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?

YANBU, but if the griping and sniping are typical behaviour for him, YABU not to bin him off.

Are you planning kids? Because this sort of behaviour doesn't improve when kids arrive. Man babies tend to get worse when they're competing with the real thing.

Cooking doesn't always kill all bacteria in food and it can grow again if left at a certain temp.
I'd like to see some data on this for, say a casserole that was simmering for 2 hours. Actual CFU numbers.

Care to explain?

So? I wouldn't want to eat it

This time of year, perfect breeding conditions for bacteria

If he's expert enough to stick his neb in at every stage of the cooking, why does he need telling to refrigerate the food he and his parents (as well as OP) are going to be eating?

Stop infantilising men and letting them get away with weaponised incompetence.

@DogsAtDawn Thank you for that lovely clear explanation

Glad to know that I haven't forgotten everything I learned in Domestic Science back in the Dark Ages

Yeah he shouldn't have cancelled

Something that has been in the oven at over 100C for hours will have no bacteria left alive.

Meat safes weren’t any colder than their surrounding environment. They were just a cupboard with a mesh front.
They weren’t just for raw meat.
People kept stewpots going for weeks, just adding ingredients and boiling them up.
Plenty of people in developing countries don’t have fridges and reheat cooked meat.

So she bought, prepped and cooked the food, and it was unfair for him to put it away once cooled?

Jesus wept.

The guidance is blanket guidance aimed at people with no understanding of microbiology and no ability to make risk assessments.

The food is the side issue. Him cancelling the dinner and announcing the row is awful. Bet you’ll be careful from now on…in case he embarrasses you again. Which is the entire point.

Your H was clearly being a total knob, but you hardly need me to tell you that. I was once married to such an idiot. What you do about him probably won't be very straightforward, but buying and using a probe thermometer is, so I definitely suggest you do that. Pork was the worst meat for you to have picked in the circumstances, but you weren't to know that. If your H carries on with his ridiculous ways, I'd suggest sticking to lamb.

I once ate a kebab out of a bin.

^

Atta girl

People in their mid 60s aren't ‘older’ in the way you're implying. Dont be so ageist.

Op did say it was covered in foil.
If the foil was on in the oven I think it would have been fine overnight.

I would eat that meat no problem so from my perspective you are over-reacting about that. No way it could have gone in the fridge last night because it was too hot.

BUT it’s crappy of your DH to tell his parents it’s cancelled because you had a row. That is just asking for trouble and I wouldn’t like that at all.

In any event, it shouldn't be going in the fridge when it comes out the oven at 10pm either. It should cool down completely before being refrigerated.

I made a lasagna at 7pm the other week, ready around 8pm. Went to bed at midnight and it was only just cool enough to put in the fridge then, and that was after it had been half eaten and the other half portioned up into smaller portions.

If yours was out the oven at 10pm and still in its original cooking dish to cool, chances are it would have been warm for most of the night throughout its cooling process anyway, making it probably fine to refrigerate in the morning.

I'd risk it with myself (though as PP have pointed out it should be reheated to piping hot stage), but I probably wouldn't risk it if I had guests.

I agree with PP that your DH is totally out of order cancelling the entire night over it and telling his parents why.

This kind of scaremongering puts people off cooking in their own homes and consigns them to living off M&S ready meals, made 10 days ago in a factory. It also contributes massively to food waste, with people binning perfectly edible food because someone like you has scared people shitless. I grew up in a household that didn't have a fridge until I was 12 years old. My mother cooked everything, including meat and fish, from scratch. Meat was cooked one day, eaten cold the next and leftovers warmed up the following day. No one ever had food poisoning. I was nearly 30 before I knew what food poisoning was: salmonella from a hotel banquet.

I wouldn't serve a meal that was left out overnight. Foil obviously doesnt stop bacteria multiplying.

Suggestion: leave it out another 48 hours and serve to him instead. You're feeling off colour so are going for a bath whilst he eats dinner.

Is this normal behaviour from him? Does he behave like this with other things? He sounds like a twit.

And yet you're still preaching that pork is more dangerous than other meats.

I agree with this - I used to work in a nursing home and we had pretty high standards for food hygiene and I can guarantee if the cook found meat left out overnight, it would have been binned.
Maybe some elderly people are ok eating meat that’s been left out, but it should be just a personal risk, not served to other people regardless of age.

I hope this isn’t a drip feed, but to clarify, he would have quite happily served the meal as normal to his mum and dad. I said it wasn’t safe and explained why and that’s when he went down the ‘let’s just cancel the whole thing’ route. Tbh, it was a pretty terse morning, so he probably also feared an awkward evening. I don’t know.

His dad was quite unwell and hospitalised a few years ago (not with food poisoning 😉), so perhaps I am a bit over cautious, I accept that.

DH does have good qualities, but the sniping and moaning have to stop. I have posed the question of how much more stressful life would become if we were to have children, and he does accept that he’s going to need to be a bit more easy going. We do share household tasks and he’s a great cook so I can’t be pissed off with him purely that I put the work in, because he cooks a lot too, but it does make me more annoyed that he didn’t think to refrigerate a meat dish. And he knows there are ways to cool things down quicker as he’s seen me do it before!

Yes, sadly there are a lot of cockcoddlers on Mumsnet - it never ceases to amaze me the way some women will go out of their way to excuse men from complete stupidity and often downright cuntishness ! They set a very low bar for themselves which affects the rest of us too. OP's DH was a twat in the first place for removing food from the oven ad not fridging it and then compounded it further by cancelling the dinner and blaming the OP. I'd be feeding him the casserole until it was finished and I'd be leaving it on the top of the stove in between servings too!