Some people have suggested making a big batch of pasta for the week

[conuly]

I get where you're coming from! And I'm hardly the queen of food safety here - far from it, my usual approach can be termed "lacksadaisical" and it's a wonder I've never been seriously ill. I'm hard pressed to remember to eat some days, so honestly, whatever.

Nevertheless, I do feel like I should mention, in case somebody hasn't heard this yet, that wet cooked grain products such as pasta or rice are a botulism serious food poisoning* risk and you shouldn't plan to store them for more than a day or at most two days in the fridge. Make the sauce in advance, cook the pasta every day.

Or if you're going to store it, at least treat it like honey and don't serve it to a baby or anybody else with a presumably weak immune system.

* Not botulism

Comments

[frandroid]

These people are wrong. You make a large batch of pasta sauce, which you freeze in individual portions beyond the next three days' portions you put in the fridge. Then you make pasta every day, which takes about 10 minutes. Maybe you make two days, worth of pasta. Fresh pasta is Nice and Easy.

Buckwheat noodles take 4 minutes to cook, for faster results.

Not that I eating much honey (I dislike it on its own but will eat sweet things made with it) but what's with honey and babies?

[conuly]

Honey is a botulism risk for infants under the age of 1.

[vvalkyri]

Since when does it take 10 minutes to make a pot of pasta? It takes longer than that to boil the water if you don't have an electric kettle (which I have no counter room for)

(frozen)

[frandroid]

Active time, you hair-splitter. Also, i have an electric kettle so YMMV

(frozen)

[conuly]

And there's certainly no good response to that, so I'm gonna freeze this here. This is a silly thread to escalate on.

[redbird]

Thanks, I'd only heard about this specifically as a risk for cooked rice.

PREACH IT!!! Cook the meat, cook the sauce, heck - even add cheese

[disgruntledgirl]

But spend 10-15 minutes making the damn starches. In that time you can get out some plates, heat up the sauce. maybe make some garlic toast.
Take some damn time for yourself. It's healthier in the long run.
Rice gets people the most. They don't think about it and nuke leftover rice as many as 3 times in a week. It's not good.

[topaz_eyes]

wet cooked grain products such as pasta or rice are a botulism risk

You're right about the risk of food poisoning from improperly stored cooked rice or pasta! But the food poisoning isn't botulism though. The pathogen involved with improperly stored cooked rice or pasta is Bacillus cereus, a different organism.

Botulism is caused by Clostridium botulinum. Botulism can result from improperly canned foods, improperly vacuum-sealed or fermented fish, or for babies under 1 year old, C. botulinum spores in honey.

They're both spore-forming bacteria, and it's the toxins they make that cause food poisoning. Difference is, C. botulinum is strictly anaerobic (can't grow in oxygen) and its toxin causes paralysis; while B. cereus is facultative (can grow in the presence or absence of oxygen) and its toxins cause vomiting and/or diarrhea. Lethal cases of B. cereus toxin poisoning may be due to liver damage and/or necrosis of the colon.

[conuly]

Ah, thanks.

[mindstalk]

I think the bigger problem is leaving the cooked grain out rather than fridging it ASAP. The guy who (probably) died of "fried rice syndrome" had left pasta+sauce out on the counter for 5 days.

I see different advice on how long to leave it in the fridge. Cleveland Clinic says 2 days, Today dot com says 4, neither gives a source. UW Medicine says "a few days", also unsourced.

There's also how cold your fridge is, I suppose; should be no warmer than 40 F/4 C

[siderea]

Where are you getting this? The authorities I have checked have all said "three to five days", and my impression is that those guidelines are already super-conservative.

And, reality check: if refrigerating pasta more than two days is a health risk, then how do non-frozen, refrigerated products like this one exist?

[conuly]

And, reality check: if refrigerating pasta more than two days is a health risk, then how do non-frozen, refrigerated products like this one exist?

I'm going to go with... pasteurization? Because if I kept my macaroni and cheese on the shelf for a week or more then it'd just get moldy. Same as I kept my homemade but not canned tomato sauce on the shelf.

[darkoshi]

I hadn't heard that refrigerated pasta was a risk; I'd only heard about that in regards to rice. I always make a big potful of pasta (no sauce on it) when I make it (as with most other meals) and eat it over the course of a week or more. That's not likely to change, but I suppose it is good to be aware of.

... So, in reading more about it now, my main takeaway is to refrigerate pasta promptly after it's been made, and if it gets left out at room temperature for a long time, it's best to discard it. Because once the bacteria and/or toxin have had a chance to propagate, even proper refrigeration and heating may not be able to get rid of it. And it can be deadly.