I left 2 blocks of cheese from a deli sit in the car overnight, car was hot inside. I put in fridge right away when found. Sharp and Baby Swiss. Is it ok to eat?
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2If it was hot in the car, the cheese may not be very nice, but it's unlikely to be off. I can't find the source here but I've seen scientific papers concluding that hard (low moisture) cheeses keep safely at room temperature. They can sweat oil over about 30C though, as I've found when camping – Chris H Aug 30 '19 at 20:46
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I'm going to turn my comment into a perhaps cynical answer…
The answer is somewhere between "cheese never goes off" and "cheese is off when you buy it".
Just eat it.
Cheese is made in 'sterile' conditions, but is a product of "allowing food to go bad" in itself.
It used to be milk… but someone intentionally made it "go off".
Once made, depending on type & maturity, it can sit in a room [in traditional methodology at ambient temperature] for over a year without "going off" any further. The flavour develops, the soft initial mixture eventually goes either softer in the middle & gets gooey, or reduces so the salt crystallises, depending on type & storage. [Think aged brie vs. aged cheddar.]
You can actually buy cheese that contains live maggots. It's a delicacy.*
In the time between buying it & putting it in the fridge, not a lot more is going to happen to it to make it suddenly become a deadly poison.
*The 'techincal' definition of 'delicacy' is any foodstuff that makes tourists squirm, whilst the locals watch them eat something they claim to eat every day, but actually only really to 'prove' to the tourists
that they eat it every day, by taking a small bite, if pressed, then claiming it's delicious ;)
Tetsujin
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