Can I eat this? The Costco chicken edition.
January 24, 2020 8:46 AM   Subscribe

Bought a rotisserie chicken from Costco on Sunday. It was refrigerated immediately and has stayed that way. I think it smells fine, but there’s a three-day rule in our house regarding leftovers.

I would argue that this chicken is exempt because the packaging shell was never opened, thus the meat never handled and less likely to be contaminated. Partner argues that this five-day old cooked chicken was handled plenty prior to packing and is THIS CLOSE to spoiled due to age. There’s no “consume by” date to bolster either argument. The intent is to shred the chicken and douse in barbecue sauce. Would you eat this?
posted by ohcanireally to Food & Drink (32 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
What time on Sunday? When are you going to eat it today?

Because it's close, and I probably would not.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:48 AM on January 24, 2020


I regularly shred a Costco chicken and eat it as much as two weeks later.

No hesitation on this one.
posted by booooooze at 8:48 AM on January 24, 2020 [19 favorites]


That rule is bonkers to me so maybe I'm the wrong person to be advising you, but I would absolutely eat that chicken. Please, for all of us: enjoy.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 8:53 AM on January 24, 2020 [15 favorites]


I would eat that without thinking twice.
posted by sallybrown at 8:53 AM on January 24, 2020 [9 favorites]


I would absolutely eat it without even thinking about it. I give most prepared leftovers (either prepared by me or commercially) a week. 3 days seems very short to me, except for maybe really delicate stuff? The quality for restaurant-style prepared foods (like a sandwich or something) may decrease a bit but I have no qualms about safely eating it, and the quality for the chicken should be fine! Enjoy.
posted by sillysally at 8:57 AM on January 24, 2020 [4 favorites]


I would eat this in a heartbeat. Even if it had been opened.
posted by gaspode at 8:57 AM on January 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


Those chickens are pretty heavily salted (which makes them pretty heavily delicious), they are fine for a lot longer than three days. Salted meat keeps much, much better.
posted by skewed at 8:59 AM on January 24, 2020 [3 favorites]


Smell it. Does it smell weird? Feel it. Is it slimy?

I think you can imagine the flowchart.
posted by nosila at 9:00 AM on January 24, 2020 [3 favorites]


The rule in my house is 7 days. Your chicken would be our dinner for sure. I mean, if you're worried, you could re-cook it in the sauce if you really wanted to...I wouldn't bother.
posted by epanalepsis at 9:00 AM on January 24, 2020 [3 favorites]


I totally would -- not even a close call. In my house, we'll pick at a roast chicken for up to a week before we toss it. Not for nothing, but I think three days is really an unusually short deadline for something like roast chicken.
posted by holborne at 9:02 AM on January 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


The FDA thinks youre a day late, which means youre probably totally fine: See pg 4 -

“When purchasing fully cooked rotisserie or fast food chicken, be sure it is hot at the time of purchase. Use it within 2 hours or cut it into several pieces and refrigerate in shallow, covered containers. Eat within 3 to 4 days, either cold or reheated to 165 °F (73.9 °C). It is safe to freeze ready-prepared chicken. For best quality, flavor, and texture, use it within 4 months.”
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 9:03 AM on January 24, 2020 [5 favorites]


1 week is a good rule for leftovers and has never steered me wrong.
posted by fiercecupcake at 9:06 AM on January 24, 2020 [1 favorite]


The link Exceptional_Hubris points should help you. The FDA is incredibly, incredibly conservative - if you stay with even 20% of their recommendations here you're probably fine.
posted by epanalepsis at 9:07 AM on January 24, 2020


In my household, the chicken-eaters would not even think about blinking at a Costco chicken today. The main chicken eater, who eats about 2 Costco chickens a month and has never suffered any problems with his chicken strategy, would probably make it into stock or something else tomorrow, and if he didn't he'd toss it once it hits the week mark.
posted by charmedimsure at 9:08 AM on January 24, 2020


Cooked chicken rule is 3-4 days according to the USDA, they tend to lean on the conservative side, but still if stored as you said then I'd eat it but it would have to be today & i'm super paranoid about food poisoning as raised by Chef who was obsessive about food storage and he'd have eaten that, though not served it to the public.
posted by wwax at 9:11 AM on January 24, 2020


A thing to add to your calculus is how well done was the meat when first cooked? A rare-ish piece of meat...I'd worry about more than four days. But the Costco chicken was fully cooked. Eat it.
posted by tmdonahue at 9:18 AM on January 24, 2020


I would eat that without a second thought.
posted by rodlymight at 9:29 AM on January 24, 2020


I expect a week out of a Costco chicken. If the week changes, I change the chicken into soup, and freeze that.
posted by Oyéah at 9:31 AM on January 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


yes, no problem. (I'm a low risk taker, but I know those chickens, and if your fridge is good and cold, you're fine.)
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:35 AM on January 24, 2020


I have a 5-day limit on most things, and a cooked simple single-ingredient protein I'd personally go 6 on. I routinely cook chicken for the week on Sunday to eat through Friday. I mean, I always intend to put the last couple servings in the freezer and take them back out on Wednesday but I never do.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:43 AM on January 24, 2020


My family gets these and picks away at them sometimes for more than a week in the fridge, and we are all still alive.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 9:51 AM on January 24, 2020


Also, thanks, now I want a rotisserie chicken. Maybe that'll be my Sunday night dinner + week's leftovers next week.
posted by fiercecupcake at 10:03 AM on January 24, 2020 [1 favorite]


On the one hand, I would eat that chicken.

On the other hand, in terms of the actual issue at hand, I would just let the wookiee win unless y'all are sufficiently fucked-over that $5 is a big deal. Even if you "win," this looks an awful lot like some of the pyrhhic marital victories I've had in my time.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:12 AM on January 24, 2020 [7 favorites]


I'm pretty confident it's fine, but would have a bit of concern. I would peel off some meat and eat it now. If I lived, I would cheerfully heat the chicken thoroughly and for at least 20 minutes and eat for dinner.
posted by theora55 at 10:16 AM on January 24, 2020


I probably would not eat this. It is worth $5 to eliminate the possibility of old-chicken related gastric distress. I'd make a sandwich or something.

Now if the alternative is going back to Costco for another chicken, that loss is way more than $5 all told. If I absolutely needed a cooked chicken and had this one on hand, I might go for it.

Please let us know if you ate it and survived.
posted by the christopher hundreds at 10:32 AM on January 24, 2020


I eat these chickens fairly frequently. I take them home, and then take them apart and immediately put all the bones in a stockpot to make stock. I put all the carved chicken in a container that lives in the fridge for a week and gets eaten on its own or put into other dishes. Depending on when I get home from Costco and when I get around to carving, the chicken may have sat around for an hour or two. The Costco chickens are brined and then cooked at high temps and very thoroughly and then put directly from the oven into a brand new container that's sealed up. The opportunity for pathogens to be introduced are minimal. I'd eat your chicken without hesitation.
posted by quince at 10:36 AM on January 24, 2020 [4 favorites]


I'm super conservative and generally have a 3-day rule myself, but I push it to four under some circumstances. Five? Ehhhh. I always cut my rotisserie chickens up immediately, after the time I stuck one in the fridge without cutting it up and discovered that the meat was still 50+ degrees many hours later (another food safety thing I'm super conservative about). Given the extended time that a whole chicken stays over 40 degrees, I'd be inclined not to eat it when it's five days old on top of that.

I haven't had food poisoning in ages, but my husband has had it twice in the last couple of years. It's miserable. Weighing several days of that against the joy of eating slightly old meat, I always come out on the side of caution.
posted by kite at 11:04 AM on January 24, 2020 [1 favorite]


I would eat it personally and think you should go ahead, but I wouldn't try to convince your partner to eat it if they'll be anxiously on alert for food poisoning.
posted by songs about trains at 11:24 AM on January 24, 2020 [1 favorite]


Generally speaking, I give most cooked meat (not fish) a week, and I've never ever had issues. I'm fifty. I buy Costco chickens several times a year, and they're almost always in my fridge for a week. Sometimes more. Again, never had an issue. Obviously, if something smells funky or feels slimey, then toss that shit out. But three days? That's pretty conservative with most food, and you're wasting a lot that you probably don't have to.

My girlfriend, on the other had, has a similar three-day rule. It makes me sad to see how much perfectly good food she throws out. (And sometimes, I just eat what I know she's going to throw away. She thinks I ditched it. Nope. I ate it.)
posted by jdroth at 11:46 AM on January 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


I would not eat it.

I am not particularly conservative when it comes to food safety, but not when I did not prepare it myself. You don’t know how or when that chicken was roasted, how it was handled, if it stayed appropriately hot. If I’d roasted it and cut it up right away? I wouldn’t have an issue. As it is, 5 days for a store rotisserie chicken would be way outside my comfort zone.
posted by lydhre at 12:22 PM on January 24, 2020


You don’t know how or when that chicken was roasted, how it was handled, if it stayed appropriately hot.

This may be generally true with random rotisserie chicken, but Costco is pretty open and straightforward about their chickens. They come through their own supply chain, are roasted on a spit in plain view, they are slid straight off the spit into the plastic container with almost no handling (the food handlers wear appropriate clothing, hair/beard nets etc and use silicone gauntlets), the container is marked with a label stating the time that the chicken was roasted, and it is put directly onto the warming stand (stock being rotated and removed if necessary) which you have a good idea if it is working because you take it out yourself and can judge if it is cooler than expected. Their volume on these things is huge, so it is only in unusual circumstances that they hang around very long in the warmer before being bought anyway.

I don’t think this means you should necesarily ignore your own rules, and, as ever, you could get unlucky, but it really isn’t the same risk as a random low volume supermarket chicken of unknown quality, possibly prepared by an undertrained high schooler and kept around too long because it isn’t clearly timestamped
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 1:25 PM on January 24, 2020 [6 favorites]


Response by poster: Update: because of our schedules, the chicken actually sat in the fridge an additional day. So at the end of day SIX the whole thing was shredded into a massive starchy casserole-type thing that was baked and then eaten over next FOUR days. It was delicious and no one died, and I'm convinced these Costco birds are the cheap and magical answer to all meal planning.
posted by ohcanireally at 10:32 AM on January 30, 2020 [6 favorites]


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