Oh god have I poisoned myself?? :(

[arghstupidmistake]

Please be kind. I'm severely emetophobic and my anxiety is sky rocketing because I think I've just given myself food poisoning.

Basically - cooked mince on Saturday, put it in the fridge cooked. On Sunday added it to a lasagne and reheated in the oven when I cooked the lasagna. There was left over lasagna
(and this is where I was stupid😫), so I put in the fridge on Sunday. Just heated it up in the microwave tonight for my tea. I ate just under half before I realised my mistake - ie eating mince that has technically been reheated twists after cooking.

I'm going to get poorly arent I? 😭 I'm really scared.

its my normal practice with lasagne. I make a huge batch of bolegnese, then a lasagne out of it. Which I then freeze in portions and reheat as required. I’ve never been ill on it. I eat it at least monthly, for 20 odd years. Feed it to friends, reletives and DD. No one else has ever been ill.

You are very unlikely to be ill. I hope this helps set your mind at rest.

Bacteria grows in the danger zone: 5-63 degrees C. You refrigerated it taking the temp below 5 and then you cooked it again raising the temp above 63. The main reason multiple reheating isn't ideal is that there is a risk that the food isn't heated above 63 degrees and thus allows bacteria to grow. A thorough reheat kills any bacteria so all is well.

You will be ok! Id have a glass of wine to kill the germs now 🍷

I do this everytime I make lasagne OP the mince ragu tastes better to be cooked in advance and left in the fridge for the next day and I always make a huge dish of lasagne that couldn't possibly eaten in one sitting, so leftovers get reheated a day or two later. I am super careful with food too but wouldn't think twice about this.

Honestly relax. :) x

Deep breaths, distract yourself now! You can do this! I’m an emetephobe so completely sympathise, it’s awful but it’s the fear that’s making you feel like this! Find something to get busy with xx

Me 😂

Cooking and heating it through each time would avoid food poisoning in most instances (rice and pasta can be a bit iffy for a different reason), but if you refridgerated it between heatings it will be fine.

I do this all the time OP. People regularly use leftover meat to make new dishes, the second time you cook it (assuming you cook it properly), it will kill anything nasty in the meat that could have started growing since it was last cooked. So you can pretty much consider it as just reheating leftover lasagne, don't need to consider that the mince was pre-cooked (because it was re-cooked).

@arghstupidmistake
I have really bad emetophobia too-
but if the mince smelled and tasted ok you'll probably be absolutely fine. 🙂

I do this all the time - you'll be fine.

I've got small kids. I've sometimes reheated food many times before I've got to eat it and it's never made me ill

I'd happily reheat the half you left tonight, tomorrow too!!!

it's a food service safety measure, to ensure they don't get in trouble IF a customer were to fall ill. the same way you shouldn't keep food out for more than two hours but no one does this as it would result in things like christmas dinners that take hours to cook being thrown away.

How else would you reheat mince based dishes?

You’ll be fine, don’t ever do it with rice but cooked mince a ok

@arghstupidmistake
Reading the replies-
My son makes Chilli con carne and it’s always nicer the next day when properly heated up.
so cooked, cooled stored in fridge then re- heated A day later.

Wow so many replies and a lot of you saying you do this and are fine - phew!!

I'm sorry there are other sufferers took of this awful bloody phobia. It just takes over rational thinking sometimes 😥

That lasagna I had tonight too was one of the most tasty ones I've ever had. So definitely tastes better reheated a few times as someone said! Just utterly devastated that I couldn't finish it once I realised.

If I survive the night unscathed, however... I'll make it that way again and again because it was bloody lovely 😀

It can in some instance cause food poisoning, it's not inevitable and plenty of people do it all the time without consequences.

Reassurance seeking - especially from those who have no idea if you’ll get sick or not - doesn’t help emetephobes. Are you getting proper help?

I'd usually cook the mince on the same day as I cooked the lasagna - so all in one step.

Day 1. Cook mince in pan, make cheese sauce, boil pasta sheets. Place all in dish, put in oven. Eat. Refrigerate leftovers.
Day2. Reheat leftovers.

So reheating only once.

This time I did slightly different, I cooked mince / bolognese sauce on day 1, put in fridge. Day 2 made the lasagna (adding mince out of fridge) and cooked in oven. Ate some, refrigerated leftovers. Day 3 reheated leftovers in microwave (I did this tonight).

So reheating twice.

That's why I panicked. If that makes sense

@arghstupidmistake meat will be fine treated like this. The thing you have to watch out for is rice. Be very careful about reheating rice.

I never make the Bolognese on the same day as the lasagne so I must have done this literally countless times.

I have a dodgy stomach too (IBS) so loads of things make me nauseous. I'd be twitchy if I had left the lasagne on the side for hours and hours or something first but otherwise I wouldn't worry at all.

Hopefully you can do some CBT/similar to reduce your concerns about this.

Nah, as long it was stored and refrigerated properly you'll be fine.

Even if you are ill, won't it just be a bit of diarrhea? What's so horrific about mild food poisoning?

The reason why they say not to continually reheat things is because it increases the possible amount of time the food has spent either unrefrigerated and cooling or not cooked to a hot enough level. Do either of those multiple times and bacteria might grow significantly enough to cause food poisoning. There isn't something magic about a second reheat that makes it worse, you could get food poisoning if you don't reheat properly the first time and you could freeze and cook something half a dozen times with no issues.