AIBU to use this in pancakes later?

[2468whodoweappreciate]

Plain flour, BBE Oct 2013
Eggs, BB 2nd Jan

Flour been in a sealed container. I've spread it out on a dark plate & no sign of movement to indicate weevils, is it safe to eat?

Eggs kept in fridge & I tested them in water, they sink, so still use able...?

Or am I putting us all at risk!! I hate food waste & I'm short on time to shop, obviously I don't want to make us ill but nor do I want to throw away food if it's actually fine to eat, too much of that goes on in the world. WWYD?

Flour can't go off . Unless it has weevils (and you can avoid this by decanting into an airtight container), it is fine.

I wouldn't use the eggs personally but there is a lot of hyperbole on this thread.

Actually, I wouldn't use the flour on the grounds of taste. Even if it doesn't go off it will taste stale.

I have eaten stale couscous and stale bulgur wheat - both wheat products and they taste unpleasant when stale.

Eggs and flour are some of the cheapest food stuffs you can buy in the supermarket - why risk food poisoning for the sake of saving about £1.70? There is no way I would eat that and double no way I would dream of risking making my kids sick with. Using eggs which are 2 months out of date is really manky and I amazed anyone would consider it.

If the eggs sink they're fine.

I didn't think flour could go off
The idea of bugs in the flour is horrific!

Yoghurt and milk absolutely not.

Of course it is. It doesn't miraculously go off at midnight. If it smells ok I use it.

Flour - 2013!!! Please don't use it! Ha ha ha!

Someone said they wouldn't eat yoghurt passed it's sell by date? I eat it weeks past and it's always fine - if the lids aren't blown and it doesn't have fur on it, I eat it.
Back to the flour, even if it did have weevils in, they are not going to kill you, and I'm pretty sure you can't get food poisoning from out of date flour. I'd make up the pancake mix if they eggs look ok, and taste a cooked pancake - if it tastes rank you can chuck them away at that stage.

Yoghurt and milk absolutely not.

Again, it's pretty obvious if yoghurt and milk are off. My milk is officially two days out of date. It's fine.

BarbaraofSeville

Not quite just flour, it has other things in it -
"Maize Flour, Rice Flour, Cornflour, Potato Starch, Raising Agents: Sodium Bicarbonate and Disodium Diphosphate, Stabiliser: Xanthan Gum"

OP - I would use them both as long as the eggs didn't smell/look off when I cracked them.

I'd have milk past the use by date as long as it didn't smell funny.

Wouldn't have 2 month old eggs though - if they smelled ok I'd let the cats have them. I would have had to buy a hell of a lot of eggs to have some left that long though.

Using eggs which are 2 months out of date is really manky and I amazed anyone would consider it.

1. They're best before not use by dates

1. Dates on eggs are fairly recent. We never used to have them. What did people do before the dates were stamped on them??

1. I sometime raise eyes when people say 'if it looks and smells ok I use it' especially when talking about poultry (salmonella is odourless and invisible) but C'MON..... you can honestly tell a rotten egg from streets away! I wouldn't soft boil a 2 month old egg but pancakes - when you can crack them, look at them and smell them before cooking them thoroughly???

Have people who advocate chucking the eggs out ever seen/smelt a rotten egg??

Using eggs which are 2 months out of date is really manky and I amazed anyone would consider it

Using eggs that are perfectly normal is "manky" just because of an arbitrary BEST BEFORE date that has no bearing on whether they are fresh or not?
It can't cause you food poisoning, it can't make you sick.

Why do people have such strong opinions on things they clearly know nothing about?

I'd use both. As they age, the whites of eggs get runnier, so they wouldn't make a decent poached egg. But if they smell ok when cracked then they're fine. Flour is fine too - just a best before date, not a use by date.

We keep flour in the freezer to prevent weevils. Apparently you can just freeze it for 24 hours to kill any eggs that came in with it before moving to room temperature storage, but we just leave it in the freezer.

mychildrenarebarmy

My point was that you still need to add eggs and milk, which is the same as using flour. It's not like you even have to use scales for pancakes - if you don't have scales there are plenty of recipes on the internet that use cups, volume or tablespoons. There is no need to be particularly exact with pancakes.

Those ingredients are 4 flour type products and a bit of raising agent. Although the instructions say you still need to add baking powder for fluffy pancakes (and sugar for sweet ones).

I always go by look, smell and taste.. I always keep food well past the best before and use by dates! I even still use broccoli when it's going yellow and I am rarely ever ill. I can't stand it when people swear by dates like throwing away opened jars, as far as I am concerned if it's not growing mould or smells off then it's good to go.... off to the kitchen to check the date on my flour now and eggs don't last long here so no worries there, I actually need to go and get some more.

No I wouldnt.

I just went to Tesco & got the 15p value batter mix Im lazy

Throwing jam away after a week is crazy!

Does the home made jam my DM makes have a use by date, no.

Some people do love to waste money. Food waste is a massive problem. We compost as I hate to chuck food away and where we live doesn't collect food waste.

I had scant regard for BB or UB dates but that changed when I had salmonella last year, it was fucking dreadful. Eggs were, admittedly, a smidge over 4 weeks out of date but DID NOT SMELL. Admittedly, I lost 10lbs on the ShiteFast diet but I will never eat an egg out of date

Ok, 2 things wrong with this. Where did you get your eggs? Because if they were lion stamped, which 85% of UK eggs are, then the eggs did not contain salmonella, as all the chickens are vaccinated and certified as salmonella free. It doesn't matter how old those eggs get, no salmonella.

Secondly, if an egg has salmonella, then it has it,whether out of date or not. The bacteria will grow to higher levels the more its aged, but if its cooked through it kills the salmonella.

So if you really did have salmonella, and you know for a fact it was from eggs past their BBD, then your mistake was using eggs from an unverified, un vaccinated source and not cooking thoroughly, and not using eggs past their BBD (although that can contribute to severity.)

Flour gets an unpleasant stale smell/taste when old. I probably wouldn't use that flour, unless war time rationing was on in which case I'd use it. I have used old flour - it doesn't kill you but it's not very nice.

Everybody needs to experience what a truly bad egg smells like, not an egg that's just bad in your head because of a date. Trust me, a bad egg makes itself known. Crack them and see.

You'd soon know about it if the eggs were off. they would reek when cracked. Flour lasts basically forever.

Ive seen weevils, I didn't know that's what they were called. They start as eggs and when they hatch they are see through (so are the eggs) so you can barely see them in the gone off flour. They can abseil (im not kidding) I found them dangling from my great aunts kitchen cupboard once when we were cleaning out her house. YUK
OP- don't be minging buy new ingredients

I just went to Tesco & got the 15p value batter mix

I don't think you can argue with this, especially if you don't keep flour in. It's the pancake mix that is £1-2 for a few pence worth of flour and dried milk that I find objectional.

I would use them OP. If the egg sinks then it's fine, I would err on the side of caution and crack them individually before adding to pancake mix. If the flour has no legs then will be fine, it will smell rancid if it's gone stale, but tbh dry goods last for a hell of a long time.

I really don't get all this pearl clutching and shocked faces, just over dramatics and people trying to outdo each other with their "oh no I would never feed my DC that".

Milk doesn't come out of the cow with a bb date on it, vegetables don't come out of the ground with a bb date. People get so stupid and wasteful with food, things don't magically go mouldy/rancid on the stroke of midnight when the date changes.

So many folk have got so disconnected with preparing food etc, use your nose, you can smell if things are off.

I'm married to a farmer and it really fucks me off that farmers give their everything to grow good crops, raise good livestock (yes I know they get paid for it, but I can assure you that it isn't well paid, it's a way of living and it's that fucking hard work that you don't do it unless you love it) for people to blithely say "oh just throw it away, just buy more". So fucking wasteful and a sad reflection of what a throwaway society we have become.

I think that far too many people need a bloody good injection of old-fashioned common sense in their lives. And good on those that aren't wasteful.

Rant over. Enjoy your pancakes, I'm definitely looking forward to mine!

Surely an egg isn't suddenly going to acquire salmonella 2 months down the line if it wasn't there to start with? Anyone know the actual science of this one, cos I also always thought if they smelled okay it's fine, unless it had salmonella in the first place, in which case it was never fine.

I always thought flour was something everyone just had.