Can this food be saved?

December 5, 2024 10:28 AM

We find ourselves in the in-between "can we still eat it" period of refrigerated food in a power outage, for about 14 hours without power. If it were much longer, I'd ust throw things out. But I'm hesitating to waste all this food.

The official USDA answer is that after 4 hours without power, throw away all these things we have opened over the past week: soft and low fat cheese, milk, eggs, yogurt.
I have low-fat baby bel (in wax,) some goat cheese, an opened tub of nonfat yogurt, opened dairy and almond milk cartons, and about 8 eggs.
We have some roasted, cut vegetables leftover from yesterday as well.
I will throw away the opened carton of chicken broth and an oldish opened jar of mayo.
The fridge has not been opened during the outage and the ambient house went down from about 73 with the power on to about 58 degrees over the power outage.
One of us who would be eating all this has some health issues, so I don't want to take a lot of risks, but four hours seems kind of ridiculous. I certainly have forgotten to put milk back in the fridge for 3 hours before.
We'd need to buy new groceries to feed the person with a more sensitive system if necessary so I'm gearing this towards their level of precaution. They are not immunocompromised, but they do have a sensitive stomach.
Is there any other common sense data on this?

posted by ojocaliente to Food & Drink (13 answers total)

There's minimal difference between an unplugged refrigerator and a cooler. If you took a cooler to the beach all day with a bunch of snacks in it, would you feel safe eating those snacks all day? Overnight and the next day if the cooler still has ice in it? I would. And it's hardly beach weather in your house.

If you want to be extra safe pop by the gas station for a bag of ice and stick it in your fridge.
posted by phunniemee at 10:37 AM on December 5, 2024 [9 favorites]

Hmm, I had something like this happen recently, and I was a bit more cautious—basically in that time the whole freezer defrosted, and I had thermometers in both the freezer and refrigerator that put them well above the range they should be in for an unknown amount of hours. Do you have a thermometer you can stick in there?

I ended up getting rid of a whole lot of things that had been in the fridge and freezer. I threw away the eggs but gave the cheese, yogurt, oat milk, and some unopened deli meat to someone whose stomach is stronger than mine. They were fine!

Your Babybels are almost certainly fine. I wouldn't trust the soft cheese, yogurt, eggs, or milk. The almond milk might be OK but not sure.
posted by limeonaire at 11:15 AM on December 5, 2024

All of the dairy, eggs and almond milk I would eat without a second thought. Roasted vegetables too. I'd probably not worry about the mayo either, and if really everything was in the fridge and it stayed closed the entire time, I'd probably not even worry about the broth unless it was already pretty old.

Refrigeration has only been around and in widespread use in the last century or so. Yogurt and cheese were methods of preserving milk in the absence of refrigeration! I mean, trust your nose and your instincts, but I would not worry about anything you mentioned there.
posted by number9dream at 11:21 AM on December 5, 2024 [11 favorites]

Best answer: 14 hours is a long time without power. It is certainly long enough for your fridge to have gotten up over 40°F/4°C and stayed there long enough to facilitate bacterial growth. I absolutely would not mess with perishables that have gone un-cooled for this long.

Here's a chart showing more specifics about what is safe to keep a bit longer than 4 hours and what really needs to be discarded. Almost everything you mentioned needs to be discarded except the Baby Bel (processed cheese).
posted by ourobouros at 11:22 AM on December 5, 2024

Best answer: The most common sense data would be a thermometer.

Refrigerators can vary greatly in how cool they remain during a power outage. A well-insulated fridge left unopened can keep food in the "safe" zone far longer than a poorly insulated fridge that people are constantly opening. No one can tell you whether the temperature in your fridge has exited the safe zone for your various foods, or for how long - anyone answering based on their personal experience is going to be answering based on, well, their personal fridge - as well as their personal luck. I'd say after a 14 hours it's extremely likely your foods have been above the safety zone for hours and are now less safe to eat, but if you stuck a thermometer in there it would maybe make you feel less guilty about throwing it out.

And just as a gentle reminder, "people used to eat unrefrigerated food all the time" is true but it doesn't mean they did so without risk or consequence. Our guidelines are conservative, but they exist for a reason: They legitimately reduce the incidence of foodborne illness.

I've lived in places where refrigeration is much less common and people are much less strict about discarding food, and foodborne illness is simply much more common (and dangerous) there. It's a signficiant public health concern, especially for the vulnerable (children, elderly, people already sick). There's a continuum of risk, of course, and I don't stick to the guidelines 100% either, but consider applying the same logic to the wearing of seatbelts.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:34 AM on December 5, 2024 [9 favorites]

toss the milk, eggs, and yogurt. Maybe the soft cheese too.
posted by zippy at 2:37 PM on December 5, 2024

I would eat all of these things without a second thought. A fridge that was not opened for 14 hours without power in a not particularly warm environment might have been above 4C for a few hours, but not significantly so. This is definitely less risky than your milk on the counter for 3 hours example, where the milk would be in a warm environment for hours.

Cheese and yogurt are methods of preserving milk, they will not suddenly got off if slightly above 4C for a few hours. Eggs are absolutely fine without refrigeration for a short while. Milk will smell bad if it goes off and it might start smelling a little earlier than it would otherwise, but it is fine as long as it smells OK.

Eat the leftovers soon, after reheating well, and if you're worried about the broth, make sure it boils before being consumed. Mayo is sold unrefrigerated, a few hours possibly slightly above 4C is not a big deal.

If any of this was remotely dangerous, I (and most of the population of the rest of the world) would be sick all the time.
posted by ssg at 3:20 PM on December 5, 2024 [6 favorites]

I'd probably eat it, using the strategies above.
posted by theora55 at 4:08 PM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

It pays to keep a few plastic bottles 90% filled with water in your freezer for this kind of contingency. When a power outage starts, move them from the freezer to the top shelf of the fridge.

If there's still any solid ice left inside any of them by the time the outage ends then they've been pulling heat out of the air around them to maintain their melting interiors right at 0°C, and because they're on the top shelf this will have created a sinking convection current of air that cools everything else. If your fridge has insulation at least as good as a portable cooler and you've avoided opening it as much as possible, then its contents will have stayed at least as cold as they would have with the power on.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the stuff in the actual freezer, most of which you'd want to use up fairly swiftly after 14 hours without active chilling.

If the water bottles have fully melted by the time an outage is over then all bets are off and you're back to relying on common sense and your nose. That said, I keep four 1.25 litre bottles in my freezer for this purpose and I've seen lumps of ice floating inside those after 24 hours in an unpowered fridge.
posted by flabdablet at 8:26 PM on December 5, 2024

Dairy generally goes bad in a smelly way before it goes dangerous, so I'd feel okay about the yogurt, cheese and 'real' milk.

Leftovers are both likely to spoil more quickly and may do so in less detectable ways, so those I'd throw out - yes, the vegetables as well.

(Eggs are fine for weeks where I live, but I know that in the US they are washed and must then be refrigerated, so I have nothing to go on for that one.)
posted by demi-octopus at 1:36 AM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

I personally would not eat meat or fish or related products that have sat at room temperature for more than a couple of hrs with the exception is dried/cured meats - drying and curing are food preservation methods that predate refrigeration.

Was the veg mixed with the meat and meat juices or kept separate? If it is separate I'd eat it quite happily without a 2nd thought.

Is the milk UHT or fresh? In my family, UHT milk lives next to the kettle after opening. It is consumed in hot drinks, with cereal and used in cooking over the next day or two. I'd not do that with fresh milk but note that it is obvious when milk has split.

Cheese making is also a method of preserving that predates refrigeration. So I would eat the soft cheeses and yogurt quite happily today. I'd not expect it to last several days though, even if the power is back on now. I'd eat hard cheese/Babybels without giving it another thought. I used to take Babybels to work in my laptop bag. Some did not get eaten the same day but over the next couple of days.
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:21 AM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Yeah, I’ve definitely seen Babybel for sale in stores not really refrigerated (like, hanging in front of the dairy cooler). That’s why they wrap it in wax!
posted by staggernation at 5:22 AM on December 6, 2024

I take babybels backpacking in the summer. Those things are very much fine.
posted by rockindata at 9:41 AM on December 6, 2024