Huge row with DH over food safety - who is BU?

[namechange294824]

NC'ed on the off chance this is outing!

DH and I are both 34. We've been in the process of moving house over the past 2 months, and are finally in a position to have guests in the house (i.e. we have a dining table and chairs). Moving hasn't been without its challenges and there have been some really stressful bits, but on the whole it's been fairly straightforward, and we don't have kids.

Invited DH's parents (mid/late 60s) to dinner on Tuesday night. I offered to cook. I prepared a starter, a main, and a dessert on Monday night, ready to go in the fridge for ease of serving quickly on Tuesday (I was going to be getting in from work only 20 mins or so before they arrived so it made sense to pre-prepare.) I spent 3.5 hours cooking/baking on Monday, which wiped out my entire post-work evening. No drama; I'd offered to do it, and I enjoy cooking.

But throughout this 3.5 hours DH could not help himself from repeatedly putting his head round the door and being critical - why hadn't I done X? Was I going to bother putting Y in the bin or is it going to be left on the side forever? So on, so forth. I asked him to stop, and he didn't. He probably whinged at me 5 times about separate trivial things whilst I was cooking.

The main dish needed a long while in the oven. It was 9.15pm at this point and he had totally exhausted me with his bitching and griping. I told him I just wanted to shower and go to bed and asked him to take the food out of the oven once the timer went off, which would have been at 10pm.

He did that. But he then failed to put it in the fridge, leaving it out overnight on the countertop. He was watching telly until about midnight, well after the point it would have cooled enough to go in the fridge.

I was so furious in the morning that after a night of whinging and sniping at me he'd not even had the thought to properly put away the food I'd spent so long cooking.

His position: the food's fine, it had foil on it anyway, just crack on and serve it tonight

My position: it's a meat dish (with pork in) and I don't feel comfortable serving it to his parents who are in their 60s after it's been left out overnight in the middle of August

He cancelled the dinner plans, and told his mum it was because we'd had an argument (which we had, I guess, but now I feel really humiliated and almost ashamed that their evening was spoiled because of us).

So... who is BU?

You seem to be very stupid. Have you worked in a professional kitchen? Of course you prep sauces, veg etc but generally earlier the same day, not a full day ahead - disgusting. And in this domestic situation there is no justification for making something to reheat (nasty) when you have time to cook on the day.

Casseroles, stews, casseroles, all manner of slow cooking benefits from having time for flavours to develop and mellow. HTH.

You should probably look up some Heston Blumental recipes. Some of them take multiple days to put together.

I think you may be somewhat over-stating your credentials.

None of these bacteria, even if present in the raw ingredients in the first place, will have survived the lengthy cooking process at presumably considerably over 121C for 20 minutes. The only possibility is if they have by some miracle alighted on the surface of the food and proliferated during the 8 or so hours. This is extraordinarily unlikely, unless OP’s DH has appalling personal hygiene and came into contact with the food whilst covering it (assuming it wasn’t covered with the foil while cooking).

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of supermarket ready meals?

You just failed bacteriology 101 not just failed you flunked: spore forming organisms have great survival and the toxins in several organism I listed are hard to destroy boil at 100 Celsius they are still present and that means if enough produced you are going to succumb. I herewith finish this education as I have failed to successfully educate.
You would still need a fair number of spores to be present in the ingredients from the start to have enough to germinate and metabolize in the fairly brief window of time that the conditions are ideal for them in the scenario that the OP describes. And there have to have been some present in the first place which isn't a given, not all pork is infected with C. perfringens and less likely with B. cereus. It's a numbers question: will there be enough vegetative cells producing toxins to cause disease under the conditions described by the OP? I don't think there would be in this case (although the OP doesn't specify time and kitchen temperature) and you think there is. I have grown C. perfringens, and pretty much every other strain mentioned in this thread and I bet you haven't.

Food shouldn't be served if left out for over 2 hours....hence the problem with buffets.
Why were you not cooking together?
No way would I spend a whole evening cooking after work.

Have you seen how many fingers touch a Michelin star dish? 🤮🤢

Bacteriology 101 The ignorance explains why there is so many millions of cases each year including deaths of the elderly ,adults, children and yes losses of new born's and still births (deaths in the womb) from food borne pathogens.

Show me where I’m wrong, specifically in the OP’s example.

I’m not minimising the risk to health and life from poor food hygiene, but the OP’s example is not poor food hygiene.

Food safety “rules” rightly take a highly defensive position to account for incomplete cooking and a lack of understanding of microbiology in the population. However this is responsible for the appalling waste of food because people are unable to make adequate and accurate risk assessments.

I still don’t believe you’re a microbiologist.

A few things.

I would have asked him why he didn't refrigerate it and said it now shouldn't be used (personally i would eat it but I wouldn't serve to guests). I would have told him he either gets something else, uses it as his risk or cancels. He would have then been doing all the serving and washing up.

I would tell him in future that if he wants his parents over he needs to organise and cook. You will help but not do it all. It's generally much easier if each partner does their own family.

Finally I would ask him why he didn't prep as a team rather than constantly nitpicking. He needs to grow up.

Literally said in my first post on this thread that OP might as well have given the inlaws a ready meal.

Which was pre-prepared in advance in a kitchen?

SnakesAndArrows I could send you many detailed reports on successful investigations of outbreaks that included hospitalizations and recommendations to reduce the risks, but you would disagree with the findings and also the recommendations to reduce the risk of future FP outbreaks. So wont waste my time.

That relate to the scenario in the OP? No, you can’t.

I leave meat dishes out on the side overnight all the time and never been ill, nor has anyone else here.
Today for example, we are having roast duck for lunch, the remainder will be on the side until tomorrow when it gets made into a chow mein.
No one will become ill.
The paranoia around food these days is ridiculous.
I would have put it in the fridge the following morning and served it up.

I live in my own little world where I deny anything I am ill informed about, it is so easy not confronting my own lack of knowledge.
March 8, 2024
Britain's food poisoning problem
A study published in 2020 by the FSA estimated that there were 2.4 million cases of foodborne disease in 2018 in the UK
Public urged to 'wake up' as hospital admissions for food-related illnesses reach new highs. The public is unwittingly playing "Russian roulette with food", an expert has warned.
Hospital admissions for food-related illnesses salmonella, E. coli and campylobacter have reached record highs in England, latest NHS data shows. And Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, told The Guardian that there would be more cases until the British public public "wakes up" to the risk of food poisoning.
A lot of people on this sight are asleep.

Oddly, that Guardian article doesn't say the problem is down to home cooks not putting fully cooked, covered casseroles in the fridge minutes after it comes out of the oven. It talks about imports of poor quality non-British poultry, hygiene issues in catering outlets, poor practice around handwashing, cleaning of surfaces and so on, not cooking meat thoroughly (with special mention of BBQs).

I would have fridge it next morning .Heated it through well and served it. It would have been fine. More concerned about your husbands attitude whilst you were putting in all the effort to prepare the food! I'd keep a close eye on that behaviour. If it happens again. Get your coat and go out. Tell him on the way out to get his rear end in the kitchen and start cooking!

2.4 million cases of food poisoning in 1 year over a 10 year period that is very simple as to why there is alarm that would mean over 35% of the entire country suffered from food poisoning and then I read some of the ostriches still have there heads in the sand, just the cost to the taxpayers alone is huge. Occupying hospital beds which are often in short supply is another addition to the disaster.

I would have been very annoyed with him. I'm petty enough to bring it up next time the parents are round.

With your "I would have fridge it next morning " (holly shit) food handling breaches of UK law in a restaurant you can be fined up to 5,000 pounds and face up to 6 months in prison. Fortunately you hopefully don't run a restaurant, just a family home and the health authority gives you permission to poison your own family but will nail your butt to the wall if you do that to the public.

How many of those cases are from leaving properly cooked food overnight to cool, refrigerating the next morning and then thoroughly reheating the next day? I’ll wager far less than from using meat past its sell by date, improper cooking/handling and hygiene issues - one of the biggest culprits being barbecues. There’s a thread currently on MN from an OP who refused to eat anything at a barbecue after watching the cook handling raw chicken and then touching cooked food without washing his hands. The most common infections are salmonella and campylobacter - infections associated with eating or handling raw or undercooked meat and touching pet faeces. Far more worrying.

I’d be calling his parents and saying ‘I’m so sorry he cancelled tou, I’d spent hours cooking and all he had to do was pop it in fridge for me and didn’t!!!

Or rather than coming across as a psycho daughter in law, they can come round and just have something different for dinner courtesy of their son. And at the table when eating you could share the amusing anecdote as to how come their son is cooking.