Beef Use By Date

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Caporegime
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That food is wastage it should not be put back in the chiller and if an employee is caught doing it they'd be in for a severe spanking.

really?

have you never seen an asda employee walking about putting back stuff? like all the crap people change their minds about at the checkout, etc.
 
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with mince your first port of call is smell .. it's mince it's been chewed up and spit out .. so those bacteria that give off a smell will be first in line .. that's your warning
with meat then I'd just wash it and cook it bringing it to a nice 83 deg c for a steak sized piece
for a larger piece I'd cut off the outside 10 ml even if it was 5-8 days over as bacteria would be slow to penetrate
 
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Use by date is a useful guild to how long something will with standard handling will last before it goes off. Just because it has passed its use by date does not mean it has spoiled nor if it still inside its use by date it is automatically fine to eat.

If a food as a use by date it means when the food goes bad it will cause some harm rather than a best before date which just means after its date the food will be not as tasty/nutritious but not bad for you.

Above all use your judgement if it looks/smell bad it most likely is bad no mater which side the use by date it is (or best before date).
 
Soldato
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Use by date is a useful guild to how long something will with standard handling will last before it goes off. Just because it has passed its use by date does not mean it has spoiled nor if it still inside its use by date it is automatically fine to eat.

If a food as a use by date it means when the food goes bad it will cause some harm rather than a best before date which just means after its date the food will be not as tasty/nutritious but not bad for you.

Above all use your judgement if it looks/smell bad it most likely is bad no mater which side the use by date it is (or best before date).

I really don't know how to get this across. Spoilage is not poisonous. You cannot smell, see or taste pathogenic (poisoning) bacteria. If you could, we wouldn't need microbiology labs in hospitals.
 
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Check if it's ok. Any change of colour and smell, discard.
Otherwise, ok.
Things don't go off magically, as far it's stored and refrigerated properly.
Also you my find good which isn't "expired" yet but shouldn't be consumed, either for poor conservation, or contamination during production.
 
Soldato
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I also worry about use by dates and have posted on here in the past about a few things I was unsure of. I'd say as long as it smells ok and not putrid and as long as you cook it to a specific internal temperature, it's fine. Red meat cooked to an internal temperature of 160f/71c and chicken cooked to 165c/74c kills bacteria. I always used my thermapen to check for those temps. And leftover food to be reheated should also reach 165f/74c.

What I generally do when I buy mince beef, sausages, chicken thighs or drumsticks is freeze them if I don't intend to cook them the same day or if I'm unsure if I might even cook them the same week. Particularly when I buy them at a reduced price if they're being sold on the actual use by date. As long as they're frozen before the use by date has passed, they'll keep for ages, but once you defrost them, then they must to be cooked the same day. I happily defrost sausages and mince in the microwave and 500g of minced beef only takes a few minutes. But I defrost chicken overnight in the fridge as my understanding is that it's safer.

One other thing. If you plan to freeze meat or chicken, prepare ahead by splitting them into the portion sizes you'll want for single meals before freezing, otherwise they'll be stuck together and you'll have to defrost the whole lot. It's pretty much impossible to pull apart the amount you want to cook once frozen without resorting to a hammer and chisel. With a pack of 8 sausages for example, I split into two lots of 4 and wrap each portion in clingfilm.
 
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I really don't know how to get this across. Spoilage is not poisonous. You cannot smell, see or taste pathogenic (poisoning) bacteria. If you could, we wouldn't need microbiology labs in hospitals.

Yes but if something is contaminated with a pathogenic (poisoning) bacteria it is going to be bad for you regardless of the use by date.
 
Soldato
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Yes but if something is contaminated with a pathogenic (poisoning) bacteria it is going to be bad for you regardless of the use by date.

Not really. So long as the numbers are below the minimum infective dose or they’ve not been allowed to produce toxins it can be fine to eat. Something like Salmonella is fine for most people up to about 1 million colony forming units. Over that and you get sick. The food may leave the factory with a few hundred salmonella and then it grows in storage.
 
Soldato
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3 hours over.... You checked the NHS Web site?

Are you like a baby that suddenly became an adult a bit like that film Big?
 
Soldato
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Where are you getting all this info from? Sources please? Not saying what you are saying is wrong. I am intrigued how you seem to know so much about this.

It’s what I used to do for a living. I was in charge of food quality and safety at one of the UK’s biggest meat packers. And I’ve worked for retailers (supermarkets) as well. The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health is a good place to start looking for food safety information. Other good sources of information are the Royal Society for Public Health and even the Food Standards Agency website.
 
Soldato
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The USE BY is calculated based on the worst case microbial loading at the point the meat is packed, then they know fairly precisely how fast the target pathogens will grow in your fridge at home and when they almost get to a point where you would be made sick by them, that’s the USE BY date.

Most factories will test the mince at the beginning and end of the run to make sure they are inside the worst case scenario - but they will generally be packing right up to the limit of the worst case scenario because they know that as long as you eat the mince inside the USE BY, everyone is safe.

Definitely don’t confuse spoilage with toxicity. They’re not the same thing. If the meat was green, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because you can see it’s not right. Same if it smelt bad. The challenge is that you can’t see or smell most of the really dangerous bacteria. Which is why you should stay on the right side of the USE BY.

I defer to your obviously in depth knowledge on the subject versus my hazy memory of a programme :D

HOWEVER no one seems to be addressing the second part. IF meat is cooked on it's use by date, is it then ok to eat it if it is refrigerated over 2-3 days?

He quoted your wrong post when he answered


So yes, it is fine to eat over 2-3 days as the cooking resets the shelf life timer.
 
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OP
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I also worry about use by dates and have posted on here in the past about a few things I was unsure of. I'd say as long as it smells ok and not putrid and as long as you cook it to a specific internal temperature, it's fine. Red meat cooked to an internal temperature of 160f/71c and chicken cooked to 165c/74c kills bacteria. I always used my thermapen to check for those temps. And leftover food to be reheated should also reach 165f/74c.

What I generally do when I buy mince beef, sausages, chicken thighs or drumsticks is freeze them if I don't intend to cook them the same day or if I'm unsure if I might even cook them the same week. Particularly when I buy them at a reduced price if they're being sold on the actual use by date. As long as they're frozen before the use by date has passed, they'll keep for ages, but once you defrost them, then they must to be cooked the same day. I happily defrost sausages and mince in the microwave and 500g of minced beef only takes a few minutes. But I defrost chicken overnight in the fridge as my understanding is that it's safer.

One other thing. If you plan to freeze meat or chicken, prepare ahead by splitting them into the portion sizes you'll want for single meals before freezing, otherwise they'll be stuck together and you'll have to defrost the whole lot. It's pretty much impossible to pull apart the amount you want to cook once frozen without resorting to a hammer and chisel. With a pack of 8 sausages for example, I split into two lots of 4 and wrap each portion in clingfilm.


What do you put each portion into to freeze? Cling film would be dangerous for like raw chicken breast and beef right? Too thin so can tear easily?
 
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3 hours over.... You checked the NHS Web site?

Are you like a baby that suddenly became an adult a bit like that film Big?

My parents have abused me my entire life and they still do. I wasn't allowed to cook most of my life and I defo wasn't allowed to cook meat until only recently. They also move everything I setup in the kitchen which means forgetting I had ingredients and then they go bad and spending hours finding something because my stepmother doesn't talk to me and my dad isn't in the house and I am usually too scared to ask him as he has SERIOUS anger issues and asking him anything makes him get angry, and we have multiple properties right next to each other and stuff gets taken between them and sometimes they just throw my stuff away.

My dad often damages food cookware I buy because he's a very aggressive dumb idiot and does things like use my new blade to cut a watermelon over the edge of the kitchen sink which means the blade slams down onto the edge of the metal sink as he very aggressively attempts to cut the watermelon, leaving the kitchen sink with an unsightly mark and the blade damaged.

He also has terrible hygiene along with all other male members of this 'family and extended family' (extended family live in the other properties). The light switch ALWAYS has some black grime on it as does the fridge DOOR. The DOOR FFS sake. Why do you need to touch the damn door when theres a handle on it?! Same with all the cabinet doors.

Also he is aggressive with everything in general, so around the sink after he has used it is water everywhere including water dripping down the front of the cabinets under the sink - and that water isn't always clean water.

There has been a lot of violence I have suffered from at their hands not to mention the emotional abuse. Learn what creates human behaviour. If someone is dumb, skinny, ripped, muscular, very knowledgeable etc, it is due to their environment which includes all the people in it not just the physical environment (which is not what environment really means in this context).

So no. I don't know how to cook for myself. And I'm trying to learn. I also was hospitalised and shot with morphine due to what I think was minced beef. Read one of my previous posts for more detail.

Let me learn in peace.
 
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