Help! Would you eat this?

[Whyehywhy]

So this morning at 7am I put all the ingredients for a chicken casserole in my slow cooker. Chicken, potatoes, carrots, stock etc. I had put the chicken in fridge to defrost last night but was still quite frozen. I poured the hot stock over everything then went on school run and had a walk. Came back from walk 3 hours after originally putting all ingredients in to realise I forgot to turn the slow cooker switch on….
All ingredients felt a bit colder than room temperature. Have put in on high heat while I decide what to do…..
what would you do?

I personally would if the heating hasn't been on.

but at the same time if ive over thought it I would bin it as id be too cautious

It'll be absolutely fine. Just make sure it gets proper hot for dinner time.

Chicken is the one thing I'm funny about, and this scenario makes me feel a bit uneasy.
There is a temperature sweetspot during which bacteria multiply - and I would worry that your chicken has spent too long at that point (hard to know, of course, but it would worry me).

For context, I don't subscribe to the 'everything goes off at midnight on its BBD' thinking, or that food can't be left out overnight, or leftovers not eaten the next day will kill you - but raw chicken is the one area where I take no chances.

I HATE food waste, but I'm not sure I'd eat your casserole.

i would eat it, assuming its dinner not lunch and will be thoroughly cooked by that point.

It's the middle ground temperatures where the bacteria multiplies, so you need to ideally move food through those zones as quickly as possible to reduce the risk.

Putting frozen chicken straight into a slow cooker even if it's on is going to increase the time where it's in the mid zone anyway, but regardless if you think about it, it's cold to the touch so you've just finished defrosting it out of the fridge but in the slow cooker and now you're going to cook it.

I can't even imagine being in the slightest bit concerned about this.

I would have taken the chicken out of the fridge to fully defrost before cooking it so this is effectively what you have done. I would not cook chicken from frozen so actually I would have been more reluctant to eat it if you had switched it on.

Thanks everyone for the replies. Still undecided so far.

Right, I'm going to expand on my original answer. the reality is that food goes off because bacteria breed. This happens more quickly when food is out of the fridge, and more quickly still if it is warm. However, it does not happen instantaneously.

An easy way to understand this is to consider fresh milk.

If it is purchased from somewhere like Sainsburys or Tesco or Waitrose, with very very strict regulations regarding refridgeration, transport etc. Then you bring it home and keep it in the fridge except for a few minutes here and there when you use it for your tea or cereal, it will most likely last significantly beyond the "use by date". That is because the use-by date is based on the assumption that the milk may NOT be obsesssively refridgerated from the moment the cow is milked. If you leave the milk out for an hour or two, it will NOT be off when you put it back in the fridge. BUT, what will happen is that your milk is likely to go off more quickly, perhaps closer to the "use by" date.

In this case, your chicken was not properly defrosted anyway. It has probably been sitting there slowly defrosting. it may well have some slight increase in bacteria. But those bacteria are not yet DOING anything (or at least, nothing notable) to your chicken. Which you are now about to cook, thereby killing the bacteria before they can do any meaningful harm or before the by-products of the bacteria have manifested themselves significantly. If you put the chicken in the firdge without cooking it, I would recommend you cook it by no later than tomorrow morning as there is probably more bacteria on it and therefore the speed with which your food will deteriorate will increase.

Thanks for your reply. I don’t think I’d be worried if it wasn’t for the hot stock I put in. I used boiled water for it and it maybe sat for just about 5 mins in a cold glass jug before I poured it over anything. Hoping the (mostly) frozen chicken and cold potatoes and veg cooled the whole thing down pretty quick? Thanks again.

Honestly, the hot stock is not a problem. Even if it has slightly increased the rate at which any bacteria multiplied, again, there has not been time for the food to actually spoil as a result of the bacteria or for the bacteria to d whatever it is bacteria does to turn into dodgy stuff!

So you would 100% be right to be concerned that this needs to be cooked fairly soon and not stored somewhere the bacteria would continue to multiply and/or start to actively spoil your food. But that's not the situation here.

I wouldn't put frozen chicken in the slow cooker, because the heat isn't high enough to move it through the "danger zone" and it will be at the temperature where they're multiplying for longer than necessary.

If you're not worried about that, then you're not in a worse spot now. All you've done is defrosted the chicken in the crockpot on the side, the stock won't have made much difference as it would have been sitting in luke warm liquid yet frozen in the middle for ages anyway even if it had been switched on.

Since you doused raw chicken in hot stock and then went out for 3hrs, I would chuck it in the bin. The parts of the chicken in the hot stock would certainly have had bacteria multiplying and secreting away merrily and remember with food poisoning it’s not the bacteria that make you sick, it is the toxins they secrete. No amount of cooking can neutralise the toxins.

This is not in line with food hygiene guidance that states raw chicken left at room temperature for 2hrs is categorically unsafe to eat. 3hrs is more than enough time for it to have spoiled.

This is not in line with food hygiene guidance that states raw chicken left at room temperature for 2hrs is categorically unsafe to eat. 3hrs is more than enough time for it to have spoiled.

Really? Could you provide a link to the UK guidance please? The last time I looked the FSA was far less rigid.

Did you eat it and are you okay?

So I chickened out (no pun intended😂) and threw it out. Was very unhappy about the waste but decided that saving £5 or so worth of ingredients wasn’t worth possible days worth of vomiting for us all. Thanks to everyone for the replies though, was helpful to see what others would have done.

I think you did the right thing

Food that has not been used within two hours, should either be reheated until it is steaming hot and put back in hot holding or chilled down as quickly as possible to 8°C or below. If it has been out for more than two hours throw it away.

www.food.gov.uk › h...PDF
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/media/document/hot-holding.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiH1YOFuO6JAxUWW0EAHUQCAoYQFnoECBQQBg&usg=AOvVaw0RGXIub7zJlV6pRk4pbiyb" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SAFE METHOD: HOT HOLDING - Food Standards Agency

Honestly, I would eat it🤔

That relates to food that has been cooked and is being kept hot, which can (depending on the temperature) lead to germs multiplying. The OP's scenario was defrosting chicken that had yet to be cooked and was left out for a couple of hours, presumably in the UK and not anywhere tropical. It would have been cooked in due course and any bugs killed.

Already cooked food has fewer germs than raw food. So the fact that even leaving fully cooked food for 3hrs at room temperature is not safe, only highlights that what the OP did is less safe.

Too, you won’t find the exact scenario of partially defrosted raw chicken left for 3 hours after boiling hot stock was poured over it.

1. It’s not exactly defrosting frozen chicken at room temperature for 3hrs- also unsafe.

2. Its not exactly leaving fully defrosted raw chicken at room temperature for 3hrs- also unsafe.

3. It’s not exactly leaving fully cooked chicken at room temperature for 3hrs- also unsafe.

But since all of the above are unsafe regardless of whether the chicken is frozen, raw or cooked; it is easy to determine that partially defrosted raw chicken that has had boiling hot stock poured over it and then left at room temperature for 3 hrs is at least as unsafe and probably less safe given the hot stock bath.

No I wouldn't eat it
I have a friend who did this and got salmonella and was seriously unwell for a long time