Help! Can I serve this lamb?

[Lovesacake]

Doing a lamb casserole for Mother’s Day lunch, browned off the lamb and precooked the veg/sauce etc. intended let it cool then put it in the fridge overnight. Will need an hour in the oven today. Just realised it never went in the fridge! So has been out ‘cooling’ for 13 hours. Is it still safe to cook??

It always makes me laugh when posters roll out ‘people survived through the ages’. Some people survived. Very many did not. Stomach bugs were a major killer in the past. There’s a whole lot of things that some people survived in the past, that we avoid doing these days, eg wearing seatbelts, washing hands and instruments before surgery, eating unsafe food. Have you any idea how high mortality rates were in the past?

Obviously I mean we avoid NOT wearing seatbelts or washing I stuments before surgery 😂

We would eat it. I often spoon leftovers for my lunch next day and leave in the side overnight I Tupperware then zap in microwave at work.

I would eat it.

When you cook food to 75 degrees, it kills off enough bacteria to a safe level. That means not all might be killed off, but there's no longer enough bacteria (threshold dose) to make you ill.

Because there are still bacteria present, however, you need to keep the food under control via temperature to ensure the remaining bacteria doesn't multiply. You do this either by rapid cooling and refrigeration, eating it straight away, or hot holding it 63 degrees or above. If it goes below 63 degrees, then it needs to be eaten or refrigerated within 2 hours.

The way bacteria works is the "danger zone" for multiplication, which is 5 - 63 degrees. This is the zone where most bacteria multiply, and the closer to the middle of that temperature (37 degrees), the faster the multiplication. Whilst it's multiplying, it's also releasing dangerous toxins that are not killed from cooking, so you could reheat the food to 100 degrees if you wanted, but the toxins would remain and make you sick. Then there's spores to think about, too, which germinate in the right conditions, i.e., 5 - 63 degrees.

Pathogenic bacteria need four things to multiply: food, moisture, time, and temperature. So, your contaminated food that's left out for 2 hours is being given the optimum conditions: it has food and moisture and now you're giving it the temperature (5 - 63 degrees because its not refrigerated nor is it being hot hold about 63)) and now your giving it time ie over 2 hours.

The times I’ve done this and thought omg I’m going to kill everyone but it’s been absolutely fine. Just make sure it’s piping hot.

You're right, but the two hour rule is for when high-risk hot food drops to below 63 degrees and high-risk cold food such as a buffet, for instance, it's 4 hours.

Quoted wrong poster.

You're right, but the two hour rule is for when high-risk hot food drops to below 63 degrees and high-risk cold food such as a buffet, for instance, it's 4 hours.

I took all today's cooking out the fridge this morning just to spite this thread 😅