To cook sausages that said use by 30th December

[youaremychocolatecake]

And feed them to my partner?

They smell ok.

He would have a fit if he knew

Don't risk it. I once poisoned myself really badly with out of date sausages. I'm not usually funny about using stuff past their dates - but I would never do it again with sausages (still can't even look at them 2 years on)....on the other hand it'll really kick-start weight loss if you're on a New Year Diet

It's fine to do this as long as you cook the meat to a safe temperature.

This is where one of those little meat temperature probes comes in really handy and they're dead cheap nowadays.

If food is heated to 74C then this will kill off all e.coli, salmonella etc

Another way of making food safe is to cook it to a lower temperature but for a longer period eg 60C for at least 14 minutes - or 35 minutes for chicken/turkey etc

I cooked some that were 10 days over recently

I wouldn't have fed them to DH though as a) he doesn't like sausages and b) I have an iron stomach where he is a bit of a delicate flower, poor thing Instead I had sausage sandwiches ALL TO MYSELF

I was eating them myself too, because I'm less funny about things like that than him. We're both still alive and food poisoning free, phew. If he wasn't so bloody lazy and made his own sandwiches then he would be entitled to more of a choice

There's a big margin in use by dates. This is to allow for failures in the customer handling of the food. So if you've kept them chilled, not left them in the car for 3 hours, then you should be fine. If they look or smell funny, don't risk it. And cook them thoroughly.

Equally, some things still within their sell bys are clearly off!!