My mom often makes a soup, keeps it in the fridge for over 10 days (it usually is left overnight on a turned off stove or crockpot before the fridge), then boils it and eats it. She insists it’s safe and has zero risk. I find it really gross because even if the bacteria are killed, they had to have made a lot of waste in the 10-15 days the soup sits and grows mold/foul right?!
But she insists its normal and I’m wrong. So can someone explain to me, someone with low biology knowledge, if it’s safe or not…and why she shouldn’t be doing this if she shouldn’t?
Every food safety guide implies you should throw soup out within 3-4 days to prevent getting ill.
Edit: I didn’t mean to be misleading with the words indefinitely either. I guess I should have used periodically boiling. She’ll do it every few days (then leave it out with no heat for at least 12 but sometimes up to 48 before a quick reboil and fridge).
In: Biology
Boiling food does kill the majority of the bacteria; however, many of the things that make us sick are not the bacteria themselves, but their waste (bacteria poop). The bacteria may be dead and unable to hurt you, but the waste is still there. That’s why you can’t just cook rotten food and make it safe. She may not have gotten sick yet, but eventually she’ll get a bad roll of the dice.
That being said, if you can keep the food over a certain temperature indefinitely, it keeps the bacteria from growing and producing waste. There’s something called perpetual stew, which is a medieval concept where they would keep a stew cooking over a fire for months at a time, and they would constantly be eating from it and then adding new ingredients to refill it.
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