Using out of date minced beef

[Monty27]

So the sell by date was 24 August. It was tbf slightly discoloured. It smelled fine.
I cooked it Bolognese style for yonks. A couple of hours probably, adding ingredients and stirring as I went along.
It tastes lovely but my picky 23 yo DS refused to eat it as he knew it was ood.
Would you?
Tia

I would have used it if it smelled fine.

Having use by dates is a guide, not an absolute.

People have become very dependant on these dates and so much perfectly good food is wasted every single day. :(

Before 'use by' dates everyone used their sense of smell to tell them if food was still OK to eat, and this method has been used for hundreds of years ! Trust your nose guys :)

Ok well I stand corrected. Also apologies I didn’t notice your second post right after your first don’t know how that happened

I suspect though that when most people cook mince and it’s bubbling for an hour or so then you don’t need a meat thermometer.

The higher risk is due to the fact that the food might not be cooked at a high enough temperature. I doubt most people measure with a meat thermometer.

Boiling point is 100c for things like tomato sauce (Bolognese). If the sauce boils for 5 minutes and then simmers for hour or 2 broken down mince meat will reach required temperatures ...
You don't need thermometer for that.

I would only use in date mince
Because the midnight the date passes bacterias can stop holding back. Innit.

Meat does not know what day it is. I go by the ‘sniff it and see’ rule and have never been ill from doing so.

Mince doesn't necessarily go off the minute the use by date says, and no one had said that

But the longer mince is past its use by date the greater the chance it's going to cause food poisoning.

You can't smell if meat is off, similar to all the people acting like not eating mince 4 days out of date is stupid, meat is not going to go from smelling fine to smelling off in a minute there is a crossover where there are toxins building up before the meat has started to smell. If heat killed these off logically you might as well eat rancid meat.

Eating 4 days out of date meat isn't necessarily going to give you food poisoning, however the risk is much higher. If you want to eat it faircop gov but the DD was well within her rights not to risk food poisoning (which can kill)

If OP cares so much about food waste why is she a) buying more than she can eat before it goes off
B) not freezing the excess
C) not cooking the excess before the use by date

There are loads of things you could have done to prevent wastage rather than risk food poisoning. Clearly it's not that important to the OP.

Well I'm still well and alive. The mouldy
mince tasted superb. Thanks everyone for your support.
@Ce7913 that makes me stupid does it?
Slightly dramatic I feel

@Monty27

Perhaps I didn't clearly communicate my tone in my previous post.

'Stupid tax' was meant in a light, casual sense - an indicator of where the burden for a particular behaviour/incident should lie in my estimation. I did not mean for it to offend or disparage.

E.g.

If I spend waste effort, ingredients and hours of my time making a fish curry for my partner, knowing he absolutely, viscerally hates fish, then when those resources go to waste, that is absolutely my stupid tax.

It is not on him to choke it down and feel nauseated for hours after to make me feel better about knowingly investing my effort in something when I had no reasonable expectation whatsoever that he would eat and/or enjoy it.

...You are well within your rights to invest your time, effort and ingredients into cooking discoloured 4-day-expired mince (of all things).

...You are well within your rights to assume the risk of eating it for yourself.

You had no right whatsoever to be bothered/annoyed/offended/whatever that someone refused to eat discoloured 4-day-expired mince just because you invested effort and resources into preparing it, knowing it was well past the expiry.

No-one is obliged to significantly risk their health, well-being and even life so that you don't have to feel like your effort and resources were wasted.

It is beyond unreasonable that you think they should.

Also, I'm not about scaremongering, but you're not out of the woods, yet.

I hope for your sake this is the end of the Mince Misadventure, but depending on the bacteria/toxin in question, the volume ingested and host's health status, symptoms from food poisoning can occur up to three weeks after ingestion.

Please keep an eye out for a couple of weeks, and take abdominal/GI etc. symptoms seriously should they occur.

Thank you for your positive feedback all.
We're all still alive and well
@BlueCornsihPixie
Sorry to disappoint you

• Thank you for your positive feedback all. We're all still alive and well  @BlueCornsihPixie Sorry to disappoint you*

Lucky you, but lots of people put their health and others at risk by believing that if you cook meat at a high enough temperature it will be fine.

Even someone in excellent health can struggle or fail to recover from serious food poisoning, is it worth it to save you binning meat that cost a couple of quid.

I'd go a couple of days max for meat, not 4. The dog would have had it.