please explain storage/reheating of food to me

[familyfun]

be gentle with me, i know nothing
if i have cooked a meal containing meat, how long can i store in fridge/freezer and how do i reheat without killing family?
thanks

Freezer- til you've forgotten what you put in there and have a pot luck dinner .

Fridge- 3/4 days ish? Depends what it is.

Put things in tubs with lids. Eat cold or reheat in pan/oven/microwave until hot all the way through.

so sunday dinner, leave in fridge then warm through and eat within a few days. if frozen, defrost then warm through and eat, and noone ill??

I would keep it in a fridge for no more than a couple of days, and then reheat it thoroughly - you want it to be properly hot all the way to the middle.

If you put it in the freezer, it can stay there pretty much for ever without getting unsafe, but the taste and texture might not be so great after about a month or so, so I'd try to use it up before then. Again the important thing is to reheat it thoroughly - you can either defrost it first, maybe in the fridge overnight, or else cook it straight from frozen - but the downside with that is that it can take a long time to cook through and you end up burning the outside to get the middle hot.

The important things are to cool it down quickly and reheat it thoroughly!

you should get the food to hotter than you'd want to eat it, and keep heating it for at least 1/3 of the 'heating up' time to be safe though

so if you'd had it in the microwave for 3 mins, give it an extra 1 min to make sure it's ok

cool it down quickly?
so if i cook extra i should stick it in fridge straight away?

thanks for all helping me

nothing should go into the fridge until it's at room temp - cooling down quickly means remove from the heat, strain/remove from cooking pot/tin and left, covered - but in as much open air as possible

oh thanks unchartered, thats waht ive been doing leaving stuff covered till room temp then fridge.

you're welcome - if you're worried about eating the same things for days on end, portion them up and when cold, freeze them in meal-sized tubs? great if you've made something and one of the fussy arses says 'i don't want that'

This is interesting for me too :) Once something that was frozen is re-heated, can you refreeze it? I think I heard that you can't, and never have done, but why is this?

What unchartered said - you don't want to put warm food into the fridge, as it warms up the air in there and everything else will be warm instead of nice and cold to keep it fresh.

Just do what you can to help it cook down to room temperature - take things out of the oven or off the ring, put them onto a cooling rack or trivet if you've got one, strain off the hot water if you've boiled something in a pan.

WopBop it's because when you reheat food, you don't take it to the original temp and bacteria can breed. you aren't affected by it when eating reheated food as you eat it before it has a chance to get to dangerous levels.
if you reheat, then let it cool, freeze then reheat again, the bacteria will probably have reached that level.

you could reheat the food to the required temp, but since every cooking process changes the state of the food, it would be almost unpalatable anyway. and not worth the risk.

i think

you can freeze something in its raw state e.g. raw chicken. You can then defrost it, cook it and refreeze the cooked product. You should not defrost something and then refreeze it without cooking it first.

what Seona says is correct - if you've cooked a food, ie changed it from frozen raw, cooked it, then frozen it again it is safe to reheat and then eat, but not to freeze and reheat again after that

Ahhhh ok thanks unchartered and seona, merci