals are just health and safety gone mad.
Seriously, if you've screwed around with rice and have never knowingly been made ill by it, you've been quite lucky.

FairPhyllis - it's rice/cereals that have been contaminated prior to cooking.

what Duane said

Rice is very dangerous Mango, you have been lucky so far...

I stopped DS taking anything in in the end. They have lost my cake pans, insisted soup was carried in a tupperware (on a bus with a bag, guitar and sports kit) by DS, left cooked food all day out on the side uncovered, requested the wrong ingredients, not done anything he can't already do at home, and possibly worst of all, told DS to make a roux sauce without cooking the flour first

Conveniently, DS guitar lessons fell in the next home ec slot as I just can't see what use it is at all. It may have been better had the teacher not been such an old sourpuss mind you.

food safety info Apart from Bacillus Cereus, unrefridgerated chilli and rice has potential for Clostridium perfringens (beef) E Coli (minced beef) and botulism! (soil borne, so rice, and food held at warm temperatures for too long)

Agree that it should have been kept in the fridge but disagree that schools should provide ingredients. Students get to take the food home there and then unlike resistant materials, and who on earth do you think is going to do all the shopping, weighing and measuring, collecting money etc.? Or do you not want your children's work marked and lessons planned?! (Am Food Tech teacher btw. . .)

In our school we do have fridges for all pupils food. We would never leave food out like that. Especially high risk food like rice. We also buy all food and pupils pay a yearly sum. Much cheaper for parents and more convenient for us. Seems like some schools just make things difficult.

DD - would be different if they eat in a hotel and got FP through rice being stored incorrectly - I dare say then they wouldn't be to pleased if a hotel/cafe said:

well no one else has got ill in all the years we have been storing cooked rice and reheating it incorrectly so you can't fine us now for getting it wrong

Back in the 90s when I was at secondary school very little of what I cooked could be eaten. It was very rare that what we were making would actually finish cooking before the end of the lesson as we were having to share so much equipment that we spent most of the lesson standing around waiting. The half cooked food would just be left on the side to be collected at the end of the day. I was doing the GCSE too. Most lessons we were able to put our food in the oven about 15 mins before the end of the lesson but were cooking things that took longer than that to cook. Either make the lessons last the whole afternoon or ditch them

Pupils weigh and measure their own ingredients and it is in the remit of the PT to food shop. We have classroom assistants every morning to set up trolleys and fridges for lessons. Pupils still bring a container.

PumpkinSweetie - although the chilli situation is not ideal, it's not high risk when compared to the rice. Any bacteria in the raw mince has hopefully been killed by cooking it and turning it into chilli. When it went into the container it was ready to eat, and could technically be eaten cold if cooled properly (as was the rice). The difference is that Bacillus cereus (if present in the rice) can produce heat resistant toxins if allowed to cool slowly and kept at room temperature. If these are present then you will get ill whether you reheat it, eat it cold or chill it then do either of these.

That's what my lessons were like jen.
My mother used to spend £5-7 or more on ingredients, the equipment was sparce, the theory part took up most of the lesson hence not enough time to actually cook the food properly.
Infact i only remember taking around 3 things home to eat in the entire time i took food economics!
In the 90's also, sounds like the lessons still haven't got much better.
I ended up teaching myself to cook out of cookery books and can cook quite well luckily!

Thanks Duane (love the name btw) and Grim.

Duane-Thats really interesting, it's amazing how much as a society we are unaware of potential food poising risk, but you would think that the teacher would have known.

I'm just impressed at schools doing Home Economics. DS did some basic cookery at junior school which we always tried not to eat on the grounds that he and his friends had made it but after that they did Food Technology which was all about how to interpret the information on your pizza packet. Mothers complained to the school all through that young people need to learn to cook but nothing changed

I think Home Ec is often not taught well - when I did it we were marked for our behaviour in class, not our actual work

I've always been very cautious about rice, as I've also heard it is the most dodgy for food poisoning. But on the other hand I reheat rice about three times a week for the whole family and have never been ill. Also, my japanese friend laughs at me for my paranoia, saying that in Japan it's fairly universal to leave rice in the rice cooker at a minimum overnight if not longer. Why does Japan not have huge outbreaks of rice poisoning? Is sushi rice somehow less prone to this problem? Or is it just that actually although the risk is there, it's actually quite a rare bacteria and on the whole you'd be unlucky to actually fall ill? Enlightenment welcome.

They should have made the chili and rice and stored them separately. When I did it at school, someone used to put our food in the fridge once it had cooled down. Surely that's not a lot to ask?

Well, now you've all agreed that im not BU, Im going to speak to her head of year tomorrow. Im not buying ingredients in future. Im quite capable of teaching her to cook at home without wasting food or putting people in danger!

I think it might be different in Scotland as we have less pupils. Maximum class sizes are 20 for practical subjects and we have 10 cookers and equipment for every pupil so all recipes are cooked/finished on time. We never have uncooked food going home and most pupils eat their food after class or store until home time (in a fridge at the back of the class). We have a high uptake in our school and most pupils enjoy the practical.