Kitchen

[Zhills]

A segment on using leftovers aired on our local TV station. Here is the advice she gave. Do you keep leftovers longer than this?

Jill Roberts' reputation precedes her.
“I walk into restaurants and they say, 'God, here she comes,'" she explains with pride.
Roberts is a professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health. And she does not negotiate when it comes to food safety.
"We have a lot of misconception," she noted.
TWO-DAY RULE
Roberts is most emphatic about leftovers.
"The rule with leftovers is 48 hours,” she says. “After 48 hours, you throw it away. I don't care what it is."
Roberts says there's simply no telling what's happening with food after you've kept it longer than two days.
"It's absolutely not safe," she insists.
Roberts goes out of her way to tell me the 48-hour rule applies to the Super Bowl of home leftovers: Thanksgiving.
"Five days after thanksgiving, you should not be eating that turkey," she said. "48 hours."
Professor Roberts acknowledges that most of us are on a tight budget..
"People don't want to waste money,” she said. “They don't want to waste food, and they don't want to waste money."
But she says the risk of eating three-, four- or five-day-old food is too great. Instead, she recommends smaller dinners to proactively cut both your kitchen waste as well as the chances you'll get sick.
"Any recipe can be cut in half," she said.

[LaLaMommy]

6 days is my cut off. Never have had an issue.

[nun ya]

3 days max.

[brewhaha]

Four or five days.

[brii]

3 days is my max.

[depglass]

DH is now around much more than he has been in years. They give him more local assignments since he is close to retirement. He expects every last morsel of leftovers to be eaten, right up to the point they grow mold. When he was gone I used to just throw stuff out, now I'm seriously cutting recipes so every day isn't a battle over some smidge of something. Both of us have parents that lived through the Depression. That's no excuse to get sick.

[DoneTryin]

2 days max for me. Otherwise, things get shoved to the back of the refrigerator & forgotten, until those interesting odors assault me when I open the door.

[chickenbutt]

Not long. I'm pretty food-neurotic. Different things have different shelf lives, but if it's something like I made a dish for dinner and have enough for another meal then I use it the next day or the day after that at the latest.

I'm a nut for proper food storage, so anything I have in there is stored in an optimal setting, i.e. either vacuum sealed or in an airtight container (Lock & Lock).

One thing different I suppose is that, for example, a few days ago I cooked 2 cups of brown rice. That is probably 5-6 meals for me, so it stores well for several days in a L&L container.

[Sweetbay magnolia]

2 days? I think it depends on the type of food. I don't conduct a scientific analysis every time I use leftovers but so far, so good. I'm of the "building antibodies is good" belief!

Off to make a casserole with (gasp) some older than 2 day cooked elbow macaroni.

How about freezing leftovers?

[AuntG]

What is so magical about 48 hours? As long as the leftovers are refrigerated, I'd be willing to go 4 to 5 days before tossing out the food. Generally, if I make a big batch of something (let's say chili), I only heat up what we need for a meal, so the big pot isn't being heated and refrigerated day in and day out.