I left a vacuum packed chicken casserole from Whole Food out four hours. Is it safe? The car ride from store is included in the time. Our house is not freezing nor too hot.
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Things that require refrigeration are safe for 2-4 hours at room temperature, so this is borderline. It's a less dangerous thing (it's not raw meat!) so it's less risky, but up to you! See the marked duplicate for a bit more detail. – Cascabel Oct 11 '15 at 05:50
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Yes, it is. The important part, for nearly any dish, is to heat it properly.
Meat is mainly spoiled by bacteria, worms and larvae. Proper heating solves these problems. Bacteria and mold digest proteins and might generate harmful molecules; while heating does not eliminate them, they are easy to smell, especially those in meat. You won't want to eat it way before it becomes a health risk. The other health risks are unhealthy proteins, like the mad cow disease, hormones and antibiotics. They are stable to heating - but they don't propagate, so if they are in there, then they are in there the moment you purchased them.
Note that fat oxidation/rancidity are not actually health risks, even though they will ruin the taste. But 4 hours is way too short to make any fat rancid.
John Hammond
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Are you saying there can't be any bacteria in a vacuum packed premade meal from a store? (That's not true; it's just as potentially contaminated as anything else, just with it all sealed in without much air.) – Cascabel Oct 11 '15 at 00:52
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And are you also saying you can always smell if meat is dangerously spoiled? That's completely false. http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/45054/1672 – Cascabel Oct 11 '15 at 01:03
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Also, I *think* you're just talking about cooking meat to safe temperatures, but just in case, even thorough heating doesn't turn unsafe food safe: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/32167/1672 – Cascabel Oct 11 '15 at 05:52
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@Jefromi _Are you saying there can't be any bacteria in a vacuum packed premade meal from a store?_ No, why would I say that? I say that proper heating kills bacteria. – John Hammond Oct 11 '15 at 17:28
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Okay, well there were a few ways to read your answer: one, you think that it's unequivocally safe to leave something out for four hours, two, you think that you can take something unsafe and make it safe by cooking, or three, you think it wasn't contaminated. Those things are all false, and it was hard to tell which you meant, but the third seemed most likely. – Cascabel Oct 11 '15 at 17:31
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@Jefromi So you think it is impossible to take something unsafe and make it safe by cooking? – John Hammond Oct 11 '15 at 17:37
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I linked to this in a previous comment: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/32167/can-adequate-heating-transform-spoiled-food-into-safe-food; see also http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/12992/why-is-it-dangerous-to-eat-meat-which-has-been-left-out-and-then-cooked. Things like raw meat are safe, but only once cooked, sure - but once something is actually unsafe, no amount of cooking will save if. And once you pass the time limit in the danger zone, things are unsafe. That's not an "I think" thing, that's government food safety recommenation. – Cascabel Oct 11 '15 at 22:06
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@Jefromi Your government maybe, in a country where people sue for a coffee being hot. If you tell anyone in Europe that you have to throw meat away after two hours at 5°C, they will question your mental health, no matter what your government says. – John Hammond Oct 18 '15 at 09:46
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You're talking about different standards for when it becomes unsafe, not taking something truly unsafe and salvaging it by cooking. In any case, Europe has food safety standards too and you're welcome to cite them instead. But we prefer not to give advice that'll be okay 99% of the but not all the time, because (much like with governments) a lot of people may read what you write here, and even small odds of getting sick can result in your advice actually harming someone. – Cascabel Oct 18 '15 at 14:21
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@Jefromi Considering that the product might be spoiled already before you buy it, the recommendation would have to be to not eat anything at all then ever. There is never a 0% chance. – John Hammond Oct 18 '15 at 17:26
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Nope, that makes absolutely no sense. None of this is about *zero* chance, it's about acceptably small risk. Just as there are guidelines to tell you when things you've bought have become unsafe (as in a small but unacceptable risk of making you very sick), there are regulations to ensure that the things you buy have an acceptably small risk. So unless you want to turn this into a part-time job, doing as much research as government food safety agencies do in order to make recommendations to people that have a similar level of risk, it's best to defer to their standards. – Cascabel Oct 18 '15 at 18:01
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To tie that back to making suggestions like yours, sure, they're low-risk. But how low? If everyone who reads this follows them for the rest of their life, what fraction of them would at some point get serious food poisoning? What fraction would die? Suppose your advice would cause no serious problems 99% of the time. Maybe you're willing to take that chance, but what if 1000 people read your post and 10 get really sick? Is that okay with you? Would 1 in 1000 be okay? How do you know if it's 90% or 99% or 99.9%? – Cascabel Oct 18 '15 at 18:05
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@Jefromi What fraction would at some point get serious food poisoning by following your advice their whole life? 16 people died 2011 due to contaminated cantaloupes. Listeria in cheese will kill more people every year than my advice for the next thirty years. Yes, I can live with my advice. I love my life and my health and I would have no problem to serve and eat a vacuumed dish after 4 hours of reasonable room temperature. Hell, a lot of parties last longer than 2 hours and I've never seen someone tear down the buffet to protect the guests. – John Hammond Oct 18 '15 at 18:57
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If you're confused about any of this, feel free to ask a question. You've misrepresented my words several times here, and comments on an answer to a duplicate question are not the place to try to sort it out. – Cascabel Oct 18 '15 at 19:41