If I cook up some food and decide to keep it to reheat later or tomorrow, why is it important where I store it? Eg it needs to be refrigerated. I get that bacteria will grow in the danger zones – so room temperature means bacteria will grow. But if I’m heating the food up doesn’t that kill the bacteria that would grow anyway? So why does it matter?
In: 35
In order to inactivate bacteria in your food you need to bring it up to a boil (or close to it 160F 70C) for 1 min. When you microwave your burrito back up to eating temp you usually aren’t getting the whole thing that hot as it would badly burn you mouth and you aren’t holding it at that temperature for long enough. Because of this a large percentage of germs remain, if you refrigerate that percentage will represent a much smaller number than if you didn’t.
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