No comment on this specific case...don't want to get sued!

When my dad was in the Army Air Force in WWII my grandmother down south would make "potted chicken" from her own chickens, seal it with a layer of chicken fat (a la duck confit?) and mail it to him in England! Since everything was going by ship under convoys, it must have taken a good ten days to arrive. As far as I know he never suffered any ill effects. Not sure if any of the packages ever disappeared due to delicious aroma...

My mother always insisted that food should be cooled before being put in the fridge, so stock stays on the stove, simmering, until bedtime (midnightish, at our house), cools on the stove until 7am-ish, and goes into the fridge then.

And, y'know? If I had to actually listen to all the food rules, to the letter? I would never, ever make stock. Because being at home long enough to simmer it/cool it down/put it in jars/etc, while not having the cool-down happen overnight or while I'm out, just isn't happening.

At some point, I think we need to look at the difference between "ideal" and "still fine".

Um, wow. One of my son's first experiments for a science fair was taking swabs of different surfaces and culturing them in a gelatin/broth solution. While there's all sorts of food media that are good environments for pathogens, broth has the combo of protein and lots of water (water provides a superhighway so microbes can reproduce everywhere.)

Even if you make your stock in a pressure cooker (and thus heat it beyond boiling) once it cools, pathogens can hitch a ride on your utensils, on the water vapor from your breath, on that floating bit of dog or cat hair that you didn't see fall in the soup. (This is why we can instead of leaving food out in the open.)

While I agree that many food rules can be bent (who of us hasn't eaten left-out pizza for breakfast?) I myself have thrown out many a batch of forgotten soup in the morning just to be on the safe side.

PS. To find what the USDA says, you can always write in to their excellent food safety column: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/ask_karen/ Admittedly, they will always give you a very conservative answer.

PPS. If you make your stock in a crock-pot (which I love to do) you can leave it out overnight on the "warm" setting and not worry.

(American) Mail in WWII, just as with our troops now, is/was a tremendous morale booster. All air-mail letters, packages, etc (for the ETO) were flown across the atlantic to england. Depending on where your dad was stationed, he could have taken delivery in as little as 36hours after arrival in England.

Of course, there were also the more mobile units that still had mail chasing after them more than a year after being written...

I also don't really worry about putting still-pretty-warm food into the fridge. I've read in many different places that it's not going to raise the temp of surrounding food (at least not significantly, and/or not for long enough before it all cools down) nor affect the energy efficiency of the fridge.

I always leave soup (or whatever I've cooked) out overnight. The next morning when it's at room temeprature I pack it into containers to bring for lunch or eat later. I just can't stand when hot food is packed up and develops condensation. Normally I'd reheat soup but most other foods are not heated agian. Never once have I or anyone else gotten sick from my habit of doing this.

For the record, confit is a very different product than soup, and if prepared correctly, would be relatively shelf stable.

When I lived in France with a host family, I was AMAZED to find that my host mother always left out soups and meaty stews overnight. We never got sick, and I never said anything, but it took some getting used to...

As other commenters have said, necessity or preference that hot food not go straight into the fridge means that sometimes you just have to deal and leave it to cool overnight. I've done this many times and have not had any problems.

The comment about France reminded me of the later chapters in Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter. At her husband's family home in Italy it was normal to plate leftovers, wrap them in a dishtowel, and place them on a shelf where they would sit until someone got around to eating them. As someone who had worked in commercial American kitchen for most of her life, Gabrielle was a little taken aback by this practice, but she admitted that it seemed to do no harm.

"I always leave soup (or whatever I've cooked) out overnight. The next morning when it's at room temeprature I pack it into containers to bring for lunch or eat later. I just can't stand when hot food is packed up and develops condensation. Normally I'd reheat soup but most other foods are not heated agian. Never once have I or anyone else gotten sick from my habit of doing this."

This is so insanely dangerous it's not even funny. Not getting sick at once? Cool. But that stuff builds up in your system... why do you think ancient civilizations created preservation methods? Old food = sickness. No thanks. Not to mention I'm sure [if you live in an apartment building or ever did] that your neighbors love that you're inviting ALL THE BUGS in. Ugh, yuck.

Umm, what? Ancient civiliations needed to safely store food for months. We're talking about leaving cooked food out overnight. HUGE difference.

I guess by your logic should throw out the onion I have had sitting on my counter for an entire day, since it's "old" and a bug magnet.

@jenawithonen, I'll bet you're the type who throws out perfectly good packaged food that's one day past the sell-by date. For shame!

I would call us the "refrigerator generation", what do you imagine that our grandparents did with those leftovers, when at best they had an ice box? I remember visiting my grandparents and others of that generation and for them leaving leftovers out overnight was not a big deal. Now I can't talk about soup or stock specifically, but meats, stews, gravy and other foods were left out, till someone ate them.
My mom owns an heirloom pie cabinet, a cupboard that originally had either wire mesh or punched tin in the doors, so that the pies (or other goodies) could have air circulating without flies getting to them. It was normal. So, no I don't have a problem with food being left out overnight.

I seal mine hot in airtight containers (usually canning jars) and let it cool on the counter overnight. I figure if it gets put in something airtight while hot, it won't gather any more bacteria from the air while it cools. Then in the morning the cooled things get put in the fridge. I find they actually last longer that way, since the heat sort of seals the lid. Not in the same way as water bath or pressure canning, so they're not shelf stable, but definitely better than leaving it out all night, even with a lid on the stock pot.

Never put hot things in the fridge - they can lower the temp inside drastically and endanger other, more perishable items.

That being said, some things I always leave at room temp - pies, cakes, bread puddings, etc. I know some people refrigerate bread, but I only do that with bread I know is already old and I just want to extend the life. Too paranoid to leave anything with non-baked dairy or meat in it out though.

For some reason, soup was never refrigerated growing up. My parents still leave out soups and stews overnight for as long as they'll have any left over--usually several days' worth. In Nicaragua, it's tradition to make soup and stews in large batches. The soup pots will not fit in a standard refrigerator (which most people don't have), much less an icebox/freezer. The rules are: reboil every day so that it doesn't go bad, whether you're going to have some or not, and always use a clean ladle and utensil when serving for each meal.

i guess i'm the only one that eats all of the soup i make? :)

If you take the proper precautions with this, then do what floats your boat. But if you're kind of lax, ugh, it makes me cringe when people get defensive about how a risky behavior hasn't yet hurt them. It's like when smokers justify their habit because their grandpa smoked a pack a day and lived to be 80. Some people get away with taking a risk, but that doesn't make it not a risk.

I'm a cancer patient, and my doctor actually advised me against eating the food that well-meaning neighbors or friends bring me. Bacteria that are harmless to most could send me to the hospital or even kill me, and while you'd think people would exercise extreme caution with food for someone with an immunodeficiency, she said she's seen a lot of patients get seriously ill after eating a meal that someone brought to them. While I'm on the extreme end of the scale, remember that your immune system isn't as effective after you've had a cold. So if you've made that batch of soup because you have the sniffles, don't forget that you're more susceptible than usual and might not be able to fight off infection.

Coming from a Viet background, my mother always left soup on the stove overnight. She always instructed me to bring any soup to a boil, turn off the heat, and leave it alone, no stirring. After boil, you could cover it and leave out overnight. It did have to be reboiled every day. In hot weather, the cooled soup went into the fridge. Since none of us (there were 7 kids) ever got sick from her food, I'm not bothered by food leftout overnight. Once something is cooked to well done, I don't worry if it's left out overnight. Except for dairy products.

@Jenawithonen: a covered soup on the stove attracts exactly none bugs. Fresh fruits on the other hand are big bug magnets so according to your logic I shouldn't buy any? But be happy in your paranoic little world and go never ever travelling in another country (please don't because I might meet you and there is nothing worse while travelling than cleanliness obsessed Americans who don't eat anything, desinfect their hands every hour and still get sick three times as much as everybody else).

Oh, the old "I never got sick from doing this, therefore......"

I mean, really. Some people smoke their whole lives and never get cancer. Does that mean cigarettes are safe?

My former boss would leave out her coffee and the next morning microwave and drink the rest. Did I mention that was coffee with cream?

I think it's very interesting how we have become such a paranoid society and wonder if it is our overly cautious attitude towards disease that have actually made us sick. My mom like so many here, used to, and still does, make soup that she leaves out over night or even a few days. Each time we wanted to eat, we would reheat the soup. No, just because we did not get sick does not mean it was good for us, but does not mean it was harmful either.

@akay, thank you very much for your insight. That is great information for those of us unfamiliar with dealing with cancer in a direct way. Much appreciated and am holding good thoughts.

Because day-old food is TOTALLY the same as smoking for forty years. ::eye roll::

this is getting pretty intense with the caddy comments

>>Coming from a Viet background, my mother always left soup on the stove overnight. She always instructed me to bring any soup to a boil, turn off the heat, and leave it alone, no stirring. After boil, you could cover it and leave out overnight.

I'm from a Chinese background. My mom says the exact same thing!

@akay - thanks for the heads-up regarding home baked meals for ill people. I love to prepare dishes for those that may not have the energy or be feeling well enough to cook for themselves and while I maintain a clean kitchen, I never considered the effects of my cooking on their compromised immune systems.

Easily resolved dispute here. No one is suggesting people should be banned from eating old, left-out soup. All we're saying is, don't then go claiming there is no risk in eating it just because you've never gotten sick. Ask your favorite microbiologist what she thinks. Got it? Right - there is in fact some nasty bacteria in food that's left out to rot. But no one's going to stop you from eating it. It's a free country.

I find I like many foods better when left out overnight, so I do this all of the time. It does seem a bit funny that people actually worry about it, and the idea of throwing it out seems really wasteful to me, but as first worlders I suppose it's our right. I'll stick to eating all kinds of left-out foods and let my immune system worry about it.

Sometimes being the 'paranoid American' does pay off. When I was living (& cooking in Ireland) we had only a tiny under-counter fridge, just big enough for the fresh--unpasteurized--milk, & any left-overs were stored in the 'cold larder'. In the winter, it was >50F in there, & It worked perfectly. In the summer, not. People got sick ALL THE TIME, & simply refused to make the connection. I didn't eat anything that had been sitting arond at 70F , & the "tummy bugs" always passed me by; I don't think it was my superior immune system.
I don't think the flies--no window screening--helped, either.
I vote for considering EVERYTHING on its own merits--not thru the filter of 'I've always done it', or 'that's how they do it in (fill in the blank)'. Remember, it's the survivors who write the history books ( recount their oral histories). It's less that a century in the US that people no longer needed to say that you might raise a baby if you could get them thru their second summer.

Ive done this on many occasion where i thought my husband put away the dish on the counter, but indeed he did not. I am not throwing away all that food and effort just because it was out that night. I'm eating it!

If you bring a soup or stock to a boil, and cover it with a proper lid (no holes like some French cookware), the steam from the soup will sterilize the air and lid inside the pot. You may find that removing the lid when the soup had cooled can be difficult as a vacuum may have formed.

There's no reason in the world to put hot soup it in the fridge, immediately. And in fact, putting hot soup or whatever into your fridge MAY BE spoiling your other foods since few refrigerators in the home can cope with the heat mass you just deposited in there raising the temperatures to unsafe levels for a long period of time. You feel some sort of need to cool and repackage your soup immediately? fill your clean sink with some water, salt and ice and put the pot in (not submerged).

"According the expert McGee consulted, soup or stock left to cool overnight, then reboiled for 10 minutes and properly refrigerated in the morning...."

Am I missing something? If you leave it out overnight to cool, then reboil it, won't you then have to let it cool again before going into the fridge? [Assuming you do not put hot foods directly into the fridge as AT generally recommends.]

I had a friend who regularly left pizza out for a few days and still ate it. So gross. He never got sick, though, must have one heck of a tough stomach/immune system!

In America, we are way too concerned with invisible bugs. I know folks who will throw away food if it is left out for a few hours, nevermind overnight. I have never once in my life gotten food poisoning. I make stocks which require boiling for 12-24 hours. Start one day, leave over night, boil again in the morning. I also buy eggs in quantities way too large to fit in my fridge, so I store them in a cool, non-refrigerated space (in many, many countries around the world, grocery stores do not store eggs in the refrigerator section).

The same thing goes for expiration dates. NPR recently did a piece on how they are more about manufacturers ensuring a certain taste than about food safety, per se. I think a little bit of common sense and a willingness to use one's nose to figure out whether something is "bad" or not go a long way.

Finally, there is growing evidence that the rate of certain diseases is higher in the US because our environments are altogether *too* clean.

OK, but I definitely draw the line at storing milk at 70 F! Crazy story from Ireland.