Re-heating leftovers

As a working mum who cooks in bulk on the weekend, I found this advice was pretty helpful:

Is it safe to re-heat leftovers?

Paula Goodyer
May 8, 2008

We might know better than to let raw meat rub shoulders with raw broccoli on the chopping board but we're not always so cluey about leftovers. The pasta sauce you made on Monday might smell OK on Thursday but is it still safe to eat? Cooking meals ahead on weekends to eat through the week might get you a gold star for efficiency but what is their shelf life in the fridge?

The fact that more of our food is prepared in advance - and that we're eating out more - is blamed for the growth in cases of food poisoning in Australia. Still, according to figures from the Food Safety Information Council, you could be in safer hands in your own kitchen. The guess is that it's probably only 12 to 20 per cent of the 5 million or so cases occurring in Australia each year that are caused by home cooks, often because food has been kept at the wrong temperature or reheated incorrectly.

One problem about knowing if food is still safe to eat is that you can't always rely on your nose: last week's milk might smell and taste really off but may not be harmful, while a four-day-old still-fragrant curry might be brewing enough bugs to make you ill.

The first rule about leftovers is don't let them hang around on the stovetop while you linger over dessert or empty the dishwasher. As soon as food has stopped steaming, get it into the fridge, says Lydia Buchtmann from Food Standards Australia New Zealand. Her own system is to decant any leftovers into plastic containers at the same time as she's serving dinner and put them in the fridge.

If there's a lot of leftover food to put away - or you're cooking in advance - it's best to divide it into small portions to cool rather than putting large quantities of soup or a casserole into one big container, she says. The idea is to speed up the cooling process so that bacteria have less chance to grow. This is also important with pasta and rice - foods that might seem less dodgy than others but which can harbour the sneaky Bacillus cereus that can produce a toxin, especially in foods that are cooled slowly. Because this toxin is heat-resistant, it's not destroyed by reheating. Don't count on cold to knock it dead - it can keep growing in the fridge.

Cooking ahead for the week? Buchtmann's advice is to freeze meals unless they're to be eaten in two to three days. When you reheat them they should be served really hot all the way through (at least 75 degrees).

Can you reheat dishes a third time? It's probably not a problem if they've previously been refrigerated promptly, Buchtmann says - but dividing dishes into small portions means you're less likely to need a third reheating.

What about reheating leftover takeaway? The safest approach, she says, is only if the food has been refrigerated as soon as it has stopped steaming.

 

Cooking for the week ahead

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