Wifey made coq au vin in the slow cooker, using chicken legs and thighs, then cooled it, and froze. Subsequently defrosted and thoroughly reheated. It was wonderful, but we only managed about half, so I stripped the meat off the remaining bones, dumped the bones, allowed to cool then put in the fridge with a view to reusing in pie form, with a pastry crust.
Wifey was not keen, and has now dumped it, saying chicken should not be reheated twice. I know there are all sorts of chicken scare stories, but is Wifey correct? I would have put the remaining coq au vin in a pie dish, covered with raw pastry then popped in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes at 200. Safe or suicidal?
If it's not been allowed to sit around too long at room temperature, was cooked thoroughly in the first place, kept cool and reheated thoroughly the second time, I see no problem at all.
cf: the mega turkeys people (including my family) had at Xmas in the
70s. Cooked, cooled, stored for week, eventually being reheated in the form of curries and rissottos.
Now ice cream is something that should not be refrozen...
Every cook - freeze - cook - chill stage takes the chicken through the temperature danger zone for bacterial growth. The final stage of cooking in a pie might not get the centre of the pie to hot enough for long enough to see off the bacteria.
Point taken. I just wonder whether we are allowing just a little paranoia to creep in. Perhaps not. I do take the point about fully reheating in the centre of the pie, though.
Probably initially in the slow cooker for 10+ hours then, when reheated,
30 minutes in a dish, in the oven at 200. I do take the point about reheating, but the contents of a pie put in a hot oven at room temperature usually boils within 10 minutes or so, and would therefore be bubbling for a good 15 minutes by the time the pastry is cooked.
We must be the same age :-)
Even today, turkey can last until New Year, and be eaten cold. I just love cold turkey - more so than hot. Having said that, we strip the meat off the bone a day or two after Christmas, then keep covered in the fridge, and only remove from the fridge enough for one meal, so nothing chilled is allowed to come up to room temperature then put back in the fridge.
I often reheat, but then I probably do a slight overcook 2nd time around just to be sure. I take the view that if cooked long enough and at high enough temp anything should be killed off.
Commercial kitchen reheating guidelines are that you should use a probe thermometer to measure the temperature at the centre and ensure that it reaches 70C for red meat or 80C for white meat and stays at that temperature for at least two minutes.
There is one other factor - if bugs have been allowed to fester prior to that, you may get a build up of toxins which are not removed by cooking. But I think you have to be fairly sloppy to manage that.
On Tue, 03 Nov 2015 17:54:11 +0000, News wrote: [...]
I wouldn't take chances with chicken. Anyone remember 'chicken-in-a- basket'? It was big in pubs back in the late 70s. I always thought it was a STUPID idea, but my missus at the time (like most wimmin) love all that nonsense, so we had to have it when visiting a country pub down south one lunchtime. It would typically be served in a wicker basket with a serviette (red usually for some reason) placed under it. About an hour later, I sensed something wasn't right. Strange gurgling noises from my stomach and then.... after a terrific dash to the lavs, I deposited the entire contents of my colon into the first receptacle I could find (a urinal, as all the stalls were engaged (I wonder why?)). Not in the normal fashion, either. This was ***EXPLOSIVE*** dioarrhea - a fulminant evacuation - and I'm not proud of the mess I left behind over the floor, walls and ceiling, but to be honest, serving dodgy grub like that, they deserved the consequences I reckon. I had to use my underpants to wipe my arse, too. The missus, though, had no such problem for some reason. Wimmin!
The danger periods are when it's at room temperature.
You're essentially re-heating cook-chill food. (And after the initial cook stage it should be chilled and into the fridge inside 2 hours - not unreasonable for leftovers)
The Safer Food, Better Business guide (which I use in my commercial kitchen) doesn't actually specify a temperature, as its designed to be an easy to use guide - it just says
Check that reheated food is steaming hot all the way through.
If you want to use a probe, make sure it gets to 82°C for at least
30 seconds, or 70°C for 2 minutes.
And you're only supposed to re-heat once.
The half hour at 200°C to cook the pastry crust would normally be more than long enough, but kitchen probe thermometers are cheap enough - I'd not be without mine (although I have a posh/expensive Thermapen one) I often cook some of the veg. pastys I make directly from frozen an I know that they get to about 90C after 30 minutes, so I imagine a pie made with room temperature pastry and chilled meat should not be an issue.
The big scare some 2 years ago now when a pub xmas meal killed one person and left ~50 ill happened because the pre-cooked meat was left out on the counter for most of the day before being put into the chiller then not properly re-heated when served. (It was used as an example on my last food hygiene course)
Gordon (with a local-authority inspected kitchen and holder of Level 2 food hygiene certificates)
Food posioning typically takes 4-6 hours to show, and can take days in some instances, so it's often the meal before the one you've just had that caused it - or days before. It's often hard to pin-point it.
The chicken inna basket thing ought to be very safe - they're cooked from frozen. The issues might be the cleanliness of the basket and the paper liners they're using... (that's assuming the "chicken" bits were properly cooked and frozen beforehand) I think these days they use plastic "baskets" for those types of meals too.
She is famous for never, ever throwing out anything :-) It falls to me to have occasional fridge raids, usually finding half a tin of beans carefully transferred to a ramakin, covered in cling film, pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten until hairy.
We are fairly liberal with sell/use by dates, trusting common sense whereas our indoctrinated schoolboy son is paranoid.
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