Out of date ingredient - please don’t judge me…

[Happydaze2]

I’ve been tasked with making a dessert for a bbq at the weekend and have decided on banoffee pie. The recipe I have used before includes a can of Carnation caramel but the one I’ve just found at the back of my cupboard is dated Sept 2019!!! (Needless to say I rarely make desserts!) Is it safe to use, do you think?

OP I used to work in a warehouse/factory producing various tinned goods. We had to put a BBE date on the tins for legal reasons but it was completely arbitrary - from recollection it was always two (or possibly three?) years from the date of production. They weren't milk based products - mainly tinned fruit and veg/pulses etc - so it might be different but the general understanding was that tinned goods don't go off (or at least not for tens or even hundreds of years) so long as the tin is undamaged. I wouldn't even think twice about using this.

What wring with using a can for this sort of dessert? This is bearing in mind the cost of ingredients, energy costs and the time to make it!

Nothing “wrong”.

Why do people cook from scratch? Because it shows skill, tastes better and is a sign of effort/pride in their work.

Surely you think fresh home made food tastes better than mass produced canned versions? It’s universally accepted they do…

@Gribbit987
Who has rattled your cage?
So you are telling me that if a recipe included for example, filo pastry you would make it from scratch, tomato purée from scratch- you get my drift??!!

I have never seen a recipe for banoffee pie than didn’t include either a can of dulce de leche, a can of carnation caramel or a can of condensed milk.

Does anyone really start with a pan of milk and sugar and simmer it themselves for 2 hours? There’s a reason dulce de leche is generally bought. It’s very time consuming to get a resulting product that is virtually indistinguishable once mixed into a pie from the canned stuff.

And banoffee pie is meant to be made with Dulce de leche, not a caramel sauce. I’m sure a caramel sauce is nice, but it’s not banoffee pie.

From scratch is way more important for some things than others.

It will be absolutely fine

The product in question is called caramel and the nestle description says it’s “dulce de leche caramel”. Not my terminology and I would agree caramel is water and sugar. But hey… I wasn’t nit picking 😂

I haven’t suggested anyone make homemade condensed milk - which takes a few hours. I have suggested making the caramel/dulce de leche filling because it is effectively the only element of cooking in the dessert and takes 5 minutes.

I think there is a fairly obvious spectrum for homemade foods - something easy and taking 5 minutes? Make yourself. Something highly skilled or very time intensive? Buy.

I didn’t suggest she bake the digestive biscuits… Although they are nicer. But I realise time usually dictates one wouldn’t 😀

As I suggested if you don’t want to make the filling yourself then just buy the whole desert and put your feet up. There’s not much point bothering when the entire input is opening packets and chopping banana.

Is the rice thing an urban myth then?

I'd open and use the tin btw. But obvs check it's not off or mouldy.

Wait… are you saying that you’d use a tin of condensed milk to make Dulce de leche? I don’t really see how that’s any more “from scratch” than buying the sauce. The carnation caramel is just condensed milk thats cooked slightly longer until it starts to brown. You make Dulce de Leche from scratch with milk and sugar and then simmering it past the point of condensed milk until it goes to the Dulce de Leche stage. Taking canned condensed milk and then making it into Dulce de Leche will taste exactly identical to buying it in a can. It’s the exact same thing. How would anyone even know the difference? Unless you’re cooking it at the party in front of the guests nobody would know that you skilfully simmered the condensed milk yourself rather than letting carnation simmer it for you. I’d say there’s a stronger argument for making digestive biscuits.

“From scratch” is a silly thing to get worked up over. Nobody really cooks entirely from scratch. We all make choices about what we buy and what we make. You buy digestives, some people buy “caramel”. Homemade with freshly whipped cream and fresh bananas is nicer than store bought because it’s not full of stabilisers and preservatives. Even if you buy digestives and “caramel” it will be noticeably homemade.

Dates on tinned goods are unnecessary. They do not go off as long as the tin remains intact. They are being removed in some countries.

I wouldn’t

I 💯 would. I have an incredibly well stocked larder, but invariably stuff like this is out of date. And whilst I probably wouldn’t use a tin of meat that old I would use highly processed boiled sugar.

👋let me be your first!

Chinese takeaway fried rice. Only thing I ate that day, 20 minutes after eating, stomach churning nausea and then violent vomiting.

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/can-reheating-rice-cause-food-poisoning/#:~:text=If%20rice%20is%20left%20standing,the%20rice%20unsafe%20to%20eat.

How terribly British!

Do yourself a favour and don’t use the ready made caramel. It’s tasteless.

instead get a tin of condensed milk, 125g brown sugar, 125g butter and 3 tablespoons of golden syrup. Heat the butter and sugar until it’s melted and then add the condensed milk and golden syrup and bring to the boil. It’s the food of the gods (particularly if you add some salt crystals once it’s cooled and started to set) Now you will wow the guests rather than feeding them gloop.

keep the tin in your cupboard for family use though, it’s completely fine unless it’s dented or otherwise damaged

no it’s not. As my exH who was hospitalised after eating rice from a hotel buffet that had been kept “just warm enough to eat” all day will testify.

this was in Canada by the way, in case anyone wants to accuse me of having a “very British response”.

I am now paranoid about food safety around rice. Id eat the tin of carnation without a second thought though.

60+ responses - wow! 😊 Thank you v much to the vast majority who were helpful; to the few who were disgusted and sneering at my supposed penny-pinching and lack of cooking skills/laziness, you know nothing about me or my circumstances. Have a good day everyone 😊

Agreed

I would use it! People yakking on about whether it has a best before or use by date are talking nonsense. Neither of these apply to tins, no matter what the date stamp says. And if the caramel is off, you WILL know! You will know immediately. I opened a tin of tuna that was 'in date' by almost two years and I have never seen or smelled anything quite like it. I know tuna stinks a bit anyway, but this was special. It was desiccated and undeniably inedible. Provided nothing went wrong in the canning process and a severe dent or rust hasn't allowed air to seep in, the contents of an intact, sealed tin will last for years and years. And a few more years!

That sounds perfectly fine but that isn’t the correct sauce for a banoffee pie. The caramel brown colour in a dulce de leche comes from slow caramelisation of sugars in the condensed milk. Using brown sugar to achieve the brown colour and melting butter and syrup into it is a cheats shortcut to achieving something that broadly looks the same, but I’d personally rather have the the canned one where the flavour and colour comes from the non enzymatic browning process.

Dulce de leche is food of the gods. People can pretend that their homemade shortcuts are better because the pay didn’t come from a can, but I’d rather have the real thing, thanks. The way you make Dulce de leche yourself is to submerge an unopened can of condensed milk in water, secure it inside a heavy casserole pot (in case it explodes) and then simmer it slowly for about 2-3 hours. Then you have to leave it with the lid on until it cools down, open it and voila! The same stuff you can buy already canned. Alternatively, if you want to make “from scratch” you can slowly simmer milk and sugar for about 2 hours, stirring continuously.

If you like your caramel sauce then that’s fine, but I’d probably be a bit disappointed if someone gave me brown sugar and butter dissolved into condensed milk instead of a dulce de leche. I’d be polite and make the right oohs and aahs because of the effort, but it’s silly to pretend it’s the same.

Jaysus, I can't believe (or can I?) that the food snobs have turned up to bicker over how to make caramel sauce, when all the OP wanted was a bit of advice on an arbitrarily date stamped can. Be careful, folks, about that out of date packet of lasagne sheets. You'll end up being made to feel like a total philistine for not grinding your own flour and procuring eggs from the arses of your very own hand raised happy chickens to make fresh pasta.

Actually rice left over night is far riskier than tinned food with a best before date which is NOT use by.

OP it will be fine.

Not sensitive at all @Sewerdrain. I should have added the 'lighthearted' qualifier to my post I guess. I thought it was obvious from my words that I was just having a laugh!

@Tessisme For the avoidance of doubt, I have never in my life made dulce de leche myself. I buy it in a can or a jar just like any normal person. Making the real stuff is a massive ball ache and what you get in a jar will be nicer and more authentic than any of the cheats sauces that involve adding butter etc to the condensed milk.

On the food forum you will find people who like to discuss food. I don’t see any harm in the discussion. People like to share their recipes and how they do things at home. It’s what this forum is all about.

Before you could buy Dulce de leche / caramel for a banoffee pie the only way to make it was to slowly boil a tin of condensed milk for hours - who could be bothered with that!
I would probably not serve the tin to anyone if it was past the BB date - it would be perfectly edible but I would feel guilty. The cooked rice thing also applies to pasta and since I learned that I've never eaten either cold at buffets