Putting hot food in the refrigerator

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Sedagive

Senior Cook
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When I was a kid (many, many years ago) my mom always told me not to put hot food in the refrigerator until it cooled down some. I've always followed this rule, but I've started to wonder if I'm chancing the safety of the food by allowing it to sit out. Has anyone ever heard of this, and what guidelines do you follow for refrigerating hot food?

Sedagive
 
You need to allow it to cool down slightly - putting very hot food in the fridge raises the fridge temperature and therefore puts the rest of your food at risk. If you read othre posts, you have up to two hours in the danger zone.

Cover the food and leave it out for a while - this need only be from serving to the end of clean up, the food should be cool enough then.
 
When I was a kid (many, many years ago) my mom always told me not to put hot food in the refrigerator until it cooled down some. I've always followed this rule, but I've started to wonder if I'm chancing the safety of the food by allowing it to sit out. Has anyone ever heard of this, and what guidelines do you follow for refrigerating hot food?

Sedagive

Seda, if you're in a hurry to get hot food cooled down, pack your sink with ice and water, and put the pot in. The contents will cool pretty quickly and you can then jar it and refrigerate.

Mom was right. If you put HOT food directly into the refrigerator, you will mess with the cooling system. It heats up the whole fridge.
 
You need to allow it to cool down slightly - putting very hot food in the fridge raises the fridge temperature and therefore puts the rest of your food at risk. If you read othre posts, you have up to two hours in the danger zone.

Cover the food and leave it out for a while - this need only be from serving to the end of clean up, the food should be cool enough then.


Don't cover it...it will prevent the heat from escaping.
 
it's a toss up - letting it sit out will gather bacterial and putting it in the fridge is bad for the fridge.
 
It depends on the size and density of the food.

A stockpot full of boiling hot soup should not go directly into the fridge. It should be cooled first. This can be done a variety of ways. You could divvy the soup up into smaller containers. You could put the stockpot in a sink full of cold water and stir every once in a while. You could put cold packs directly into the soup (sealed of course).

Something small with or with a lot of surface area can usually go directly into the fridge. If you cooked up a pound of ground beef and wanted to use it later then that could go from stove top directly to fridge without worrying that it will do anything bad to the fridge or the food inside it.

If you have something like in my first example then it is very important that you find a way to cool it down and get it in the fridge within an hour or two.
 
It's the interior part of the food you need to worry about. Some things can be left out and stirred occasionally with success...then cover with plastic or foil and poke some holes in it just in case it's still a bit warm. It's the interior that can stay in the danger zone. If it's a stockpot of soup, or spaghetti sauce, or something like that you can easily fill a baggie with ice, zip it, and insert into the center. Or do what Katie E and I do...fill an empty soda bottle and leave about 2" or 3" of head space, cap it, and freeze it. When you need it just place the bottle in the center of the pot. It doesn't take long at ALL to do it this way.

Yes, it does heat up your refrigerator but it's mostly about the interior of that pot/dish where the heat will be held.

If cooling on the counter place in several dishes, if possible. Or, if it's a hunk of meat i.e., roast, cut into smaller chunks/pieces. When you go to cover it still poke some holes for the rest of the heat to escape.
 
I have a small fan I use when I need to cool down food quickly. Divvy it up in smaller containers and point the fan in on them to cool quickly.
 

Well, they are mostly talking about cheesecake...sometimes not though.

I can agree with some of what they say but they are leaving some VERY important steps out - steps that affect the quality and stability of the food. For instance, ok, if you want to put hot foods in the refrigerator, for whatever reason, DO NOT PUT A LID ON IT and if you do leave it offset so heat can escape OR, poke holes in the plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Like I said, it's not so much about heating up the refrigerator - it's about the food you are putting in there.
 
2 + 2 = 4

If you can remember that 2 + 2 = 4, you can remember the basic rules for storing leftovers in your fridge:

2 Hours from oven to refrigerator: Refrigerate or freeze leftovers within 2 hours of cooking the food. Otherwise throw it away.
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2 Inches thick to cool it quick: Store food at a shallow depth - about 2 inches - to speed chilling.

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4 Days in the refrigerator - otherwise freeze it: Use leftovers from the refrigerator within 4 days, except stuffing and gravy, which should be used within 2 days.

:heart:
Z
 
I didn't see anyone mention the reason this whole thing about not putting hot foods in the refrigerator got started in the first place.

Back before there were refrigerators, there were iceboxes. Put hot food in an icebox, the ice melts more quickly, and if the ice melts too quickly, all the food in the icebox may go bad before the iceman comes around to deliver another block. So food had to be left to cool before it could go in the icebox.

Even then, much as now, there were people who didn't bother to wonder why they shouldn't put hot food in the icebox, they just knew they weren't supposed to. I know, it may seem obvious, but then, a lot of things do, don't they? :)

Fast-forward a few years, and envision little Sally asking her mother why she shouldn't put hot food in the refrigerator, and her mother telling her "You just shouldn't." Or, another one I heard once: "Because it will go sour." Whatever that means. It's just a carry-over from the icebox days, something their mother or grandmother taught them, which is no longer valid because of new technology. Of course, you still shouldn't park a giant red-hot cauldron of chili right up against your milk. And because heat rises, it is a good idea to put hot foods on the top shelf; if put on the bottom, they will be heating everything above them. Oh, and never put a ceramic container, like the liner of your crock pot, for instance, in the refrigerator while it is still hot; it will most likely break.


The bit about food going "sour," by the way, was from an old girlfriend, whose mother had apparently been full of cooking myths and quite devoid of logic. She would invariably throw out partial cans of olives and anything else like that that I neglected to put in other containers. Though when asked why, she didn't really know. "You just can't store things in cans in the refrigerator," she would say, while looking at me as though my foolishness would eventually poison us both.

That myth, I'm sure, grew out of a misguided fear of botulism. Not that the fear of botulism is misguided, but the fear of the method by which it might be contracted. Any canned food stored on a shelf that bursts or is otherwise breached needs to be thrown out due to the near certainty of botulism, but that simply does not apply to intact canned goods that are opened, partially used, then refrigerated. If it did, we'd have to re-package ketchup, once we opened it. :)
 
Tin cans, once opened, would start having a chemical reaction with the food and air that would transfer the metal taste to the food. You can still experience that but most acidic foods now have a coating on the inside to prevent such.

I'm not aware of any misguided fear of Botulism, though I am aware of a cavalier disregard for the seriousness of it because, like lightning strikes, your chance of it is still quite rare....but it does strike.

You won't find Botulism in an open bottle of ketchup because its a high-acid food product and usually has bunches of food preservatives in it. Homemade products without the preservatives will see higher instances of bacterias, molds, yeasts and fungi, if not kept properly refrigerated. Conditions that favor botulism include a high-moisture, low-salt, low-acid environment in which food is stored without oxygen or refrigeration.
 
You won't find Botulism in an open bottle of ketchup because its a high-acid food product and usually has bunches of food preservatives in it. Homemade products without the preservatives will see higher instances of bacterias, molds, yeasts and fungi, if not kept properly refrigerated. Conditions that favor botulism include a high-moisture, low-salt, low-acid environment in which food is stored without oxygen or refrigeration.

If I found a bottle of ketchup on an unrefrigerated shelf that had been breached, I wouldn't use it, would you? Are you saying botulism can't occur in ketchup?
 
Many many many people store ketchup on he shelf, opened. It is not necessary to store ketchup in the fridge.
 

Well, that link puts the arguement to rest!! I've never had a problem with putting hot food straight in the fridge, and as the linked article states, putting food in the fridge still hot has no effect on the fridges temperature. In fact
We found putting a hot cheesecake in the refrigerator to have less of an effect on the temperature than adding a new batch of groceries from the store.

I just make sure I put a cloth of some sort on the glass shelf to protect it against the hot dish, and I never have a problem.
 
I would not say that article puts anything to rest.

First off, they were only testing a cheesecake. There is a HUGE difference between putting a hot cheesecake in the cold fridge and putting a large stockpot full of boiling soup in the fridge.

Secondly the article says that the temp on the top shelf only went up 3 degrees F. The problem though is that most fridges hover around 37 degrees F so raising it 3 degrees puts it at 40F which is the beginning of the danger zone.
 
Well, yes, I suppose a cheesecake is different to a pot of hot stock, you're right there. I generally do let things sit on the bench until clean up time, but when I do casseroles with meat in them I put them in hot with the lid on as long as I put a teatowel down. One day we forgot to, and had to throw away a whole roast chicken (minus the legs that we'd eaten), so to avoid that I put it in fairly quickly, plus I'd rather not take chances with cooked animal meat.
 
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