To think everyone uses leftovers

[moogy1a]

Certain smug, lispy, fat tongued chefs make a living at the moment by telling people not to throw perfectly good food away if you've cooked too much.
Surely no one does anyway?
Would anyone really cook say a roast chicken, not eat it all, so bin it rather than keep for sarnies / stir fry/ nibbling at secretly in the kitchen?
Do you bin leftover food or use it later?

raggedy don't worry !
You just need to cool it asap - quickest is to transfer it from the cooking tin to a plastic -or even a tray that you have cooled in the freezer/fridge -spread out so the heat can disperse quickly - let it cool and then put in fridge within 1 hr or so and you should be fine...
(don't put it in the fridge hot/warm - you will raise the temp of the whole fridge)
Boiling (so 100 deg c) should kill most spores of the main rice bug ...but maybe not all - but as long as you don't leave it hanging about for a day at room temp you should be fine - and make sure you reheat it thoroughly ...
In general even if it makes you ill - (from cooked rice) it is most likely to be the toxins made when it was badly stored - so it is short term - 24 hrs absolute max -it's not nice - but not too bad either!!!
Different from something like salmonella where the actual bacteria is making you ill - it can live in your gut - so the illness lasts much longer and is harder to get rid of...

curlew, google is your friend.

Googled. None the wiser. What do you mean by "traditional English food"?

"However, i dont like indian food and i agree it pisses me off when people say "oh you just havent tried X" no i haven't, and i don't intend to either"

Er- how do you know you don't like it, then?

"Indian food"
covers the same range and variety as "European (incl UK) food"
Kashmir to Goa is as Finland is to Spain
an open mind is a good thing

Skullly
and all of that food will have been cooked and reheated - yummy though !
I had Jamaican last night - fiery but so so good

Oh, thanks for the more info about rice! Phew. I already dish out my planned overs into containers before we eat, and let them cool during the meal; I could pre-cool the containers to get the food to cool faster. I might still avoid feeding planned-over rice dishes to DD until she's older, though, just to be on the safe side.

do you think some people are less sensitive to things because we quite regularly eat rice thats been in a thermos,the kid have it for lunch all the time at school,and we have never been ill from it?

If I was the type that couldn't eat leftovers I'd probably cook up less when making a meal. As it is, when I make any stews, chilli, bolognese, curry and the like I always do too much and box the extra up to freeze and have on can't be arsed cooking days.

If I make DH's favourite, Thai curry, he always takes a box into work the following day for lunch.

I've always reheated rice. I normally freeze boiled basmati rice in bags then nuke them as needed. Have never had any ill after effects.

Food poisoning from rice is a (small) risk - you should do what you can to minimise it...if you don't it doesn't mean you WILL get ill - just you are more likely too...link to no of reported cases in UK...
www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/InfectiousDiseases/InfectionsAZ/BacillusSppFoodPoisoning/EpidemiologicalData/baciDiseasestatistics/

Getting ill from eating certain foods will always be a risk - bad oysters, salmonella from a runny boiled egg, etc, etc

If a restaurant poisons someone they have to prove to Enviro Health that they have shown 'due diligence'- done everything they can to stop that happening ...or they will be fined/prosecuted - poisoning caused by rice stored at room temp would result in a prosecution ...

(can't believe how easy the web makes things! - I did something on increase in Salmonella cases for a project in 95ish - I had to write in to the public health labs, I think pay a small amount and wait for the reports to be posted out to me ..now just a few clicks of a mouse!)

We certainly re-heat rice here, and never had a problem in all the years I've done this.

If we've ordered too much at the chinese, I often let a rice portion cool down and freeze it straight away in the original packaging. Never had a problem using it later on.

Today I'm roasting a pork joint with enough for leftovers, but as others have said, that's meal planning (I did like the term "planned overs" that someone used ).

I don't always use the leftovers the next day, in this case the leftover pork is scheduled to reappear as risotto on Tuesday. If cooled and stored correctly, left overs will last a few days. Even bread going stale can be whizzed into crumbs and frozen to use in all sorts of recipes.

I just don't like wasting food, and DP's the same. And now the DCs are picking up on this attitude and even make suggestions as to what we can do with food now.

I am really surprised at the amount of leftovers some people seem to have! Do you not cook for the number of people eating the meal? Maybe over the years I have become better at estimating how much we will actually eat. There are 5 of us and we rarely have leftovers, though I often cook double amounts of casserole, shepherds pie, lasagne etc to go in the freezer for when I am home late, too busy to cook etc. On the rare occasion there is leftovers DH or I will have it for lunch next day.

failingatlife I think one thing is that people might cook planned extra food but still call it leftovers. I do.

I don't have much actual food leftover from a meal as I am okay at calculating how much food to cook for our family of 4. So no leftover roast potatoes, or veg, etc.

But I do have leftovers that are planned for other meals, eg the pork for Tuesday's risotto, and I still call that leftovers.

However, I do sometimes have problems calculating the right quantity of food when I have extra people coming for dinner, but even then I can usually find a good use for any leftovers.

I often cook extra because I'm a fan of the dreaded stew and though there are only two of us, a larger amount works better.

I've some frozen duck and I'm going to do a cassoulet and refreeze it in portions.

It's not going to be a properly-authentic one but it'll be good enough for me.

btw I once asked a waiter at a French restaurant I go to a lot why cassoulet was never on the menu he looked as magnificently disdainful as only the French can. He also didn't reply, so that was me told.

I think I blundered into a bit of a cultural/class war there by mentioning it but I think I got out of it

Yes
I will buy a large chicken for a family roast with the knowledge it will do us adults as a pie and then chicken burgers afterwards.
Even though it's planned I still refer to them as leftovers.

I usually plan to have leftovers, or just follow a recipe for 4 without bothering to half the amounts, even though 99% of the time, its just me and DP. It reduces the amount of times I need to cook .

I like the term 'planned overs' as thats usually what it is for me. Taking an extreme example, the Christmas dinner I cook usually involves a single massive turkey breast and a whole ham or a beef joint, that is probably enough meat for about 20 people, but we will eat loads of it over Christmas and I will slice and freeze loads of meat, which I then reheat in gravy as a shortcut roast dinner over the next few months. Its not unusual for us to be still eating the Christmas dinner turkey at Easter . I think the meat reheats fine like this, although some people say that reheated food is grim. But what do they think ready meals are, or most food that is served in chain restaurants?

We mostly do planned overs - it's hardly any more effort to do a huge pot of Bolognese sauce than it is to do one meal's worth (in fact it's easier because you don't end up with half an onion, half a pepper etc). I love it when there are actual leftovers though - yesterday's fish pie or shepherd's pie is my favourite lunch. I can't believe that someone up thread chucks perfectly good lasagne because it's not a full portion - heat it up in a couple of days and have it with some garlic bread or salad for lunch.

I'm shocked by the people who waste so much of a chicken. This is an animal that has lived (probably in pretty crappy conditions) and died so you can eat it. It's bloody disrespectful to not use the whole animal. If you're only going to eat the breasts then only buy the breasts - that way the rest of the animal will be eaten by someone else.