My parents unhygienic food practices

[sahknowme]

This is on behalf of my DH, as I'm used to it my parents eccentricities.

My parents seem to live in another world when it comes to food safety. They seem to be against refrigerating cooked meat. For example, they boiled a piece of preserved beef (a traditional dish), and left it on the counter overnight, warmed it up to a simmer then served it. They regularly leave joints of meat out on the counter for 2 to 3 days. Worst of all is the gravy which gets cooled to room temp, left overnight (on the counter), added to, reboiled, then cooled to room temp several times over the course of a week. They even do it to fish soup. We all have strong constitutions, so this doesn't affect us.

My DH is worried, because they serve food to their elderly parents, and to our 1 year old DS. He thinks I should have a word with them, but they are stuck in their ways and won't listen.

AIBU to let them do their own thing? Is this as bad as my DH suggests?

Beef is different from chicken though, especially with a whole joint. There's no bacteria on the inside of a joint of beef, only on the surface. So any bacteria will be killed by cooking. Eating beef which is raw on the middle and seared on the outside is perfectly safe - like a rare steak.

Leaving it out isn;t ideal but that still doesn't mean bacteria are breeding inside the beef, perhaps on the surface but that's still a very small percentage of the overall product.

I wouldn’t eat or let DC eat that either! But I understand it can be very difficult to question your parents and the way they do things, and embarrassing to feel like you’re being rude to them or telling them what to do.

I am 95% sure my mother doesn’t wash her hands after she goes to the loo. I’ve tried to bring it up a few times but she always lies and I feel petty or rude trying to provide her with my “evidence” or push it further. It’s tricky (but gross).

I’m with your DH. I wouldn’t want to eat there for fear of food poisoning, and I wouldn’t let my children either. Although as I’m not generally keen on confrontations with family I’d probably be doing what a pp said and always be either having an excuse for why we can’t eat there, or bringing our own food along (claiming it’s to save them the bother of cooking).

I can’t believe this is a normal cultural thing for Ireland either. All the Irish people I know are anal about food hygiene and refrigeration.

Years ago my mum used to cook a massive turkey on Christmas Eve. It was too big to fit in the fridge so was left on the counter top covered in foil and eaten until around New Years Eve.

I have no idea why she didn’t cut the meat off the carcass so it could go in the fridge or freezer but miraculously none of us were ever ill from it.

Thankfully these days she cooks a turkey crown so it fits in the fridge.

@ShutUpBaz - I was told the no re-heating rice rule in school Food Tech class but have regularly flouted it (and so far been fine).

But after a recent bout of rather nasty food poisoning (badly frozen chicken I suspect), I'm more fussy about what I eat.

So how, if reheating rice is so bad, can ready meals with rice be a thing? Surely that counts too?

It's not the reheating of rice that's the problem, it's something to do with the cooling down process. If it cools down too slowly, it can grow some bacteria which will not disappear when reheating. Something like that. Sorry, I have a really bad headache and I'm too tired to Google it...

Yes it's the slow cooling if rice which is the issue. In factories they'll have blast chillers which do this very quickly. At home, if your doing fried rice or a rice salad or something I'd spread it on a tray and whack in the freezer, or run under the cold tap.

My mum is like this, only not as bad. My step dad recently was very ill with food poisoning.

I wouldn't eat the food like that! I also really struggle to eat at my MIL's due to lack of food hygiene. What I will do is often make a really fancy dish that I know she'll like and say "I'll bring the dinner" which she loves because it means she doesn't have to cook. Maybe you could do this..? Just a suggestion.

My MIL is like this. She is lovely, but I dread eating at her house. Examples:

Christmas turkey left out of fridge (on the side in a fairly warm kitchen) for a week
Fresh meat pies from the butcher kept in the cupboard
Raw fish bought from market in the morning, left sitting on the side and then cooked in the evening
A pot of smoked haddock (raw) sitting in water in a pan on the hob for 2 days (on day 2 MIL tried to feed it to 3 yo DS; I declined!)
No soap in toilet.....

I've tried to gently broach this with DH but his response is usually "it gets cooked, so what's the problem?"

@PolkerrisBeach - thanks! This makes perfect sense.

I'll add rice to my 'Foods to be exceptionally careful with' list, which is getting longer by the minute!

My dad is Irish and does similar -leaves bags of fresh meat outside and cooked stuff just covered on the counter for ages. I won’t eat it and certainly don’t let my daughter. He just can’t see the issue and doesn’t get ill but I won’t risk it

I wouldn't let dc eat there either.
my parents are similar + their fridge is set to 8 degrees.

they constantly complain about their 'ibs'

I only eat freshly prepared food there, no leftovers. and the dc as well. and I sneakily turn the fridge to a better temperature.

I am always surprised on MN about the lack of knowledge about basic food hygiene rules and the misconceptions people hold. I seem to post this every few weeks... Information on food safety for rice:
www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning.aspx?CategoryID=51

Eek!! Terrible food hygiene practices which are a ticking time bomb before they make someone really ill!!

Can they attend a local food hygiene course? Would be an eye opener for them.

Bacteria grows at an alarming rate every ten minutes hot food is left out. 4 hours is the maximum food should be left out for.

I was about 12 or older when we bought our first fridge. My mother couldn’t see the point of them because food was bought fresh for every meal and milk was delivered. I was born in the early 50’s btw.

Roast beef was always left in the pantry for a meal or two in the coming days.

Dangerous. It only takes one case of salmonella, campylobacter, e coli etc. to kill a child or to damage it for life. Even hospital treatment can't always save a child from, for example, kidney failure from e coli poisoning. It's just not worth the risk.

OddS0ck You are fucking joking, right? I’ve never heard of such grossness. Who even considers that an ok thing to do?

Dangerous and disgusting. DH once left out a cooked piece of beef overnight, next day it had maggots. My friend + her relative ate smoked fish left in room temperature for 5 hours, both ended up in hospital.

I won't eat food my parents have prepared and when DC visit I bring food for us all to share which I know is safe and tell DC to steer clear of anything prepared in their kitchen. They were never hygiene conscious but have got far worse since growing old and batty. But it is true that you can get an iron constitution from having been raised in less than sanitary conditions. If it doesn't kill you, it makes you less suseptible.

No, Quack I'm not even slightly joking.
First time I saw it I asked my ex why the roasting pans were on the ground outside the back door?
"So the cats can lick them clean".

They'd be there for days! No, I didn't go for dinner again.

OP and subsequent posters - we don't use the derogatory term of 'Eire' anymore, however, being from the Republic of Ireland myself I can understand your frustration at how your parents handle their food.
I do not eat at my mothers house because she is still of the 'old school' and not only whips her whole chicken out of her fridge with her unwashed bare hands but then walks it about 5 feet to the sink, washes it, shakes it and then dries it with a teatowel before putting it in a roasting dish for the oven. She refuses to believe that A) you should never wash a chicken or B) that any of the countless stomach bugs they have in that house are anything to do with her chicken. I get told 'ah but sure look at all of ye, great immune systems ye all have' trotted out to me the whole time so it is absolutely pointless to battle with it. They are not going to change - you can either allow them at it or drive yourself mad and I personally decided on the former cos if they want to kill themselves then all power to them but I am not puttin my family life at risk due to it!

The 'olden days' have a LOT to answer for.

That's weird, I didn't know flies would lay eggs on cooked meat.

salmonella, campylobacter, e coli are killed by proper cooking, and they can't spontaneously regenerate; OP isn't talking about mixing raw with cooked meat or no cooking meat enough. She's talking about leaving cooked items out of the fridge. New bacteria might come along, but not the species that lived in the live animal unless there's fresh contamination.

What PolkerrisBeach wrote earlier is sensible.

I think I’m going to be sick OddS0ck. Some people aren’t wise. My nan would put any leftovers in a foil tray for the cats (mostly her cat that didn’t come back but she left food out for) and binned the tray when finished. I’ve never heard of someone leaving the actual trays out. Fingers crossed they are at least washed lol

That's weird, I didn't know flies would lay eggs on cooked meat.
Nor me but let me assure you they did.
YUCK.