Will my DH have given DS food poisoning?

[BBQbarbie]

We’ve got some cold chicken legs - ready to eat in the fridge. DS (5) said he doesn’t like them cold, my DH decided to warm them up in the air fryer for a few minutes then gave to DS. He’s now eaten them. I’ve come downstairs and he’s told me this and I’m not impressed. DH said because they’re fine to eat cold then it won’t be a problem. But I thought chicken needed to be cooked through to piping hot, even if it’s ready to eat.

How much do you think bacteria could grow in the tiny amount of time between the chicken being heated up and your child eating it? It will be fine!

He'll be fine.

I'd divorce my partner if they told me to go on a food hygiene course, what shit advice.

Are they all still alive? If so then move on.

I'd have thought everyone knows meat, especially chicken, needs to be very hot all the way through if reheated but clearly not!

That being said your DS will probably be OK. Your DH shouldn't risk it again though.

Re-heating chicken is a real no no....Warming it slightly makes the bacteria proliferate. Chicken is particularly bad for bacteria such as salmonella.

Heating until piping hot isn't even recommended - chicken always says on the packaging ''Do not re-heat'' for this reason.

@BBQbarbie Hopefully your son will be ok, but I'd be annoyed, too.

But it was already cooked?! I don't understand what the issue is

But how would that work? Your body is 37degrees, so food will get warmed up inside your stomach as it's digested.

It's "woken up" in the sense that it can start to multiply, not that all food is riddled from the get go.

Be fine, he ate it immediately, barely warming it and then letting it sit around outside the fridge for hours would be a party scenario for bacteria but they hadn't a chance to even start partying!

You learn something every day! Probably lucky my left over chicken always belongs to the dogs 😂

I think I'd rather eat chicken immediatly that had been reheated to my prefered temperature than heated to piping hot, and allowed to cool for 15 mins!

Same here! Into the Canine Waste disposal it goes!

''Did someone say ''Chicken?'' {Friend's dogs}

Think about it this way.

It's fine to eat the chicken cold. It has been cooked and there are no nasty bacteria left. (Raw chicken is risky because the bacteria in it need to be killed by cooking. But cold cooked chicken is fine up until the sell-by date.)

It's also fine to eat the chicken hot.

So suppose DH had put it in the air fryer for one second. It would still be fine, right?
Two seconds? Fine. Yes? Two seconds of heating it can't hurt.
Five seconds? Fine. Yes?
And so on.

For there to be a problem, there has to be some temperature between 4°C and 75°C at which, suddenly, the chicken becomes dangerous. Which there isn't. The chicken doesn't know that it's been in the air fryer for "less time than it should".

If the food is safe when it's cold, it's safe when it's hot, and it's safe when it's warm. There is no point in between at which it suddenly and immediately becomes dangerous. If chicken went bad that quickly, you'd have to throw away a meal that got a bit tepid because you had to answer the phone. In fact there would be huge disclaimers on it: "Once heated, eat within 3 minutes".

(Obviously you don't heat it up and then leave it on the windowsill for a week.)

The confusion arises because the food manufacturers have standard texts that the health authorities (not unreasonably) make them put on everything. It's a bit like having to put "Warning: Contains peanuts" on a packet of peanuts.

Something similar happens with frozen food. "Never re-freeze food once it's defrosted" is generally solid advice. But if you buy chicken breast fillet on the 5th of the month that has a use-by of the 18th, then freeze it on the 6th, defrost it on the 7th, change your mind and freeze it again on the 8th, then defrost and cook it on the 9th, it isn't going to turn into plutonium.

I'm amazed, warming up chicken is just wrong. It has to be piping hot if reheating, I certainly wouldn't do it.

at least we understand why we have such a ridiculous food waste problem in this country

What are we not supposed to do this I aways chuck mcdonalds in the airfryer for a few minutes when it's delivered to warm it up

Right?! How do so many people think this is ok?!

Really?

Food safety awareness on this thread is scary.

Food that is in a non-sterile environment will contain bacteria. When kept at cold temperatures, bacteria multiply very slowly. When you start to heat that food, the bacteria start to multiply more rapidly. This is the danger zone. That is why when you heat food you must heat it until it reaches a temperature that will kill all the bacteria. By only warming food, you provide bacteria with the perfect conditions to multiply rapidly and cause food poisoning.

Bacteria ‘woken up’? Interesting… 😂

Because they aren’t idiots.

When food needs to be reheated to be safe to eat, it needs to be thoroughly reheated. But food that is safe when it’s cold can just be warmed up a bit, it doesn’t become unsafe by being heated.

Bacteria numbers will double once every 20 minutes in ideal conditions. A quick 5 minute warm will not significantly change their numbers.

Why would this not be ok?

This is only a problem if you leave it at the warm temperature for some time (as may happen in a restaurant with food sitting under heat lamps) so the bacteria has a chance to multiply. Not if you are eating it straightaway.

According to a recent article {BBC} Campylobacter is the risky and common one that lives even on the outside of packets of chicken..

''Food poisoning is usually caused by bacteria on food. The biggest culprit is not the perhaps more famous Salmonella, E. coli or Listeria, but Campylobacter, and it was recently found on 6% of the OUTSIDE of packaging of supermarket chickens and it can survive 1-2 hours on a kitchen surface, so it’s easy to spread it around. The problem is that whereas for Salmonella, tens of thousands of individual bacteria need to survive the hostile environment of your stomach to make you ill, for Campylobacter it’s only around 500.
**
The key to killing bacteria is to use heat – so thorough cooking, all the way through, is important, especially with chicken where the meat texture is loose enough that bacteria can be found all the way through. This is as true of leftovers as it is for cooking the first time.''

It's not about the chicken being unaware it's not been reheated all the way through 🤣🤣🤣