How to store leftovers safely with Jenna Brown – Food For Kids Podcast

Joanne Roach (00:00)

In today's Food for Kids, we talk about how to keep leftovers safely so that you can save some money and reduce your food waste without any upset tummies.

Joanne Roach (00:23)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. In today's show, I'm talking to environmental health expert, Jenna Brown, about how to make sure that we handle our leftovers safely.

We all want to waste less food and food is so expensive right now that frankly we can't afford to be throwing away edible food. But we also often worry about handling leftovers wrong and people getting sick, especially little ones with their less established immune systems. So I invited Jenna to come in and answer some common questions.

Jenna is a fully qualified environmental health practitioner and has been specialising in food safety and public health for over 15 years. She started her business under the name Food Safety Mum when she became a mum of two children herself. Because she understands how much you think differently when you have a little one to think about too, Jenna became passionate about using that expertise to educate families so they have some confidence both when cooking at home or when eating out and about.

In this chat we talk about some everyday scenarios that come up with leftovers such as a Sunday roast, rice and sauces, takeaways and baby foods. Jenna is really helpful and practical and there are some reassuring guidelines in here to follow. So I think you'll find it useful. So let's get to the interview.

Joanne (01:44)

Okay we've got Jenna "Food Safety Mum" here to help us talk about leftovers today, I know people really worry about leftovers, you obviously don't want to waste food, nobody can afford to waste food at the moment, much less the environmental cost of wasting food. But on the other hand, we do worry about leftovers and things that we might do for ourselves when we’re in student digs is not the same sort of thing we'll do when we've got little kids to feed.

So Jenna, I'd like to ask you some questions about how we deal with leftovers to make sure that they're safe.

The first scenario is a roast dinner so a large piece of meat or a vegetarian alternative, some vegetables and things on the side, maybe some gravy, that kind of thing. We don't necessarily serve the whole thing in one go. There might be some left on the stove or we might put it in the middle of the table and people put what they want onto their plate, The food that's then really never been touched by anybody other than during the cooking process, is that safe to keep as leftovers and how should we treat that food?

Jenna (02:36)

Yes, it is absolutely safe to keep that as leftovers. So in the scenario that you've given, as a general rule of thumb for those kinds of leftovers, we'd be looking a shelf life of two days in the fridge. But of course, if you want longer than this, then you can freeze it. Now, obviously you've already cooked it. That’s cooked leftovers and then you can reheat that at a later date.

Joanne (02:56)

So two days for most things in the fridge and then look at the individual food to see whether it's suitable to freeze and keep it longer in the freezer.

Jenna (03:02)

Yes, absolutely.

Joanne (03:04)

What about a scenario where you've put a little bit of the food onto people's plates, but your child hasn't finished it, so I'm thinking of an example where a child just isn't hungry at the right time, but you think they might eat more food if they come back to it later or I quite often had it where we'd eat a little bit and we need to go out for sport and they didn't want to like be totally full when they went to sport. So it'd be kind of, okay, well, we'll reheat it later. Are there any rules about reheating on the same day?

Jenna (03:27)

So there's a couple of things just on what you've mentioned there. So when it comes to reheating foods, we want to make sure that we are only reheating once. So depending on what you've served up there's a couple of things to watch out for. Now, obviously if it's already been half eaten, you want to think about the transfer of bacteria. And obviously if you then leave that to sit there, then obviously bacteria then multiply. So I kind of have like a two hour rule. I'd say obviously if you've got some hot food, then you want to make sure that it's in the fridge within say two hours. If you’ve served up a food, you want to make sure that that's eaten within two hours. Now, when it comes to again, it's only a case of reheating once. Now, even if say it's one o’clock, you’re going to go out for a few hours and you want to come back. You’ve cooked it up, it hasn't been touched, think I'm going to reheat it later, then you still want to make sure that you pop it in the fridge within that two hour window. Then you can get it out the fridge and then reheat it later.

So my only concern with the scenario that you've mentioned is obviously the half eaten food. You can kind of cut off whatever has been eaten that's been, you know, in and out of the mouth. And it's the same when it comes to feeding babies as well. You're putting a spoon in, you've got a yogurt, something like that, you know, they haven't necessarily finished it all. There’s obviously been the transfer of bacteria from the mouth via the spoon from the mouth into the yogurt. And that's obviously a risk point for the bacteria to multiply.

Joanne (04:43)

Okay, so carve out a section that may have been tampered with really and then save the rest and get it straight into the fridge as soon as you can.

Jenna (04:50)

Yeah exactly.

Joanne (05:52)

Obviously a lot of people make their own baby foods, but also use commercially prepared foods and you know, some combination of that. If you open a jar of baby food and they're not going to eat it all in one go, what's the best way to go about making sure that you can use both halves of that jar of food? I presume from what you've just said with the going backwards and forwards, you wouldn't be putting the spoon in and out of the jar if you wanted it to be used later.

Jenna (05:13)

So no, so the best thing to do obviously in that scenario would be to decant a small amount as much as you think your baby would eat or as much as your baby would typically eat, with the option of more once they've finished it. So whether you've got a jar of food or a yoghurt or a pouch or something, you can pour out enough of what you think you may need and serve that to your baby. And obviously if they're still hungry, they eat all of what you've just served up then you can just offer them more, quite easily. it's the same, for example, if you've got a pouch, then you can squeeze it directly onto the spoon. So that wouldn't be so much of a risk, rather than the spoon sort of going in from the mouth to the food, to the mouth to the food.

Joanne (05:48)

Okay, so if you got a pouch and you're out and about, you could always squirt it onto the spoon and not have to then have a bowl out and about with you.

Jenna (05:55)

Yes exactly.

Joanne (05:58)

One of the ones that I know people worry about an awful lot is rice. But also people do want to use the leftovers and either freeze them or put them in the fridge So what are the rules around keeping rice safe?

Jenna (06:07)

So the most important thing when it comes to rice is making sure that you cool it as quickly as possible. Now you want to make sure that ideally you're cooling it within an hour, but definitely no more than two hours. Now this will determine your rice, or your leftover rice is safe to keep for another day. Now the reason is, even if you reheated rice, if it's been sat at room temperature for a long period of time, then the bacteria can multiply. But it's actually, it's a different kind of bacteria. It's called bacillus cereus and it's actually a spore forming bacteria. So if that rice is left at room temperature, that bacteria will then multiply but form toxins. And it's those toxins that will cause the food poisoning from rice, which won't be killed by further reheating.

So if you've left your rice out for four hours or four or five hours, for example, you then come to reheat it, then toxins will be completely unaffected by the reheating, which will then obviously make you sick.

Joanne (07:00)

People worry it's the reheating of rice. It’s not actually the reheating. It's what happens to it before it's cooled.

Jenna (07:04)

Exactly, precisely. It's actually the time in between it being cooked and how you store it once it's been cooked that is the most important thing when it comes to rice, which is why I always talk about cooling rice quickly. And it's always an example that I use when I talk about cooling foods and how to cool foods quickly, because it is one of the most important foods that you need to cool. Always within two hours. But you want to make sure you've got a room of error. So you kind of want to say within an hour to have it cooled down.

Joanne (07:31)

So eat your meal together and then when you're clearing up from the table, get that rice sorted out as part of your clearing up. Don't be doing everything else first and then coming back to it later.

Jenna (07:40)

Exactly. And you know, if it's, if it's just rice on its own that you're looking to keep, say, for example, you've cooked a curry, you've got the rice, you've got the sauce separate. Rice is one of the easiest things to actually cool you can just run it under cold water and it's cooled instantly.

Joanne (07:53)

Cool, so plain rice you can just run under the cold water.

Jenna (07:56)

Yeah, exactly. So run it under cold water. There's, there's other ways you can cool obviously, you know, you can divide into smaller portions, you can increase the surface area. So for example, instead of having it in a bowl, where you've got that, that centre that's going to remain hot for longer, you can actually put it onto a plate, which will then cool it down, you know, very quickly. You can stir it regularly, divide it into smaller portions. But again, the easiest way, if you've got plain rice like that, you can actually just run it under cold water and dry it off, pop it straight in the fridge in a container.

With regards to the rules of using the rice, you want to make sure that it's used within 24 hours in the fridge. Now that's UK guidance. Does different in different countries, but obviously that's the UK guidance is to use any leftover rice within a day. But that's not to say you can't freeze it. You can freeze it as well.

Joanne (08:43)

If you froze it within those few hours of having cooled it down. How long could you keep it in the freezer for generally?

Jenna (08:48)

So food doesn't become unsafe in the freezer. So essentially you can keep it for several months, you know, the ideal general rule of thumb is around three to six months to keep food in the freezer. But it's important to remember food doesn't become unsafe in that time, you know, nothing happens to the food, but the quality does deteriorate from things like freezer burn. That's why obviously want to make sure you're using food within three to six months.

Joanne (09:10)

If you've got something that's more like… I'm just thinking of like a curry or something like that, that might have meat in and you want to get it cooled down quickly, but it's not the kind of thing you can spread out necessarily on a tray. Could you use any kind of like water baths or… I think we used to do that in school kitchens where we used to put things into water. How does that work?

Jenna (09:27)

That's exactly what I do. So I use a water bath for two things actually and one of them is to cool food down quickly. So just like the example that you've given, whether you've got bolognese or a soup or something, you know, don't want to start adding water into it because it will completely change the product. Yeah, what you can do is you can sit your bowl inside a larger bowl just filled with cold water, ideally some ice as well, because otherwise you'll soon find that the water will warm up, within five to 10 minutes the water will warm up. So you just need to keep changing it. But yeah, absolutely, sit the bowl of food or the dish inside a larger dish with cold water and it will cool down in no time. Give it a couple of stirs and it'll be good to go in the fridge within say within about half an hour.

Joanne (10:05)

That's a lot quicker then.

Jenna (10:06)

The other thing I use the water bath for is actually for defrosting as well. It's actually a good way to, defrost something really quickly, so you can use it for two different ways, cooling it down and also defrosting.

Joanne (10:16)

So that's exchanging the heat, but in an opposite direction.

Jenna (10:19)

Yes, indeed. So again, you want to make sure that you're changing the water every half an hour. And again, your food will be defrosted in a couple of hours.

Joanne (10:27)

Oh that's a really good tip.

Jenna (10:28)

Versus a day or two in the fridge.

Joanne (10:32)

And I've got one last leftovers question, which is we don't need an awful lot of takeaways, but when we do, it's a massive treat and we tend to kind of like splurge out and have some side dishes and so on, and then eat them for lunch the next day. But I'm always a little bit nervous about food that other people have cooked in a kitchen I don't know anything about. How safe are, you know, your average evening takeaway, how safe are they to reheat or keep for a couple of days in your fridge?

Jenna (10:55)

So I think it depends on how the food's actually been cooked by the takeaway in the first place. So ideally you wanna make sure that you're only reheating food once. This goes for all foods because obviously the more you're handling it, the more you're leaving it, the more risk there is of food poisoning.

Now it could be that they are cooking it earlier on in the day and then keeping it warm or perhaps reheating it before it goes out to service. Now in that sense, I'd obviously be a little bit more wary about keeping those leftovers.

So I think it would be a case of a conversation you could have with the food business as to find out whether they prepare their food fresh go from there really. You still wanna make sure you're only reheating the food once. If you are keeping the takeaway, then you just wanna make sure that it's still within the fridge within two hours. And if you're reheating, then you always reheat until piping hot.

Joanne Roach (11:45)

I really enjoyed that conversation because if you can just get the basics right of cooling food down quickly then you can definitely waste less food and keep it safe.

The water bath technique we talked about for cooling down and defrosting is something that we do often in our own house. I usually use that one big metal oven tin that you usually use only for a big meal like Christmas, but you still have to store all year. I tend to decant the leftovers into the containers they're going to be in when we store them while we're clearing up from dinner and then drop those containers into that big roasting tin with just enough water to go about halfway up their sides. And then while I'm clearing up, I usually change the water once. And honestly, it's usually cool enough for the fridge by the time everything's cleared and cleaned. I quite like the fact that it also makes some use out of that big tin too.

If like me, you find Jenna's guidelines really clear and helpful, she's got quite a few guides on her website. She's got a specific guide just about rice on her website. I'm really glad that this is easy to follow and keep rice safe because I do like to cook big batches and freeze portions of it for easy lunches when I'm working at home or for when you've just got a bit of leftover sauce and you want some rice to go with it but you don't want to get a pan out just for a few spoonfuls. In our house we also eat quite a lot of food from parts of the world that use pre-cooked and cooled rice, such as fried rice, so it's great to have some on hand to make those recipes.

Other guides that Jenna has on her website include one about making and storing baby food safely and how to deal with children's party food. I'll put links to all of those in the show notes.

You can find Jenna on Instagram under the handle @foodsafetymum and I highly recommend giving her a follow because her content is always super practical and reassuring.

Thanks for listening today and I hope to see you on the next episode but in the meantime happy eating!

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:44 Storing leftover roast dinners and partly eaten family meals

04:26 Storing leftover or partly eaten baby foods

05:56 Storing leftover cooked rice safely

09:10 Cooling wet foods like stews and sauces to store

10:31 Storing leftovers from takeaways

11:43 Summary and outro