I'm about to go Gordon Ramsay on my roomie. Help me be nice!
April 5, 2013 1:58 PM Subscribe
How to tell her not to let unsealed meat go brown in the fridge for over a week in a efficient and diplomatic fashion.
She's actually in cooking school, I'm not. But I know for a fact that this is a bad idea. The date on the meat is been past for 5 days and it's just sitting there. Can it contaminate other food? I ate something that was in the fridge and now I feel slight stomach pains (might be paranoid ones)
What's the best way to let her know its not ok without going all "wth is this, so gross!"
Other than that she's a good roommate and I want to keep a good non-recriminating relationship going. I tend to be blunt and matter-of-factly but a lot of people like to communicate things otherwise, so how should I go about this?
If it was just me I would simply throw it out, clean the fridge and lecture her on food safety. I don't think she would like it. How do I let her know?
She's actually in cooking school, I'm not. But I know for a fact that this is a bad idea. The date on the meat is been past for 5 days and it's just sitting there. Can it contaminate other food? I ate something that was in the fridge and now I feel slight stomach pains (might be paranoid ones)
What's the best way to let her know its not ok without going all "wth is this, so gross!"
Other than that she's a good roommate and I want to keep a good non-recriminating relationship going. I tend to be blunt and matter-of-factly but a lot of people like to communicate things otherwise, so how should I go about this?
If it was just me I would simply throw it out, clean the fridge and lecture her on food safety. I don't think she would like it. How do I let her know?
What kind of meat? You can 'dry age' cuts of steak in the fridge at home. If rather it was ground beef or something similar then yeah you might have a issue re: bacteria/contamination.
posted by Captain_Science at 2:03 PM on April 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Captain_Science at 2:03 PM on April 5, 2013 [4 favorites]
I'd approach her calmly and just say, "Hey, I'm a bit of a freak about food safety, and I like to keep the fridge clean and odor free. I notice that there's some expired stuff in there, would you mind if I threw away anything that's turned?"
Either she's going to be a human and say, "Oh! Gosh! You know I get ambitious and then I order out. Sure, by all means."
Or she's going to be weird and say, "Oh, I never go by what's on the label, I've learned in my classes that you can AGE meat in the fridge."
If that's the case, you can say, "That's cool, but can we agree that if it smells like death and there are maggots on it, that I can toss it?"
Hopefully, it goes no further than this very brief conversation.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 2:04 PM on April 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Either she's going to be a human and say, "Oh! Gosh! You know I get ambitious and then I order out. Sure, by all means."
Or she's going to be weird and say, "Oh, I never go by what's on the label, I've learned in my classes that you can AGE meat in the fridge."
If that's the case, you can say, "That's cool, but can we agree that if it smells like death and there are maggots on it, that I can toss it?"
Hopefully, it goes no further than this very brief conversation.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 2:04 PM on April 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I would say, "Hey Roommate! Did you see that your meat has been gone by for over 5 days? Do you mind if I chuck it?"
Sometimes it's okay to let a steak sit in the fridge to age it, so make sure she is not doing this first. Maybe she got so busy with school that she forgot about it.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 2:04 PM on April 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
Sometimes it's okay to let a steak sit in the fridge to age it, so make sure she is not doing this first. Maybe she got so busy with school that she forgot about it.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 2:04 PM on April 5, 2013 [8 favorites]
I honestly think you can never go wrong with a simple, "Hey, dude, this is gross. Please don't do this again."
But also: dry aging meat in the fridge is a thing, so is that a possibility? Might want to check with roomie before throwing it out...
posted by Admiral Haddock at 2:05 PM on April 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
But also: dry aging meat in the fridge is a thing, so is that a possibility? Might want to check with roomie before throwing it out...
posted by Admiral Haddock at 2:05 PM on April 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
There is a good chance that the meat is now unsafe to eat. But without some kind of cross-contamination, it will not make other food in the fridge dangerous. An example of cross-contamination would be picking up other foods after you handle the meat and don't wash your hands.
I would say one of two things.
In the short term: "Hey, this unpacked raw meat's been sitting in the fridge for a few days, would you mind if I threw it out? It's probably not safe to eat anymore."
In the medium term: "Hey, would you mind if we split up the space in the fridge? It'll help me keep track of which stuff is mine, and you won't have to deal with me rummaging through your stuff to find something."
A consistent problem with shared fridges is that they're usually messy and overstuffed. If your fridge is full of nearly empty bottles of condiments, old takeout containers, and old crumbling cheese, it's probably a good time to clean it out together.
posted by Nomyte at 2:05 PM on April 5, 2013
I would say one of two things.
In the short term: "Hey, this unpacked raw meat's been sitting in the fridge for a few days, would you mind if I threw it out? It's probably not safe to eat anymore."
In the medium term: "Hey, would you mind if we split up the space in the fridge? It'll help me keep track of which stuff is mine, and you won't have to deal with me rummaging through your stuff to find something."
A consistent problem with shared fridges is that they're usually messy and overstuffed. If your fridge is full of nearly empty bottles of condiments, old takeout containers, and old crumbling cheese, it's probably a good time to clean it out together.
posted by Nomyte at 2:05 PM on April 5, 2013
First of all, dial it down, mate. Stomach pains? Really??
You don't know a lot about food safety if you think that's how this works.
While I'm sympathetic that you are grossed out by the sight, or smell, or whatever, you sound like you want to blow up your relationship with your roommate.
Since she is in culinary school, why don't you just ask her about it? Maybe it is a school project? Or she honestly forgot about it being in the fridge?
Does an open package of meat require cleaning out the entire fridge and a lecture on something she likely knows more about than you? Probably not, unless blood was dripping all over the place.
If the meat was on a upper or middle shelf you have a case. If it was on a lower shelf, not dripping onto anything, then your roommate likely has an experiment working and forgot to mention it to you. Or forgot the meat was there at all. Meh.
Either way, a quick text message would have cleared this up without bringing Ramsay or the Green into it.
You have a roommate. Things like this happen in shared living spaces. While a quick text message or question is OK, it emphatically does NOT require a lecture.
posted by jbenben at 2:19 PM on April 5, 2013 [19 favorites]
You don't know a lot about food safety if you think that's how this works.
While I'm sympathetic that you are grossed out by the sight, or smell, or whatever, you sound like you want to blow up your relationship with your roommate.
Since she is in culinary school, why don't you just ask her about it? Maybe it is a school project? Or she honestly forgot about it being in the fridge?
Does an open package of meat require cleaning out the entire fridge and a lecture on something she likely knows more about than you? Probably not, unless blood was dripping all over the place.
If the meat was on a upper or middle shelf you have a case. If it was on a lower shelf, not dripping onto anything, then your roommate likely has an experiment working and forgot to mention it to you. Or forgot the meat was there at all. Meh.
Either way, a quick text message would have cleared this up without bringing Ramsay or the Green into it.
You have a roommate. Things like this happen in shared living spaces. While a quick text message or question is OK, it emphatically does NOT require a lecture.
posted by jbenben at 2:19 PM on April 5, 2013 [19 favorites]
Here is a script...
You (via face-to-face, text, or phone call): "Hey, roomie. What's up with the package of meat in the fridge?"
Roomie: "Oh! Blah blah blah."
And then you guys decide what to do, if anything needs doing, or if it's all OK.
The real problem is that you sound unnecessarily upset, so, either there is something going on in your life and this meat thing is an easy taget, or you don't like the roommate as much as you say you do.
It's hard to keep it simple when you are really really white hot pissed. Go ahead and ignore this until you calm down (or better yet, can laugh about it) then go ahead and shoot your roommate a question via text.
posted by jbenben at 2:29 PM on April 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
You (via face-to-face, text, or phone call): "Hey, roomie. What's up with the package of meat in the fridge?"
Roomie: "Oh! Blah blah blah."
And then you guys decide what to do, if anything needs doing, or if it's all OK.
The real problem is that you sound unnecessarily upset, so, either there is something going on in your life and this meat thing is an easy taget, or you don't like the roommate as much as you say you do.
It's hard to keep it simple when you are really really white hot pissed. Go ahead and ignore this until you calm down (or better yet, can laugh about it) then go ahead and shoot your roommate a question via text.
posted by jbenben at 2:29 PM on April 5, 2013 [2 favorites]
"Hey, can I throw away that meat that's been going bad in the fridge for the past week or so?"
Follow up: "Cool. In the future if I see meat like that again, can I also throw that away too or do you want me to check with you first?"
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 2:45 PM on April 5, 2013
Follow up: "Cool. In the future if I see meat like that again, can I also throw that away too or do you want me to check with you first?"
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 2:45 PM on April 5, 2013
You can 'dry age' cuts of steak in the fridge at home.
Dry aging beef is totally a thing. Dry aging individual cuts at home is not a thing that actually works very well. If she's in culinary school she probably knows this.
posted by pullayup at 3:04 PM on April 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
Dry aging beef is totally a thing. Dry aging individual cuts at home is not a thing that actually works very well. If she's in culinary school she probably knows this.
And guess what? For steaks aged five days or less, tasters could not identify which steak was aged and which was fresh. There was literally no detectable difference in the cooked steaks. In fact, out of the first seven tasters, none of them were able to correctly identify the odd-steak out. Even with completely random guessing, there's a 94 percent chance that at least one of those tasters should have gotten it right. In all, only two out of 12 tasters correctly identified the different steaks, a number still lower than you'd expect from pure chance alone. Again, steaks aged for seven days were ranked below the rest of the steaks for having stale flavors.That said, just having meat hang out for a week is not going to contaminate your food unless it is dripping on it or touching it. Bacteria just aren't that mobile. On the other hand, any meat could contaminate your food if it drips on it or touches it, even if it happens in the first five minutes of its tenure in the fridge. So, it's always a good idea to store it below anything which might be contaminated. Your roommate should also know this: it's a pretty basic tenet of commercial kitchen food safety.
Finally, we tasted the fresh and five-day-aged steaks against steaks that were aged for 28 days in a professional aging cabinet. The difference was immediately, undeniably perceptible, with the true aged steaks offering a far more tender texture and a significantly deeper flavor. Frankly, I don't see how anyone could possibly confuse the two.
So there we have it. Some pretty darn strong evidence that the so-called "aging" of individual steaks in the refrigerator is entirely bogus.
posted by pullayup at 3:04 PM on April 5, 2013 [1 favorite]
First off, food that's going bad can't contaminate other food, if that other food is in a sealed container. So the stomach pains you're having are probably not from food poisoning. (Also, food poisoning is usually one of those kinds of things that you don't have to ask "is this food poisoning maybe", because you KNOW something is wrong.)
Now - I'm unclear whether this is meat that you're sharing, or just hers. If it's both of yours, then just maybe saying "yo, this meat is lookin' pretty bad, let's both try to seal things up better." If it's just hers, the MOST i would do is wait until I'm cleaning out the fridge anyway and say "so, I'm cleaning out the fridge and I found this and it looks kinda iffy, want me to chuck it?" But otherwise - it's her meat, and if she wants to waste money that way, then....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:31 PM on April 5, 2013
Now - I'm unclear whether this is meat that you're sharing, or just hers. If it's both of yours, then just maybe saying "yo, this meat is lookin' pretty bad, let's both try to seal things up better." If it's just hers, the MOST i would do is wait until I'm cleaning out the fridge anyway and say "so, I'm cleaning out the fridge and I found this and it looks kinda iffy, want me to chuck it?" But otherwise - it's her meat, and if she wants to waste money that way, then....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:31 PM on April 5, 2013
Is this a single incident, or just the latest in a long and recurring series?
*If this is an isolated incident, just pull out the meat and ask her, "hey, this looks like it's gone bad: do you want me to toss it out for you?" In this kind of situation, no need for the full-fledged roommate talk.
*If this is one more time in a long series, then yeah, you're gonna have to have a come-to-jesus talk about food safety.
posted by easily confused at 4:37 PM on April 5, 2013
*If this is an isolated incident, just pull out the meat and ask her, "hey, this looks like it's gone bad: do you want me to toss it out for you?" In this kind of situation, no need for the full-fledged roommate talk.
*If this is one more time in a long series, then yeah, you're gonna have to have a come-to-jesus talk about food safety.
posted by easily confused at 4:37 PM on April 5, 2013
I used to be a vegetarian, and then I ate cheeseburgers and turkey sandwiches but didn't keep meat in the house, and now I've gone full on Roasting A Chicken. I'm keeping raw meat in my fridge for the first time pretty much ever as an adult.
Every once in a while I'll throw some meat into the fridge (usually from the freezer, rarely directly from the store), and then something comes up, and then the next night I forget, and then maybe I end up ordering takeout... a few days go by, and I open the fridge to discover some pretty unappetizing meat.
I throw it away and move on with my life.
I have not died yet, to my knowledge, and no other food stored in my fridge has been tainted by this.
I think you should calmly and non-passive-aggressively remind your roommate to clean out the fridge periodically, especially if she's in the habit of leaving culinary school experiments around. If it's really only the meat issue, I would straight up say, "I've been noticing a lot of rank meat in the fridge. It's kind of gross." There's a strong possibility she's just being absent-minded and needs a reminder that the fridge is shared space.
posted by Sara C. at 7:12 PM on April 5, 2013
Every once in a while I'll throw some meat into the fridge (usually from the freezer, rarely directly from the store), and then something comes up, and then the next night I forget, and then maybe I end up ordering takeout... a few days go by, and I open the fridge to discover some pretty unappetizing meat.
I throw it away and move on with my life.
I have not died yet, to my knowledge, and no other food stored in my fridge has been tainted by this.
I think you should calmly and non-passive-aggressively remind your roommate to clean out the fridge periodically, especially if she's in the habit of leaving culinary school experiments around. If it's really only the meat issue, I would straight up say, "I've been noticing a lot of rank meat in the fridge. It's kind of gross." There's a strong possibility she's just being absent-minded and needs a reminder that the fridge is shared space.
posted by Sara C. at 7:12 PM on April 5, 2013
Is your roommate Heston Blumenthal in a wig? (30 seconds.)
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:18 AM on April 6, 2013
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:18 AM on April 6, 2013
I once lived with someone that sincerely believed that food could pretty much be kept forever, and this person was wrong. This person also couldn't remember what food they put in the fridge/freezer or when it went in.
I gave up trying to convince them and would just throw it out when I felt it was bad. If they ever asked (and they seldom did), I simply said, "oh, it was moldy/bad/smelled."
posted by HuronBob at 3:52 AM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
I gave up trying to convince them and would just throw it out when I felt it was bad. If they ever asked (and they seldom did), I simply said, "oh, it was moldy/bad/smelled."
posted by HuronBob at 3:52 AM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: I didn't know about meat aging! looks like this is what it is, so I'll ask her. I'm glad it cannot contaminate just through shared spaced I was scared! I did have stomach pains but it wasn't related to the fridge. I ate something else and had them then too; it's because of my back. I'm relieved! Thanks all
posted by proximacentauri at 7:55 AM on April 6, 2013
posted by proximacentauri at 7:55 AM on April 6, 2013
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How unsealed are we talking? Open bag, or sitting in its blood on a plate? Either way, if it's not touching your own raw food you're fine.
posted by Dynex at 2:03 PM on April 5, 2013