Reheating leftover chicken soup safe?
- Thread starter nicklord1
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Andy M.
Certified Pretend Chef
Reheating soup the next day (or so) is not an issue. Leaving the soup at room temperature for extended periods is. So, if you make the soup, eat it and refrigerate ther leftovers then reheat the leftovers the next day, you should be OK.
elaine l
Head Chef
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- Aug 10, 2006
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I am not qualified to answer this but I have done just what you did.
GB
Chief Eating Officer
Yes that will be OK.
jennyema
Chef Extraordinaire
That's ok, but it is highly recommended that you cool your stock much more quickly. It's easy to do with a water bath or with bottles of frozen water.
Once the stock comes down to 140 degrees the bacteria start infecting it.
BreezyCooking
Washing Up
Your stock will be just fine cooling it as you did. No need for baths or frozen water. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but it never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which some folks now insist we go to re: things like cooling down stock or soup. Procedures that for many years never did anyone any harm.
I think that's one reason why so many people (definitely not me) are so very sensitive to natural bacteria these days. If you live in a glass bubble, don't stick your toe out. . . .
I think that's one reason why so many people (definitely not me) are so very sensitive to natural bacteria these days. If you live in a glass bubble, don't stick your toe out. . . .
jennyema
Chef Extraordinaire
Of course everyone's approach to food safety is different.
Here's one of America's most respected food scientists on why it's so important to cool homemade stock quickly.
"Let me emphasize, then, that it is indeed essential for safety's sake to cool your stock as quickly as possible to prevent the growth of bacteria." Robert Wolke
It's so easy to cool it quickly with a water bath or with ice. The risk/reward with just letting it sit out for hours doesn't make much sense to me.
GB
Chief Eating Officer
I would love to see your proof of this. How can you possibly say that no one was ever harmed by those procedures?
Food poisoning can only be confirmed by a blood test. it is highly likely that many people had gotten sick from poor food practices and just attributed it to something else. There is no such thing as a 24 hour flu, yet you always here people saying that is what they have. It is possible that very often those people who have a "24 hour flu" actually have mild food poisoning and do not even realize it.
elaine l
Head Chef
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Well Nicklord, you still with us? haha. I am sure your soup was just delicious!
mozart
Senior Cook
Well, I clearly don't agree with Breezy's attitude. She is probably correct that illness is rare from this practice, but it is not because people have a resistance built up from following years of poor practices, it is because there is a limited potential for problems and it requires a number poor practices to end up with infected food at the point of eating.
C. perfringens is the only spore forming bacteria I am aware of that can cause problems in properly cooked foods. All the rest are killed. (Botulism is not a problem in this type of cooking).
Once cooked, if the spores are present, thay may vegetate into the bacterial form and grow very rapidly. Ingestion of large amounts of these organisms cause the food poisoning. This is not a disease caused by the toxin like botulism.
This is the reason why rapid cooling is important. Over 2 hours under 140 degrees and sufficient growth can occur to cause illness if ingested.
However... and this is a big however... reheating the stock to over 165 degrees again will kill any bacteria that had formed. This is the reason why, IMO, there is little anecdotal evidence of problems with soups and stocks; we almost always reheat them to the boiling point.
The foods most commonly associated with this food poisoning are gravy based dishes, rice and meats, where fear of drying or changing the consistency of the food often leads us to just reheat to 120-140. If the the food was previously improperly cooled and then improperly reheated, this food poisoning has an excellent chance of occurring.
And that is the problem with Breezy's thinking, because she will also leave her rice, gravy, and ham out for several hours without concern.
So Jenny's point is very well taken that the amount of effort to follow good cooling practices is minimal compared to the consequences of guessing wrong.
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/chap11.html
