If it gets up to temp, what’s the difference? Answers I have seen is it takes too long to reheat, but how does that apply to raw food if the time is the same?
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Bacteria has been growing on the food now that it has been in the fridge. Reheating in the slow cooker keeps the food in the danger zone for way too long. Its not the bacteria that makes you sick, its the poisons the bacteria produces as its waste product and that poison cannot be cooked away.
Who says you can’t? I think the question is “why would you” when there are faster ways to do it? You could reheat on the stove in less time, and if you’re only planning on eating a portion of what’s leftover, it doesn’t seem very efficient.
I’ve made stews etc and reheated them by putting the entire insert pot back in the cooker, but that’s only when I was planning to serve the entire batch again
The issue with food spoiling is that tiny organisms called bacteria will grow in the food, and some of their excretions are poisonous. Even if you later kill the bacteria with heat the poison is still there; hot poison is still poison.
Bacteria reproduce by dividing so their growth tends to be exponential. This means that for the first few generations their numbers don’t really change that much. If you have 100 bacteria then 200, 400, 800, etc. that is probably fine. Bacteria are tiny and the dose makes the poison, so a small amount of toxin isn’t going to cause a problem. But when you have a billion bacteria where each generation is making a billion more the amount of poison can be a problem!
That is where reheating leftovers can be a problem. With the raw food you should be starting with a much smaller population of bacteria so you have a longer time before they can grow to a problematic population size. Leftovers already had time to grow a bigger population so you have less time to let them grow before their poisons become dangerous. Slowly reheating in a slow cooker can allow time to generate the poisons even if the bacteria die at the end temperature.
Food safety is all about minimizing the amount of time food spends in the “danger zone” of temperatures where bacteria can flourish. This danger zone is, roughly, anything warmer than the fridge and colder than a cooking temperature (140F). This isn’t just about killing bacteria but about minimizing the amount of time it spends eating your food and turning it into toxic waste. You absolutely can get sick from eating food with no active bacteria. This is why you can’t just leave food out for weeks then make it “safe” by heating it through.
Ideally, you wouldn’t start raw food in a slow cooker – traditional braising usually starts with cooking the ingredients on high heat before moving to “low and slow.” This is a good move for both flavor/texture and food safety reasons. But putting your ingredients through one slow heating cycle generally won’t cause any catastrophic problems and may be tolerated because it’s convenient. Putting the same food through another slow heating cycle is flirting with danger and also unnecessary. Heating in a microwave or an oven is faster, easier, and achieves the same results.
As a side note, this is also why you should only reheat the leftovers you intend to eat immediately. Reheating that whole casserole dish, taking a few scoops, and putting the rest back in the fridge is subjecting later servings to unnecessary time in the danger zone.
Does this apply to pizza? I think pizza is exempt from all rules. /s
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