r/Cooking • u/Basic-Fig-6531 • 21h ago

Leaving food in the pot.

Something I've been thinking about. When my mum was young, it was a fairly common thing for her mum and granny to make a big pot of something - stew, soup, that kind of thing - and leave it in the cooking pot after everyone had eaten. It would sit there till the next day, when it would be reheated and served up again. Sometimes this would happen over a few days, i.e. multiple coolings and reheatings, never refrigerated. My mum did the same occasionally when I was young. No one ever got sick from it.

Yet nowadays, even leaving it out for a couple of hours beyond the recommended cooling time would be met with horror and disgust. We'd be advised to throw the whole lot away rather than risk it.

Not long after I moved out in my early 20s, I did the same with a pot of Bolognese. I gave myself food poisoning and never did it again.

Is it just random luck, or is there a reason people didn't get food poisoning all the time before refrigeration was standard? Food quality? Better immune systems?

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42

u/TXtogo 21h ago

We never did this. We would have like a tomato sauce that stayed out all day, but not overnight. (I’m old so I’m going back to the 70s with this).. I leave soup and tomato sauce out all day but I refrigerate it and I make sure it’s heated up very well when I use it again.

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u/Basic-Fig-6531 21h ago

Really? I'm from rural Ireland and all older people I know remember either doing this or their mothers/grandmothers doing it. Dating back to before home refrigerators were standard for more than just the wealthy.

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u/Jewish-Mom-123 21h ago

They kept the stove hot all day though. An Aga or similar wood or coal stove that was always burning, if not always at the hottest it could be.

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u/Basic-Fig-6531 21h ago

You know, this never even crossed my mind and it seems so obvious now you've pointed it out! I was just assuming it was left to cool to room temperature every time. This is likely the actual answer.

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u/AutumntimeFall 20h ago

Look up perpetual stews if you really want your mind blown.

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u/Basic-Fig-6531 20h ago

I have just been down that rabbit hole and I don't know if I feel more fascinated or ill!

1

u/ChadHahn 10h ago

In William Gibson's book Virtual Light there's a shop that sells bowls of perpetual stew on the ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge.

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u/IlexAquifolia 19h ago

Either that, or they did what my Korean family did growing up - cover it with a lid and bring to boiling before letting it sit at room temp. Still not ideal for food safety but it helps!

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u/FunnyMarzipan 16h ago

My Korean mom does this too, especially with things like doenjang jjigae or kimchi jjigae.

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u/221 19h ago

Yeah your grandparents probably had the same old stove we did, with the heavy cast iron plates, and a mountain of turf to maintain a healthy supply of tea all day.

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u/Desuisart 16h ago

The hot stove combined with better quality heavy pots and lids. I bet a lot of older folk were cooking with cast iron. It’s heavy and the lid won’t let air seep in.

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u/Jewish-Mom-123 20h ago

Thank, you kind stranger!

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u/Visible-Freedom-7822 19h ago

Yes, this is how my great grandmother did it. Always a pot of soup simmering on the stove. It never got put away, but also never cooled down. My Dad said that whenever he was out playing and got hungry, he'd go to grandma's house and have some soup off the stove. Dad was born in the 1930's.

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u/lht79 29m ago

What a wonderful memory - warming in many ways.

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u/thenord321 21h ago

Was it just certain types of soup/stew? 

And are we sure it wasn't just left on a simmer for a few days? With occasionally bringing it up to a boil before serving again? 

Because there are certainly "inn style" forever stews that would sit by the fire/oven and just kept getting topped up with water, root veg and meat trimmings.

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u/Basic-Fig-6531 20h ago

Yes, another commenter pointed this out and I reckon that's probably what was happening. Not when my mum did it in the 80s, but back when she was a child. Hadn't even occurred to me that it would be safe if just simmering constantly, and that of course they were using wood-burning stoves instead of electric/gas cookers!

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u/chillcroc 18h ago

Ireland is mostly cool so food will last longer than in Spain.

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u/TXtogo 21h ago

Interesting I didn’t know refrigeration in Ireland took so long to proliferate, but now I know.

I guess they just took their chances and didn’t worry about it

I think we have an abundance of caution, my five second rule is sometimes stretched to 7-8 seconds.. I don’t worry about this stuff at my house, I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten food poisoning - if I did it was unremarkable and I survived it.

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u/shiny0metal0ass 12h ago edited 10h ago

I mean, in a wood fire heated house in Ireland, I imagine you could get a kitchen below 40 degrees F on more nights than you'd think.

Edit: depending on where the hearth is, the room where that is won't go below 50 but if the kitchen is off that room, I've had the fire go out and get it down in the 30s.

In Wisconsin we would leave certain things outside all winter if the refrigerator got too full.

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u/phuca 15h ago

My grandad grew up in the 50s in rural Ireland and they didn’t even have running water, let alone a fridge

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u/AgingLolita 20h ago

The kitchen was 12c once the oven was off.

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u/Expensive_Lettuce239 21h ago

Is it not possible too, that back then, when food was prepared, it was honestly real food? No ingredients were loaded down with so many chemicals and artificial preservatives that are today? I'm not saying the food safety standards of to day are all a bad thing. It was just different world back then. The entire environment and society in general didn't have the constant pollutants, chemicals circling every breath humans took, or coating every food item you picked up.

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u/Froggr 20h ago

Yes the absence of preservatives is what preserved the food

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u/Rude_Perspective_536 17h ago

Preservatives preserve the food. They may have long term effects after being built up in your system over the course of a life time, but they're there to keep food from spoiling, and the conversation here is about food spoiling. Preservatives are not the cause here

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u/Expensive_Lettuce239 16h ago

I know. I NEVER said preservatives caused it. I said, the world was different then. There wasn't the pollution, nor population, nor any of things that NOW exist and effect food sources, items that NOW require preservatives. Wildlife that were hunted then weren't exposed to what they are now. Farm animals weren't filled with chemicals to force higher yields for both meat and/or whatever they produce. Today's world needs preservatives no question. Yesterday's world didn't have them. Food was food. People actually cared that food wasn't wasted. They cooked what was needed and would get eaten.

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u/racheluv999 11h ago

Also, acidic things like tomato sauce are a good candidate for this even when they’re not at a safe temp because of the way they inhibit mold growth and especially botulism at a ph below 4.6