AIBU to eat the dinner I left out accidentally overnight?

[WattThreeWords]

Gnocchi bake. Gnocchi, pepper, olive oil, tomatoes.

Out of oven 8pm. Realised at 6.30am I hadn’t put in fridge, so put it back then.

AIBU to heat it up for dinner tonight?

YABU - it’s full of toxins and you’re going to thrown your guts up

YANBU - don’t waste that delicious dinner. Heat it up and enjoy

The fridge won't keep up with cooling off hot food which would mean raising internal temperature of the entire fridge. So, if you are worried about bacterial growth, your entire food supply is now at risk. Not to mention excessive condensation and possible long-term effect on appliance performance if you do it repeatedly.

I probably wouldn't give it to a child under about 5, but yeah I'd eat it.

Unless your kitchen is very warm overnight, I would eat it.

It’s all hypothetical really because there are not many foods which would remain hot for two hours, but modern fridges can keep up and it wouldn’t ruin the other food.

If you’re ever in a rush and food is still warm, it is much safer to refrigerate it (don’t seal it if it’s so hot it’s still steaming) than to leave it sitting out at room temperature.

It's not so much the food that'll be harmed, but it'll shorten the life of your fridge if you do it frequently.

Fridges as designed to keep cool stuff cool. Most fridges only have to cool down from room temp once or twice in their life time, when they're first turned on. Other than that they're just maintaining a temperature.

Putting something hot in there forces all the motors and pumps to work harder, extracting extra heat. The harder something works, the quicker it burns out

This is very easily resolved by putting hot food into a few smaller containers so it cools quicker before putting in the fridge.

Its not just meat or dairy or rice that carry food poisoning bugs. One of the biggest source of bugs in places like kebab shop is the salad!

Saying that, it's not been out 24 hours, it's not roasting at the moment, and there is nothing in that that degrades really quickly so may be ok

yeah - I would. Just nuke it before you eat it again. It's all very low risk stuff.

Yes, but I can’t imagine many people are regularly putting five litres of hot soup into the fridge.

But, if one an occasion there was not enough time to decant it into smaller containers, it would be safer to put the soup into the fridge than to leave it at room temperature for longer than two hours.

The bacteria that grows on food which has been left out overnight once cooked isn’t destroyed by cooking it.

Nope 👎 🤢🤮, this thread is making me never want to eat at anyone’s house ever again

Survived the long hot summer of 1976 without a fridge and lived to tell the tale. There was no microwaves then either. My granny never had a fridge just a pantry shelf that was tiled. Pantry did stink though I have to admit...

I was honestly in the middle of a post saying it wont be long before someone comes along to say their mum used to keep a turkey in a pantry for years as evidence that food safety is all rubbish cos they're still alive 😂

Thats a mixture of pantries generally being at the back of the house on an outside wall, often almost as cool as fridges, people not using heating as much, food being fresher in the first place, leftovers being eaten quicker, and a large amount of sheer luck.

Yes I was 10 year old before we had a fridge. Food would be left a couple of days and we’d eat it with no ill effects

Indeed. I’m really surprised that so many people think this is okay/believe cooking destroys the bacteria/think that only meat and rice cause food poisoning.

Not for me thanks.
https://www.chowhound.com/1786087/what-happens-eat-pasta-left-out-overnight/

from the link-
'The danger comes from a bacteria called Bacillus cereus, which can exist as spores on dry pasta. While not immediately dangerous, these spores can survive the cooking process and begin to multiply on cooked pasta, releasing harmful toxins as they do. Refrigerating pasta at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below can cause the bacteria to become inactive, but they will begin multiplying again when the pasta is reheated.'

So its not entirely about meat or dairy for food poisoning!

Read More: https://www.chowhound.com/1786087/what-happens-eat-pasta-left-out-overnight/

Its not worth the risk of being sick to me. What I taught myself to do to prevent forgetting food at night is to set the kitchen timer so I MUST come back to the kitchen, not my phones timer. But this pasta would be in the trash can if it was in my kitchen.

When I'm in doubt I recall that dodgy leftover salad I ate once and the major all day work meeting I sat through the next day wishing I was dead. That incident taught me the money lost isn't worth risking being sick for days.

To be fair, whilst I’d eat it myself, I wouldn’t serve it to anyone else 😂

It doesn't need to be hot soup though. About once a month I make a bloody massive chilli con carne. I'll have some of it that night, some of it the next day and then freeze whatevers left (if there is any, Chilli is my greatest vice). I used to put it in the fridge straight away after dishing up, but ended up knackering my fridge, so these days I leave it on the side for a few hours to let it cool down first.

It doesn't even need to be something that big, even putting small hot things in there will have a cumulative affect on the life of your fridge over time.

Whats to go off in it? I do that all the time. It's good to leave it to cool fully before going in fridge.

I always leave food to cool down. I was replying to someone who asked what would happen if I made five litres of soup which was still hot after two hours. It isn’t a problem I’ve ever encountered, but if I did and I couldn’t put it into shallower dishes, I’d refrigerate it.

I often stick my big batch of 'whatever' outside overnight. It might not be fridge temp but it's cooler than inside, then it goes in the fridge / freezer in the morning.

I wouldn’t give it a second thought. Bung it in the microwave or oven, heat and enjoy.

I think this is the reason soup always tastes better on the second day!

My mum would make lentil soup and leave it on top of the cooker for 2-3 days until it was finished. She would however take some out in a separate pot to reheat it, rather than reheating the main pot repeatedly.

We lived in an unheated house so it was always pretty cool, but she did this year round. It was also in the days when fridges were much smaller, so making room in it for a large batch of soup was not really feasible. Ditto Christmas turkey. It would sit on the counter overnight until Boxing Day when the leftover meat would be stripped off into a smaller container to go in the fridge.

Heat resistant toxins and bacterial growth both on the gnocchi and vegetables. Once they are cooked bacteria will grow on them.

Heat will not kill toxins which develop on cooked food.