Sorry - another OT, cooking B B E dates)

I am full of off topics this morning.

As a female I should know all about cooking but obviously I don't and the cooking newsgroups don't cover this topic ( indeed many are not used at all).

So, I today I cleared out my cupboards. Now I always have some things that need removing but I had never noticed the " best before end of " dates.

It seems my whole pantry is full of unusable goods. My curry powder was supposed to be used before 2000. My pepper before 2002 my ground mixed spice

2004. Even my flour is up this month and I have a jiff lemon which was out of date last year - as was my mincemeat ( Robertson's , got it last year for backing mince pies as a BOGOFF) and some coffee ( we don't drink a lot of coffee) which was also out of date two years ago apparently and a Birds Triffle mix which I got last Christmas - and was going to keep until this Christmas!

I had thought from my school days that dried and preserved food and spices lasted almost indefinitely?

Obviously I don't use many spices and condiments as you should be able to deduct. But I looked at the products themselves and they all seem perfectly OK. Anyway, I have already gone and baked a cake ( as I do every week) with these out of daye goods ( including some flour which it seems had a BBE of May.) before I realised that nothing in my store cupboard was "in date"

Am I really putting my other half at risk by using them? Should I chuck them all out?

Reply to
sweetheart
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K

Reply to
Jim K

Best before dates are advisory - stuff should be at optimum condition until at least then. Ignore if you think it's fine.

Use by dates are a bit more serious - they are supposed to be the date the product will not be safe to eat afterwards.

I ignore BBE dates - and just use common sense. UB I'm a bit more weary of (he says, having just eated sausages 2 days after the use by date :-))

Spices and coffee will be fine for *ages* if not opened. Once opened you the strength tends to disappear. Does that ancient coffee still actually smell like coffee??

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

There are 2 relevant dates, 'best before' and 'use by.' Use by is the safety date, best before has nothing whatever to do with food safety. A short best before date is used by manufacturers to offload liability after the date, and sometimes to encourage users to throw and re-buy.

Tinned goods last indefinitely, as long as the can stays sealed. I did however turn down the opportunity to eat something that looked like it was from the 1930s on the grounds that there were some widespread safety problems with foods back then.

Dried goods are more of a mix. Generally theyre fine after BBE dates, eg using curry powder 10 years out of date is harmless if its still in good condition, but they do deteriorate in quality and can become spoiled by damp, insects or fat degradation, and damp spoilage can make them unfit for consumption.

NT

Reply to
Tabby

No and no. Give them a good sniff and if they smell OK (or indeed, *of* anything) then go ahead use them. I've found dried spices tend to go tasteless after a while, and anything with a high fat content goes rancid, but otherwise I pay no attention to the dates on things.

Reply to
Huge

and flour can get weevils in if left for long enough.

Where do they come from I wnder?

Reply to
chris French

Nonsense - I'm better versed than the missus - I have to teach her stuff.

"Best Before" is more an indicator (partly for supplier's stock rotation) - it is rarely life threatening to ignore it.

"Use by" is more related to food actually perishing, but see below.

Answering your questions point by point

Ignore that. If it hasn't got damp and clumpy, use it forever.

If not damp or being eaten by weevils, use it forever,

Not so sure. It's very acid and not prone to bugs, and I usually give these many months past any "BB date". I usually lob mine in the fridge and regard their life as virtually infinite then,

Unopened jars and cans can be regarded as lasting practically forever. They are sealed sterile. Once opened, deterioration sets in in days/weeks/months depending on food type and sugar or salt content.

Eg unopened mincemeat - use it whenever. Opened, I'd fridge it and use in a week or two. Jam (especially low sugar types) are best fridged after opening. Proper jam, not necessary. Jam will develop mould as its first mode of deterioration IME, so visually obvious when it's dead.

Coffee (beans/ground/instant) keeps forever if dry, even if opened.

Sealed dry ingredients - regard as lasting forever.

Still true.

No.

Some things have changed since we were both younger. Some foods have more preservatives so actually last longer. But a lot of "fresh" food had been in a longer transport chain, eg milk, meat and veg. Some things like jam often have less sugar (which was the secondary preservative after the bottling process which rendered it sterile until opened).

With frozen stuff, there's still a lot of latitude, if your freezer is good and you don't let it ice up solid. I'd eat 9 month frozen meat even though it might be a nominal 6 months storage. Veggies, at least a year.

Fridged stuff:

Now, this is where it gets more sensitive:

A good fridge makes a huge difference over an old crap fridge with leaky door seals. Replacing an old crap fridge with a decent one that actually holds everywhere inside at 4C made a huge and noticeable difference in how long stuff was good for. Switching to Waitrose from Tescos also made a noticeable difference.

I now will keep micro-meals 2 days beyond UseBy, Chicken I prefer to go 1 day extra, beef and lamb I'd go 3-4 days beyond and pork maybe 2 days.

Dairy I will drink until it tastes sour.

You need to understand the risks:

Red meats are generally quite resistant to deterioration and in theory can look/smell odd before they kill you (cf "Hung beef"). Cooking to death kills the bugs, though doesn't remove any toxins they may have already produced. So if unsure make sure it's cooked well.

Chicken and fish are buggers though. Both are very delicate and bugs love them. Also, the bugs that like them are the ones that give you bad gutrot. I wouldn't stretch poultry and fish much unless I know ehere it came from, eg freshly caught or killed by a local place.

Dairy tends to go sour and the bugs that do this are mostly harmless (yoghurt is basically soured milk)

However, certain soft cheeses are dodgey for listeria and other unpleasant bugs.

Hard cheeses (eg cheddar) are generally OK until mould appears and even then, chop the mouldy bit off and eat.

If you like to cook meat a little rare (ie pink or bloody) then fresh is more essential.

The exception on red meats is mince where the heat produced by mincing can start bug production off and the bugs are mixed through rather than being on the surface. I'll give minced red meat and extra day beyond useby in a good fridge but not much longer. But it's a good candidate for freezing anyway.

Pickles: Last forever until opened. After opening, the life should be good if kept in a cool larder or fridge as the vinegar or brine is a preservative. IME, with brined products (eg olives), mould seems to be the first to appear. Never had vinegar pickled products go off in any noticeable way.

Vacuum packed deli meats tend to last well until opened, then the lifespan drops sharply. Chicken and ham (esp processed) should be treated with respect. Salami is more robust because was originally designed to keep at room temperature (though this can't be assumed de-facto for packets of ready-sliced). I have had a full stick of genuine Hungarian salami hanging in summer off a kitchen shelf in the room for a good few weeks, chopping off some whenever I needed - on the advice of the Hungarian who gave it to me.

Bread is OK until it's mouldy and I never got any problems even eating the mouldy bits.

Eggs - there' a good test which is to put them in a bowl of water. If it lies horizontal or stands up near vertical, it's bad (to do with what happens to the air sac inside). A good egg will tend to lie at about 20-40 degrees - try it.

Other's may have different views, but I've never got food poisoning from my own food. A dodgy botty perhaps on a couple of occasions, but those were traceable to some really out of date fresh stuff.

Cheers

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

I have bottle of Lea and Perrins with no BBE or Use By Date. It causes a certain amount of consternation when offered to friends

Richard ;-)

Reply to
RJS

When my (now) ex walked out she left a load of tinned stuff in the cupboard long past its use by date. I used some cook-in sauce and was ill for a couple of days. In view of your other posts in here perhaps you should leave them another couple of years before feeding them to your other half?

Reply to
Jeff Gaines

The most pessimistic best before date is the one on salt. It's been sitting quietly minding its own business for 220 million years when it gets shoveled up, cleaned, packed and given a best before date 2 years in the future!

Reply to
Peter Parry

Even when a little mouldy, I scrape off the top layer and eat it anyway. Obviously if it's developed democracy and space travel, then it's time to bin it.

My rule of thumb is that if something smells, looks and tastes OK, I'll eat it no matter what the dates on the packaging.

Reply to
Huge

They were on holiday from the previous lot of flour which you'd kept way beyond its BBE date and came back to find they had a new home :)

More seriously, we habitually keep flour way beyond its BBE as we use it little. We now routinely checking for wiggly things before using it. AIUI they hatch from eggs in the grain before it is processed. I've read they can be prevented from hatching by keeping flour in the freezer but we ain't got the freezer space to spare.

Reply to
Robin

In message , sweetheart writes

We live in hope

Spices and such should last, but their effect can deteriorate with age

I think you have to learn to start thinking - what is there to go off in e.g. flour

Reply to
geoff

In message , chris French writes

Folk songs

Reply to
geoff

The possible presence of wiggly things, is one of the reasons for sieving flour before use. I keep whole-meal flour in the freezer, but not because of weevils - whole-meal contains oils which can turn rancid.

Reply to
S Viemeister

Why not buy an additional freezer? Then you can also put your woollens in it, to keep the moths from spoiling them.

Reply to
Ronald Raygun

More or less my approach as well. Though stuff with a BBE date that was a couple of years, or more, ago will have a fairly close examination for "look" (texture, colour, etc) smell and finnally taste. I'd also examin all the packaging for damage/deteriation/corrosion etc. The top contents of a tin might be OK but the bottom could have reacted with the contents or had a tiny failure in a seam or what ever.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

LOL! Marvellous!

Reply to
Huge

One last note is that cooking kills nearly all bugs, and destroys some toxins, so if you're a bit uncertain, cook it well.

NT

Reply to
Tabby

Precisely so.

Reply to
Huge

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