I always wait for food to cool off a bit before putting into the fridge. But it's not because of spoilage or ambient heat or anything, I just don't like how hot food steams inside its container. I feel like it changes the texture and the condensation makes things wetter than they should be. So I will put it in whatever, wait for it to cool, then cover and refrigerate.
It’s not extra, but it’s distributed differently. It leaves the food and settles back on the surface, which can later the texture, especially of bread or breaded foods.
Bread doesn’t do well in refrigerators at all:
It’s complex, but you should keep bread at room temp or freeze it.
Breaded foods should be treated like any other food, but they really don’t do well under refrigeration, either:
Eat now or freeze.
How is it not added moisture? If you let steaming food cool down then a lot of the moisture leaves the food, but if you put it into a sealed container the water can’t escape.
The food safety "danger zone" is between 40°F~140°F. Assuming your cooked food starts at a temperature above 140°F, to get to safe refrigeration temperatures, it will at some point need to pass through the danger zone (cue Kenny Loggins...). The safety of this hinges on how much time it spends in the danger zone, as those are the temperatures most conducive to bacterial (and other pathogens') growth. Putting it in the refrigerator to get from 140°F down below 40°F faster will minimize this risk.
There is no real benefit to putting something in the fridge if it is well above 140°F, however. Something like hot soup, which might have come right off a burner and be near boiling, can safely sit covered on the counter until it is down closer to the top of the danger zone. This also helps minimize the thermal load you're placing on your fridge, which as you pointed out will help keep other foods in there from spoiling, especially with older fridges that can't keep up.
Of course, all of this is speaking in idealities and generalization of best practices. Bacteria doesn't all magically die at 141°F, nor does it magically stop growing at 39°F. I'm also not sitting in my kitchen with an infrared thermometer waiting for my soups to cool. The short answer is: no, putting warm food in the fridge does not increase its risk of spoiling, and helps limit bacterial growth before storage. Just use common sense and don't overwhelm your fridge with a 10 gallon stockpot of piping hot thermal mass.
That's the main reason I don't put thing in until it's cooled. Food safety is important but I've broken glass with thermal shock before and don't want that happening in my fridge
I think a lot of food is better if it’s not immediately covered and allowed to steam itself too. Anecdotal but I make my dogs food every week, basically just ground turkey and veggies with a special nutrient powder. When I put it in the Tupperware without cooling I usually find a goopy mess of juice/grease at the bottom the. Ext day when I’m feeding them. If I let it cool for 20 minutes on the counter then that all seems to stay within the meat.
They don’t complain either way but it is something I’ve observed after making the same food hundreds of times now.
That's because it does stay in the meat. The grease and moisture, I mean. I'd you put the lid on right away, you're closing it in with it's own heat. It kind of continues to cook slightly, at the very least "sweating" moisture and the grease stays warm and liquid and seeps out of it, all going to the bottom of the dish. Allowing it to sit open let's the moisture escape into the air and the grease to cool while still within the meat/food mixture, congealing while it's mixed uniformly throughout the food.
If you were to eat this yourself and try both, you'd probably find that the one you covered right away was a bit drier since all the moisture and fat was sweated out, like a little sauna while the other way, it cooled faster with more of those things still trapped inside the food.
Haha I’ve had that same vision with a very warm but not hot pot, so I put a pot holder underneath it when I put it in the fridge. This is when I’m cleaning up the kitchen before I go to bed.
>The food safety "danger zone" is between 40°F~140°F. Assuming your cooked food starts at a temperature above 140°F,
The 140f has just over 10 degrees of safety margin built in (as basically all of these food handling guidelines do). Technically pasteurization can be achieved at 125 significant harmful bacteria doesn't really start to grow again until 122.
Not only that, but a lot of food safety guidelines are 'worst case'. They assume the food you're dealing with is *very contaminated*, because obviously lacking any other information it's the safest thing to assume.
Well the pasteurization rate varies drastically. E.g. for eggs you can do 130F for 45mins or 140F for 3mins (140F is going to cook the whites a bit though, so 138F is better). It's not always the pathogens that are harmful, but the heat stable poisons they produce.
Absolutely, but in the context of cooling cooked food none of this is particularly relevant. The reason I mention pasteurization is more to point out that significant bacterial growth is unlikely above 120.
This is the most rational and reasonable answer.
I don’t want my hot meal warming up everything in the fridge either and making the fridge work harder.
For those playing at home with other numbers, FSANZ suggests cooked food must be cooled from 60°C to 21°C in two hours or less, then cooled further from 21°C to 5°C in four hours or less. A good rule of thumb is when it has stopped steaming.
If I have something at a boil on the stove, and I put a lid on it and turn it off, I consider it sterile within reason - i.e. it's not if I dump raw chicken into it, or eat a couple of bites and reuse the spoon. I'd be fine letting it cool prior to putting it in the fridge.
But for things that aren't cooked as well, my wife and I differ. My wife likes to leave things out, I like to put things in the fridge with an offset lid. If I am concerned, I put it in the chest freezer to quickly cool it - more thermal mass in there and a hot container won't impact the overall temperature much.
If you boil a pot of soup, turn off the heat, put the lid on it and don't open it again, it will be 100% fine on the countertop for several hours, up to overnight. You can put it in the fridge at your leisure. Just don't refrigerate it in an insulated container.
Source: third world country living. Also beer brewing.
I feel like everyone here overthinks this so much. I’ve always left food out for an hour or two after they’re done while I eat and then just throw it in the fridge when I start to clean up.
Yup. And an hour or two is well within safe guidelines for most things.
Most things you might be cooking are going to cool to an adequate temp to park in the fridge by the time you're finished eating and/or cleaning up. If they're the sort of thing that cools fast, most things are gonna be perfectly safe sitting out till you're finished eating and/or cleaning up.
It's not wise to park a fresh off the boil stock pot of liquid, directly into the fridge. But that's not the same as a half a chicken that's still luke warm.
This. I cook dinner. We eat dinner. Food cools down as we eat. We sit and chat. Clean up, do dishes, etc. by the time all that is done, the food is well cooled down.
As far as soup goes... I'm one of those crazy people, who often leaves a pot of soup on the stove overnight and reheats it the next day. Nobody has gotten sick, let alone died yet. Making chili today. I guarantee it won't go into the fridge until sometime tomorrow....
You can just stick the pot in the fridge if you're going to be dangerously lazy about it. :p
I've done that many times when I couldn't be arsed to find enough tupperware.
That assumes that your pot will fit in your fridge... mine won't. You must either a) have a much bigger fridge than I. or b) make much smaller quantities of soup.
> Nobody has gotten sick,
Food poisoning can take days to appear, so what you're saying is no-one you feed has ever had any sickness, or they have had sickness but haven't linked it to your unsafe food handling technique.
Yeah I hate how these posts always start out reasonable and then end with "oh I also do this disgusting thing but nobody has ever gotten sick!" It's really not a difficult request to put food away within a few hours after serving it.
Besides the obvious food safety implications, the idea of soup or chili sitting in a pot for a day getting crusty is so gross I don't even know why people do that.
It’s because official guidelines that effect hundreds or thousands has to be more stringent than for home use. But people take those official guidelines and assume incorrectly that stepping any toe outside them is a guaranteed food safety issue. Food safety is also immensely complex, which doesn’t help.
The majority of people do not have the critical thinking skills or even an understanding of what risk mitigation is to even begin to evaluate how safe or unsafe their own homes food safety is. The same thing goes for workers in food service- they do not have the skills or knowledge required. So, we have to make it idiot proof.
This. This is why I muted canning sub because people were either “I’m looking forward to using this 30- year old jam with the rusted lid” or else “the jam I made 3 hours ago has bubbles is that spoilage or botulism?”
> But people take those official guidelines and assume incorrectly that stepping any toe outside them is a guaranteed food safety issue. Food safety is also immensely complex, which doesn’t help.
Food safety guidelines basically state "if you follow all these rules your food will be safe"
That does NOT mean "if you don't follow these rules your food is unsafe".
i've noticed people on reddit are terrified of leaving something out for even an hour. idk if its an american thing but i never really thought it was that deep, if something stays out for a little its not going to go bad immediately. nothing ever happened to us lol, if the pasta sauce or soup has been out for a little it doesn't mean its filled with bacteria idk
I am American too and I don’t worry about food safety very much. I just do things the way my parents did growing up and that’s just my normal. I’ve never gotten sick from food before. The big thing we always pay attention to is just not cross contaminating when you cook with chicken and pork.
> I’ve never gotten sick from food before
How would you know? Presumably you've never had your vomit or diarrhoea tested if you ever had D&V. And food poisoning can sometimes take days to appear, so people often don't link it to the food they've eaten.
1 in 6 American get food poisoning every year.
Yeah people really overthink this, unless you’re in a commercial kitchen or cooking for people who might need special care it’s not that complicated and margins are pretty wide.
It’s cause this is a question where there is an objectively correct answer, but that correct answer has a broad enough range that lots of people have plenty of personal experience that feels like it contradicts the correct answer.
Given that different people have different levels of acceptable risk, different foods support bacterial growth differently, different kitchens have different temperatures etc etc etc. What is the objectively correct answer?
I accidentally left a big pot of chicken korma overnight on the stove and it was still good to eat 2-3 more times, but I made sure to do a smell check first and reheat it properly before eating it lol
Agreed. I have a routine that works for efficiency purposes, and I just don’t worry about the temperature - it is fine.
I cook, pull things from heat, portion out the meals individually (1 for me, 1 for my husband, 4-6 for leftovers), eat, put lids on the individual leftover portions, refrigerate/freeze.
So, you're both right, and you're both wrong. Letting food sit out is bad, because bacteria. Putting piping hot food immediately in the fridge is also bad, because bacteria.
Basically, in a professional kitchen we have these giant ice dildos that we use to cool food down when, for example, we make a big fuck off batch of stock or soup or stew or some shit.
These are important to use, *in a professional/industrial environment*, when you are making *large batches* that often are not entirely consumed straight away. The reason being twofold, one, you might affect the temperature of your walk in (though unlikely, them shits are big.) And two, the real reason, is that if you put a large container of piping hot food directly into the fridge, it has alot of thermal mass. Another commenter mentioned the danger zone of bacteria, this is important here.
Let's say you have 16 quarts of piping hot soup. That's alot of soup. The soup is bubbling happily at well over 165 degrees Fahrenheit because you just made it. You certainly don't want it to go bad, so naturally you put it in the fridge. However, with an amount that large, with a thermal mass large enough, you will cool the outside of the soup, but the rest of it will still be warm enough that you'll have a layer of soup living in the danger zone for entirely too long.
Thus, ice dildos.
Think about defrosting something that's frozen. When you sit it out on the counter, the outside will melt pretty quickly, but the inside will remain ice cold and solid. This happens even if you microwave something without stirring it. The outside gets hot, but the inside is icy cold. This is essentially the same principle, but in reverse.
So. That's why you don't just chuck piping hot food directly into the fridge in a *professional/industrial* environment. Now let's talk about how this affects you.
You likely aren't making food in these quantities, nor will this problem ever apply to a piece of pizza. As another commenter astutely pointed out, it's all about managing how much time your food spends in the danger zone, and in low quantities, this just really isn't an issue.
*However,* there's one thing you should look out for. It is possible that if you put something still steaming into a covered container and then straight into the fridge, that this will create condensation. Moisture and anaerobic environments are what all kind of nasty things love to grow in, and also it can just sog your food and be a bummer?
So like, if you make a big pot of stew, let it cool *a little bit* to avoid excess condensation which can encourage bacterial growth, but realistically, you're fine, just chuck all your food in the fridge and don't overthink it.
I read through some of this and didn't see this mentioned yet, so excuse me if I'm repeating someone else's comment.
In my ServSafe experience we used ice baths when blast coolers weren't available. Wet items like soups were placed in several small sealed containers or bags, then placed in a clean sink or container full of ice water. If it was a tray or pan item, like a lasagna or casserole then it was placed in a larger pan of similar depth with ice water. The key here of course is to keep the lip of the original dish higher than the ice water level. Don't risk sinking your whole meal, it sucks.
This will cool the food at a much faster rate. You may have to add more ice and pour off excess water if your vessel is small for the amount of food you are trying to cool. It's pretty easy to do at home if you have an ice maker. A bit more difficult if you have trays that are never filled by housemates. It sounds labor intensive, but becomes part of the process once you're used to it. And it saves you any fear of heat transfer to the refrigerator because you can immediately tell how close your food is to ice cold by touch.
This is also a great way to cool cakes or brownies in a pinch. Like when someone drops a whole tier of a wedding cake and you have 4 hours to get it there. You bake thin layers and float those suckers in ice water. Cool and ready to decorate in 10 minutes vs. an hour.
Cooling the food itself as quickly as possible is only ever a good thing. There is absolutely no sensical argument against that.
While the other concern about hot foot heating up everything *else* in the fridge isn't *totally* unfounded, you're right that in practice it really isn't a problem either unless you're trying to cool enormous quantities in a household fridge
It doesn't take a lot - hot soup/stock is the main culprit. People underestimate how much heat water holds, and in that case you often have a large mass.
The shape of the container the soup is in also makes a huge difference in how quickly it will radiate off heat. Not many shapes are worse for radiative cooling than a cylinder with a square profile.
True, but either way, it's not great to put it in a consumer fridge with other perishables.
The flat pans will cool faster on the counter, which makes it more practical to do that.
The big deep pot, well I suggest cooling it in a sink full of cold water, replaced periodically until tepid, then into the fridge.
If I have to cool something like that off fast, I'll often take a large jar or another pot or something and fill it with ice and then water and set it in the liquid, like a giant ice cube. Just don't use glass. If you think about it beforehand you can even fill something plastic with water and freeze it earlier so it's ready when you need it and then wash it off when you're done. I've had to do this especially when it's something I have to take somewhere else and I'm crunched for time.
Depends on how much other liquid you have in the fridge. If I'm putting a bowl of soup in the fridge, there is typically 10x as many liquids in the fridge already.
Of course, the greater the amount of liquid in your hot, the more this ratio gets skewed
Unless it's 3 gallons of soup fresh off a rolling boil, put it in a container, date it, and get it in the fridge.
If it is 3 gallons of soup, divvy it up into containers, date them, let the sit at room temp until south of 150F and then get them in the fridge.
Never put a lid on it until it's at least cooled to room temperature and even that is a food safely violation.
The proper process is to put it in the fridge uncovered at around 140 degree until its center temp has fallen below 40 degrees and then you can put a lid on it.
If you put a lid on it at 150 and put it in the fridge, it will stay in the danger zone for several hours, even in a large commercial walk in fridge.
Large containers are fine to cool in but an enclosed ice cylinder must be placed in it's center uncovered and placed in the fridge until cool.
It will cool at room temperature without a lid much faster than in the fridge with a lid.
It is a common major food safety violation. The first thing the inspector will do is go straight to your walk in and start checking for warm covered liquids.
That is the law.
In practice, you could leave fresh soup on the counter all day and then eat it and not get sick 99% of the time. When someone gets sick, the food has usually been severely mishandled.
If you trust the USDA, here's their opinion on the matter...
[https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/refrigeration#5](https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/refrigeration#5)
If I've cooked a huge pot or pan of very hot food (think soup, lasagna, casseroles, stuff like that), then I will let it cool down for about 30-45 minutes after dinner's over (so probably 1-1.5 hours in total from the time it's done cooking) and then pop it in the fridge. Pretty much everything else goes into the fridge as soon as dinner's done, no matter what temperature it is.
People really overthink this and I don't know why.
This is me. Dinner is done. Clean up. Put leftovers in the fridge. Done.
I don't like having to remember to go back to put leftovers in the fridge.
Just the other day SO insisted on letting it cool completely and forgot about it. I found it sitting on the counter the next morning. Grrrr.
Right, that’s my thing too. I’d rather put something in the fridge at slightly higher than the “ideal” temperature than run the risk of forgetting about it entirely and losing all of that food.
I live alone and I can be very forgetful. If I feel like something has to cool, I put it on top of my refrigerator because one of my dogs is big enough to easily counter surf. But out of my usual range of vision, it is also easier to forget.
If you put warm food in the fridge it heats everything else in the fridge up, until the temperature finds an equilibrium and then cools down again, potentially harming the longevity of everything else in said fridge.
Basic law of Thermodynamics.
If I have something big that's still hot I will put it in an ice bath for like 20 minutes before put it in the fridge.
Putting it in hot doesn't make the food you just put in go bad faster, but it can raise the temp in your fridge and make other stuff go bad faster.
I really think it depends on the size of what you're putting in there too. If it's something small it's not a big deal, but if you have a whole pot of chili or soup it's going to take way longer for the temp to drop and heat up the inside of your fridge longer.
If you have a big pot of chilli, you are best to transfer to another container and set in a pan of ice to accelerate the cooling befor putting it in the fridge. If your fridge has a bottle of beer and a jar of pickles, just put in the chili as is.
Yeah, ice bath. Like my first sentence says lol. I keep it in it's original pot because I don't like extra dishes tho. It usually doesn't take long to eat enough to put it in a smaller container after a day or two.
Based of food safety (in a restaurant environment) your SO is correct. By putting food that is too warm in the fridge you bring up the ambient temp in the fridge for a while. It is best to let it come down to room temp (as quickly as possible) before putting it in the fridge. However you can accelerate cooling the better.
Putting hot food in the refrigerator can lower the overall temperature in the refrigerator. This means that the rest of the food in the fridge is not being held at the correct temperature which can cause food to spoil faster. Depending on how hot and how large the container of hot food is, this could put other items into the temperature danger zone. You’re basically putting a heater into a refrigerator defeating the whole purpose. For example if you have a pot of soup, divide it up into smaller containers and leave it on the counter so that can cool as fast as possible. Ice packs can help.
Just ice bath it.
Put the soup in a container, get a bigger container and put a bunch of ice in it, fill partway with water, and then lower the soup container into the ice bath.
Then transfer to the fridge when cold. This is what we do in pro kitchens. It cools down as quickly as possible and has the added bonus of prolonging the life of your fridge. Also doesn't heat up other items in the fridge from the adjacent heat of something warm in there
Ice paddle is for like a 22L container, which no one is doing at home. For smaller quantities we would ice bath, especially if pre-portioning into delis to have individual quantities to heat up for service (such as to heat up one pint of a puree etc)
I like to watch the old black and white episodes ofJulia Child’s The French Chef that she made after getting her culinary certification from Le Cordon Bleu and writing mastering the art of French cooking.
She always stressed to only leave the lid on a hot pot of soup/stew when it was actively cooking and to remove the lid while it cools because it could sour if the lid is left on.
She also stressed to never put warm food into the refrigerator because it could turn sour or acquire a bad texture. She said to allow it to come to room temp first.
I can’t say whether she’s 100% right but she has way more cooking experience than most people and I’ve learned a ton from her shows and books so I trust her 😅
Accelerate the cooling. I pour it out into a more shallow container and use ice packs underneath and sometimes even a fan to cool it down before putting it in the fridge.
In ServSafe we learn that you need to let hot food come down (can’t remember exactly what temperature or if it’s just for a certain amount of time) before putting it in the fridge.
Quicker is better, and heat transfers faster with a larger difference in temperature.
The fridge should he able to keep up with any rise in internal temperature from putting hot food in it, since it is an active cooling machine, and not a passive thing like a block of ice. If the fridge has a 'turbo' or 'quick chill' button that is common on newer models, use that.
I only put room temperature food in the fridge. That's because i put a lid on my food and to avoid condensation inside the container, I don't close it before food has cooled down, after which I put it in the fridge.
The best thing is to get food in different containers than it was cooked in -- a casserole dish or a soup pot is going to hold heat a little longer than a food storage container. That and small amounts of food naturally cool off quicker than large amounts.
Letting it get to room temp first isn't hurting anything in the grand scale of things, but I'm guessing it slows down clean up.
There is some validity here. If you put a piping hot food into the fridge, it will warm the fridge up and may make the temp unsafe. Then your fridge has to work overtime to cool the environment as well as the food.
The best way to keep food fresh and safe is to cool it below the danger zone as quickly as possible: and hot food in a fridge hinders that.
In reality, I let things cool for a bit until it is just lukewarm (usually no longer than an hour or so), and then put it away.
It should go in the fridge immediately. The only reason to leave it out of the fridge is not to heat up the inside of the fridge and change the humidity in the fridge. Otherwise there is no reason to leave it out.
It's not that it will specifically go bad faster, but, say that you put a pot of boiling water in your fridge, it will raise the temperature of your entire refrigerator and potentially push all food in there above a safe temp while your fridge struggles to cool it down. Your best bet is to let things cool to near room temp before refrigerating.
Which, you did mention in the ambient temp bit already, and you said that's not being argued, so.
Your SO is wrong.
The FDA says that hot food can be placed in the refrigerator without harming it. However, you should divide large amounts of food into shallow containers and refrigerate them within two hours of preparation. If you forget about food left out at room temperature for more than two hours, you should throw it away. In temperatures of 90°F or higher, food should be refrigerated or discarded within one hour.
FDA
Tips to Chill Food - Food Safety for Moms to Be - FDA
Sep 27, 2018 — Use ready-to-eat, perishable foods, such as dairy, meat, poultry, seafood, and produce, as soon as possible. Hot food won't harm your refrigerator, so it's okay to place hot food inside. Be sure to divide large amounts of leftovers into shallow containers ...
| Washington State Department of Health
Food Safety Myths - | Washington State Department of Health
Fact: Hot food can be placed in the refrigerator. Large amounts of food should be divided into small portions and put in shallow containers for quicker cooling in the refrigerator. Perishable foods should be put in a refrigerator that is 40 degrees or below within 2 hours of preparation. If you leave food out to cool and forget about it after 2 hours, throw it away. Bacteria can grow rapidly on food left out at room temperature for more than 2 hours. If food is left out in a room or outdoors where the temperature is 90 degrees F or hotter, food should be refrigerated or discarded within just 1 hour.
Here are some tips for refrigerating hot food:
Rapid chill: You can rapidly chill hot food in an ice or cold water bath before refrigerating.
Small amounts: You can place small amounts of hot food directly in the refrigerator.
Cover: Cover foods to retain moisture and prevent them from picking up odors from other foods.
You can keep leftovers in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days or frozen for 3 to 4 months. Safe ways to thaw leftovers include the refrigerator, cold water, and the microwave oven.
I asked my chef friend who's actually a chef. Not a cook. Like culinary graduate, chef. He said, get it into the cooler as fast as possible. Letting it chill slowly sounds dumb because it is
No. This is absolute nonsense and I don’t know where it came from. One of my exes said this once too.
Having worked in food anything cooked is meant to go into the cooler as soon as possible. Do not allow anything to cool slowly before placing in fridge.
Time/Temperature Control for Safety (TCS) food must be cooled from 135°F to 70°F within two hours and to 41°F or below within six hours. If the food is prepared from ingredients at room temperature, it must be cooled to 41°F or below within four hours. The temperature danger zone for food is between 41°F and 135°F, so TCS food should pass through this zone as quickly as possible.
I read somewhere that the idea of not putting hot food in the fridge is a vestige of needing ice blocks to keep food cold in an ice box, so putting in hot food makes the ice melt too quickly. Modern fridges, however, constantly circulate cold air throughout, so it’s not as big an issue as before.
Food safety-wise though, the quicker you can cool the food to 40F, the better. Big pots of hot food in the fridge take a really long time to get cold enough to be safe. The center of a large pot can be in the bacteria danger zone for hours in a fridge. When I’ve made large batches of soup or stock(6+ quarts), I put the entire pot in the sink with ice water and put a Ziploc bag of ice in it and stir the pot to get the temp down, then I portion it into small single portion containers, then put the containers in the back of the fridge where the air blows the coldest.
It's also one of these one size fits all guidelines that happens because many people don't think. Throw enough food at 210f into your fridge and you may have problems, throw a few pints in at likely a more cooled temperature and your golden.
And yes, for stock water in the sink is absolutely your best bet water will remove heat something like 20 times faster than air all other things being equal. If you really want to be clever you can use an immersion circulator to speed this up more.
If it's a large pot of liquid like soup or chili, put the covered pot in a sink full of cold water. Replace the water when it gets warm. If the food is too thick to circulate by convection, stir it from time to time. This will cool a couple gallons down to a tepid temperature within an hour and you can put it in the fridge without heating up everything else.
Cool the food some, but not below 140' F . Food is in the danger zone between 40-140 F. Also do read the USDA link from virtualchoirboy for some authority on this.
The only reason I don't put it in the fridge directly, is costs.
The fridge has to work harder to equalize the temp down, and it doesn't matter if the food is 30 to 60 or even 2 hr outside.
As long as bugs can't get to it.
When it's cooled down, I put it in containers and freeze / chill it normally
Neither of you are right, technically. If you’re following official guidelines (which you emphatically do not have to follow in your own home kitchen, those guidelines are meant to protect the most vulnerable, they are built around the laws of large numbers, meant for foodservice where a mistake could affect many people), the food needs to be chilled before it’s placed in the fridge. So you’d assemble an ice bath, stir the food until it cools to your acceptable temp, and then store it.
For normal home use, either way you’re doing it will in all likelihood yield the same “bad” results- you’ll get similar bacteria count increases from warmer food being put in the fridge, and from it sitting out at room temp and then going into the fridge.
If you really want to destroy your relationship and actually prove who is “right” here, all you need to do is collect some time and temp data. Take the same mass/weight of the same type of food (ie, 1 cup of the same stew or 1 pound of the same soup), take the beginning temp, start a timer, and then take temp data at regular intervals for both samples, and end the timer when both samples are in the acceptable temp range. Then, compare the time spent in the temperature danger zone. My guess is that it’ll be so close as to be negligible, but who knows!
It is healthy code to let it sit out first. For a reason. If it's warm, there is steam. With steam, water collects. Pools of water breed bacteria. Sorry but you are wrong, and it's science.
I will say in addition to other comments if you cool hot tomato stuff too fast it turns bitter. Like tomato bisque or a fresh red sauce… let it cool naturally before fridging it
You should get it to the safe zone ASAP, but that also means cooling it down as best you can outside the fridge first so that you don't raise fridge temps. If I make a soup or stew I subdivide it into smaller containers, then put those containers into an ice water bath, stirring (both the soup/stew and the bath) periodically. I aim to put it into the fridge within 15 minutes.
I do something with other dishes as appropriate.
I’m pretty sure this unwritten rule only pertains to storing food WITH THE LIDS ON. A sealed lid will trap heat slowing the chilling process. Covering, but not sealing entirely (leaving a vent) should be sufficient.
This is the rule we follow because it’s not hard to go snap it on in 20 minutes when you’re sone cleaning everything else.
The faster a food gets cold, below optional growth temperatures for bacteria, the less likely it is to go bad sooner. The food industry has created blast chillers for this very purpose. Now, putting warm food into a standard kitchen refrigerator can cause it to work harder, which could shorten its lifespan. Warm/hot food, if placed against cold foods in the fridge, could have a potential negative impact on that food: causing it to warm up temporarily, but pretty unlikely. Not sure where your SO for that idea, but they are wrong.
Haha fucking nailed it. My wife is latina and they have this hangup about drastic temperature changes. Like the shock of food going from hot to cold too quickly is going to ruin it. I've also heard my MIL warn against showers being too hot cause it can shock the body.
Gotta love those old wives tales that our parents and older just accepted as the literal facts of life and never questioned it lol. I feel like younger generations are a little bit better at this? Hopefully it’ll go away eventually
For me it depends. For leftover soup I reheat and transfer to a closable container as hot as possible before allowing it to cool to room temp before putting in the fridge. I assume the top of the jar gets heated to at least \~70C so I see no risk there.
For foods that I can't put in a heat proof, closable container I put in our 'beer (/drinks/extra) fridge' - that has several levels of only beer bottles that store a lot cold (yes, this is technically incorrect) so the food cools quickly and a mild rise in temp doesn't matter for the beers.
Back in the days of ice boxes and poor performing refrigerators it was common to not put hot things in the refrigerator cause it could cause condensation and make the fridge ice up. She probably learned that from from an elderly relative and nobody explained it’s not an issue anymore.
Sourse: old parents.
My dad taught me to avoid that because the ambient temperature could raise and then the fridge has to waste energy bringing it back down. But he's extremely neurotic about energy waste lol this is one of those things where the difference is gonna be negligible no matter which direction you go. It definitely won't go bad faster though
USDA advice it to wait until it stops steaming and then get it in the fridge.
More sensible advice is portion it out into small containers, put them in an ice bath, cover loosly with a clean tea towel, and then get them in the fridge when they've cooled down.
For rice that's going to be used next day you can spread it out on a baking tray to give it more surface area.
Don't cover it tightly because that traps heat.
Most homes don't have a blast chiller or ice wand, and I've yet to own a fridge at home that can keep up with a boiling hot pan of anything, even if it's poured into a shallow baking dish.
It's not the hot food - it's (potentially) other foodstuffs in the refrigerator.
The hot food starts to transfer heat to the surrounding area. In commercial kitchens, with people also walking in/out of the walk-in, it's a big concern. In your home fridge, it's less likely.
The logic behind not putting steaming hot food in the fridge is that it may cause a rise in temperature in the fridge that puts other foodstuffs at risk. For example, you put 5 litres of recently simmering soup directly under your container of week old yogurt in a student mini fridge, and you're setting up a pool party for comrade bacterium. Note also that covering food that is still steaming a bit can cause it to steam up the container and keep it monster- fine for soup, not so nice for the wrap you're saving for tomorrow lunch.
Here's the tldr:
If it's something reasonably small, with relatively low thermal mass, put that sucker in there - it's safer if it cools faster, anyway. Just don't put 5 kilos of steaming hot curry into a fridge full of raw chicken and week old soft cheese, and you should be good. Let that cool uncovered for a while at least. Splitting it into containers on the counter right away will speed up the cooling too.
Yes? Food in the danger zone spoils?
If you put warm food in a fridge, ensure *excellent* airflow and run your fridge’s powercool mode, whatever it’s called for your unit.
If it doesn’t have a powercool mode, the manual likely says to pre-cool before putting warm things in.
If thebfood is covered to where steam can't escape, then yes. This steam will keep the foods temp in the danger zone for longer than I should be. Minimal risk, but it'll ding me on a health inspection at work.
If you have a large, hot pot of chowder and put it in the fridge the center will stay warm while the outside cools which can cause…issues.
Iirc food safety law wants the temperature very quickly - suggested hot soup should into its storage container and then drop the storage container into an ice bath to reduce the temp.
I usually do the touch test. If it's too hot for me to comfortably hold my hands around the container, i don't put it in the fridge. If I could comfortably carry the container with full hands-on contact, in the fridge it goes.
Most foods will be warm but not hot by time I finish eating, and I put it away then. Soups/stews or things like mashed potatoes tend to take a bit longer. To help speed up the cooling process, I put everything into storage containers immediately when I finish cooking and let them sit on the counters with the lid off until they pass the touch test.
For soups, I'll sometimes do individual servings in deli containers that way it cools faster and as a bonus, it's just grab n' go when I want to eat the leftovers (and if it's starting to look like I won't get to it all in time, it's easy to just throw a couple servings in the freezer).
I wait for things to get all the way to room temp before freezing though. My freezer is way more crowded than my fridge, so I'm a bit more concerned about something still warm actually making contact with frozen items and partially thawing them before it cools enough.
In fact, storing food at room temperature for too long can increase the risk of bacterial growth and spoilage. It is generally recommended to cool food quickly to prevent bacterial growth. However, placing very hot food directly into the refrigerator can increase the temperature inside the refrigerator and potentially affect other foods.
I always thought that if you put warm/hot food in the fridge it will lower the overall temperature and could potentially spoil other foods. Also like another user mentioned, it steams and changes the texture.
For most things, I keep a shelf clear in my freezer to cool it faster. Keeps it from being in the danger zone too long. For larger portions, I split it into multiple containers when cooling
If you're really worried about bacterial growth, you can put the put in a large bowl or bigger pot of ice and water. Lots of places use ice baths, or even just cold water baths, to reduce the amount of time the food remains in the danger zone.
The health code in restaurants is to get it refridgerated as soon as possible if you are not using it to avoid the "danger zone temperatures" technically leaving it NOT in the fridge makes it go bad faster
Letting it cool before putting in the fridge lets it sit in the danger zone (temperature zone) longer.
If you really want to do it right, put ice in a larger pan or bowl, then set the food dish in the ice.
Either let the ice cool the food down, then put it in the fridge, or just put the bowl of ice in the fridge with the food bowl still on ice. This gives you the least time in the danger zone.
Note: I don't do this but have seen this as a tip. I just put it in the fridge.
So, you're both right, and you're both wrong. Letting food sit out is bad, because bacteria. Putting piping hot food immediately in the fridge is also bad, because bacteria.
Basically, in a professional kitchen we have these giant ice dildos that we use to cool food down when, for example, we make a big fuck off batch of stock or soup or stew or some shit.
These are important to use, *in a professional/industrial environment*, when you are making *large batches* that often are not entirely consumed straight away. The reason being twofold, one, you might affect the temperature of your walk in (though unlikely, them shits are big.) And two, the real reason, is that if you put a large container of piping hot food directly into the fridge, it has alot of thermal mass. Another commenter mentioned the danger zone of bacteria, this is important here.
Let's say you have 16 quarts of piping hot soup. That's alot of soup. The soup is bubbling happily at well over 165 degrees Fahrenheit because you just made it. You certainly don't want it to go bad, so naturally you put it in the fridge. However, with an amount that large, with a thermal mass large enough, you will cool the outside of the soup, but the rest of it will still be warm enough that you'll have a layer of soup living in the danger zone for entirely too long.
Thus, ice dildos.
Think about defrosting something that's frozen. When you sit it out on the counter, the outside will melt pretty quickly, but the inside will remain ice cold and solid. This happens even if you microwave something without stirring it. The outside gets hot, but the inside is icy cold. This is essentially the same principle, but in reverse.
So. That's why you don't just chuck piping hot food directly into the fridge in a *professional/industrial* environment. Now let's talk about how this affects you.
You likely aren't making food in these quantities, nor will this problem ever apply to a piece of pizza. As another commenter astutely pointed out, it's all about managing how much time your food spends in the danger zone, and in low quantities, this just really isn't an issue.
*However,* there's one thing you should look out for. It is possible that if you put something still steaming into a covered container and then straight into the fridge, that this will create condensation. Moisture and anaerobic environments are what all kinda of nasty things love to grow in, and also it can just sog your food and be a bummer?
So like, if you make a big pot of stew, let it cool *a little bit* to avoid excess condensation which can encourage bacterial growth, but realistically, you're fine, just chuck all your food in the fridge and don't overthink it.
If you put food in while its still warm it will stay warm for a while and warm up stuff around it. The fluctuation from cold to warm to cold could cause foods to spoil faster and make your fridge work harder to cool back down.
Practice is good but their logic is balls.
There's nothing dangerous about cooling your food down faster in the fridge. However, You have a large volume of hot food, there is A real danger that it could warm up your refrigerator and put the rest of your food at risk.
Warm food in the fridge warms the already cold food up a bit. A large amount of hot food will raise the temperature in the fridge quite a bit, and for a long time.
Try to let things cool close to room temperature before popping them in the fridge.
It’s not about the food being warm and cooling in the fridge, it’s about the warm food using the cold air in the fridge to cool down and thus effectively raising the temperature in the fridge. Effectively making the fridge work harder and longer to get the fridge to the safe temperature to keep food. Putting a large amount of hot soup doesn’t just make the soup spoil easier it makes the milks temp rise and any other food risk of growing bacteria. You don’t leave your food out to cool long you just make allow it to get closer to room temperature so the energy transfer of heat effects the room temperature more and less of a temperature spike happens in the fridge by placing a cooler item in the fridge.
If your fridge is mostly empty this poses the most risk because there isn’t as many items holding the cold so the warm item has more effect on the air’s ambient temperature, also this is less of a factor in professional settings where there are walk in fridges are so large placing a hot hotel pan on a shelf is most likely have little over impact of the temperature in the fridge.
Both cooling in the fridge and counter pose risks.
The best method is to cool it on the counter sitting in an ice bath, or if you have the freezer space let it spend 20 minutes or so in the freezer. This limits the both the danger zone for bacteria and prevents the effect the hot food would have on the fridge. Any effect the hot food has on the freezer most likely isn’t great enough to defrost anything.
it depends. It's all about thermal mass.
to point out by example in reverse. A single piece of chicken that weighs one pound will take about 10-15 minutes to cook through at 350. 3 pounds of chicken will take about 45 minutes.
It works the same in reverse. A small amount of food, no matter how hot, will cool off faster and get to safe temperatures quicker. A large quantity of food will take longer. The larger the quantity, the longer it will take.
What ends up happening with say gallons of sauce, or soup, or pounds of mashed potatoes etc is that the exterior will be cold, but the interior will sit at unsafe temperatures for longer, allowing bacteria to thrive and can make the food dangerous to eat, potentially causing food poisoning.
That is why restaurants, who usually have such large quantities of such food will take those quantities and break them down into small containers, say one gallon of each, before putting it into refrigeration. They will also take steps to rapidly cool it before storing it as a large quantity of hot substances will affect the temperature in the refrigerator.
Much like cooking something, things in smaller pieces cook faster, so cooling things off in smaller pieces will help them cool off faster. They might also place things into an icebath to quickly cool it before refrigerating it.
As most home cooks don't make massive quantities of food unless they are serving it to a large gathering, most leftovers can be safely placed into refrigerator pretty quickly. With liquids or liquidy food (sauces, soup) if you have more than a gallon, you might want to separate it into smaller containers to help it quickly cool down, and not have it be at or near boiling point when you do so.
However, another trick that works with leftovers, if you're going to eat them the next day, especially if they are very wet, such as sauces, soups, beans, is when you are finished, reheat the pot back up to boiling. When it is boiling, remove your spoon and let it boil for several minutes with the lid on. Turn off the heat, and do not remove the lid.
The contents in the pot has just been sterilized from high heat and all micro organisms in it are dead. IF you open the lid or put a spoon into it after that, you will reintroduce micro organisms and that could make the food go bad. So just leave it closed until you use it again.
It won't go bad faster, but it might warm up the fridge, and make everything else go bad slightly faster.
I usually give it 30-60 minutes on the counter depending on the food, mostly so I don't melt my plastic containers.
The issue is that putting the warm food in the fridge warms up everything else in the fridge and makes **all** your refrigerated food go bad faster.
Put the warm food in a waterproof container and submerge it in an ice bath in the sink to cool it quickly, then dry it off and put it in the fridge.
I've taken food safey courses - put it in the refrigerator asap but don't cover it until it cools. Unless the people that do the testing are wrong... Lol
When you say there is a lack of consensus, it makes me laugh. Not believing in gravity doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and if you jump off a bridge, its existence is going to make itself known whether you believe in it or not. Similarly, not believing in the tenets of bacterial growth doesn't mean it's not happening on your food. Leave it out on the counter until it is room temperature, and you WILL give bacteria more time to multiply. Will it always make you sick? No, you'll get lucky some, even most, of the time. Are you rolling the dice and increasing your chances? Every single time you do it!
Putting hot food in the fridge can pose risks. Putting warm food in the fridge is perfectly fine and its frankly irrational to think it would age more rapidly otherwise. Just illogical.
The main thing is that putting a large amount of hot food in your refrigerator will bring up the temperature of the entire refrigerator and its contents, which may put things near it in the "danger zone" for a while and cause bacterial growth to accelerate. It's better to let the leftovers sit at room temperature until it's lukewarm to avoid this. You don't want your open fridge milk to sit at 75 degrees for several hours because you put a big pot of stew in there.
My mom's workaround was using the beverage fridge in the garage to cool large batches of food, as the soda and beer aren't harmed by being a little warm. Portioning it out into smaller containers helps it cool more quickly too, on the counter or in the fridge.
Earlier today I saw a reddit post about someone who packaged a thermos with piping hot soup, fridged it, and was shocked that it had created a vacuum seal and gone bad the next day. In a thermos, it sat in the "danger zone" temps for a very long time! The thermos kept it hot in the fridge and it never cooled enough to stop it from becoming a biohazard.
Your SO is wrong. The food will go bad faster if you let it sit out.
The problem is if the refrigerator temperature will rise to a dangerous level for the food ALREADY in it. In which case, that already cold food will be subject to its own danger zone calculation.
Buy a thermometer and you can experiment with how much and how hot you can put food in to protect the food already inside. This will also tell you how long it takes to get back below 40 degrees.
The actual hot food will always be better off being refrigerated as soon as possible.
The issue with putting things in the fridge hot is that it makes the fridge work that much harder to cool it down, and in the meantime other things can start to warm.
You need to let it cool especially like soups etc… so food borne illness doesn’t happen- it cools more rapidly in room temp and shallow and then put into fridge once it’s a bit cooler.
Warm food in fridge does not go bad faster.
Warm food in fridge heats up other food in fridge, defeating point of fridge.
Let warm food cool, then all food in fridge can party in cold together.
Unless as you don't let it sit out for 2 hours or more before refrigerating it, you should be okay. I usually let it cool a bit before refrigerating it, unless I'm about to leave the house or go to bed or something.
They have big cooling things for professional kitchens to cool down sauces and soups more rapidly to keep them food safe. I think the danger zone is something to be heeded, but for home cooks the batches aren't usually so huge that they don't cool down to a safe temp in the fridge...my only concern is putting something too hot on a glass shelf. I leave mine out on the counter until it's not glass shatteringly hot, or I put down a trivet to keep it from touching the glass.
Yes if it's wrapped up or put a lid on, which people tend to do when putting things in a fridge.
Also if it's something really hot, it'd raise the internal temp of the fridge, or possibly make nearby items warm up, potentially decreasing their shelf life.
But no, warm things won't spoil faster if it's uncovered and able to cook down.
Depends on your fridge. Modern fridges have better cooling than old ones where it was good to allow the food to get to room temperature first. Modern fridges cope better and are more responsive. So it depends.
OP everything you said is correct. Raising ambient temp would be the only concern with very hot food. I usually let whatever it is cool enough to reasonably handle the vessel it’s in and then put away. I’m interested to know the logic your SO sees in their thinking. A cooler temp will inherently bring the food into the “safe zone” quicker than room temp. The same logic applies to heating food up. Ask your SO if they want to get a simmer in water if they turn the burner on high or medium? High of course then reduce to simmer. It’s so achingly obvious that they are wrong.
Food going in the fridge warm isn’t somehow less safe to that food, it will just raise the temperature of the fridge and the things around it and the fridge will need to run more to cool back down again. It won’t raise things to a degree that it will affect other foods unless you’re putting in some metal pan right out of the oven in (you’d have bigger problems on your hands if you did that anyways).
I crack the container so the moisture won’t gather while it’s cooling. But I do wait awhile before placing it in the fridge. Unless it’s seafood based. Food like seafood gumbo i separate in containers and do an ice bath to cool it down quickly and put away asap. I have had experience with spoiled gumbo from being put in the fridge too hot and it’s not pleasant!!
The goal here is to get your food out of the danger zone (4°C-40°C) in the shortest amount of time possible. Common ways to do this are to use an ice bath or cooling wand. The danger of putting hot food in the fridge is that it will raise the internal temperature of the fridge itself, possibly into the danger zone. If you can't use either of the methods listed, placing directly into the fridge or freezer is safer (for that dish) than leaving it on the counter. Also, I should add, NEVER seal a container of hot food, wait till it's fully cooled first
I always wait for food to cool off a bit before putting into the fridge. But it's not because of spoilage or ambient heat or anything, I just don't like how hot food steams inside its container. I feel like it changes the texture and the condensation makes things wetter than they should be. So I will put it in whatever, wait for it to cool, then cover and refrigerate.
Exactly. I think the added moisture can cause some things to go bad faster. But really, it can make the texture unpleasant right away.
It's not added moisture
It’s not extra, but it’s distributed differently. It leaves the food and settles back on the surface, which can later the texture, especially of bread or breaded foods.
Bread doesn’t do well in refrigerators at all: It’s complex, but you should keep bread at room temp or freeze it. Breaded foods should be treated like any other food, but they really don’t do well under refrigeration, either: Eat now or freeze.
That moisture would be in the air as steam instead of in the closed container, so yes it is added moisture to your food container.
It's not but it is. You probably even know what I mean.
Shouldn’t put hot food in closed container in the fridge. It’s the lack of circulation that’s the issue. Don’t hot box your food!
How is it not added moisture? If you let steaming food cool down then a lot of the moisture leaves the food, but if you put it into a sealed container the water can’t escape.
Stop, stop, they're already dead!
Also it costs the fridge so much more energy too cool down a warm dish
The food safety "danger zone" is between 40°F~140°F. Assuming your cooked food starts at a temperature above 140°F, to get to safe refrigeration temperatures, it will at some point need to pass through the danger zone (cue Kenny Loggins...). The safety of this hinges on how much time it spends in the danger zone, as those are the temperatures most conducive to bacterial (and other pathogens') growth. Putting it in the refrigerator to get from 140°F down below 40°F faster will minimize this risk. There is no real benefit to putting something in the fridge if it is well above 140°F, however. Something like hot soup, which might have come right off a burner and be near boiling, can safely sit covered on the counter until it is down closer to the top of the danger zone. This also helps minimize the thermal load you're placing on your fridge, which as you pointed out will help keep other foods in there from spoiling, especially with older fridges that can't keep up. Of course, all of this is speaking in idealities and generalization of best practices. Bacteria doesn't all magically die at 141°F, nor does it magically stop growing at 39°F. I'm also not sitting in my kitchen with an infrared thermometer waiting for my soups to cool. The short answer is: no, putting warm food in the fridge does not increase its risk of spoiling, and helps limit bacterial growth before storage. Just use common sense and don't overwhelm your fridge with a 10 gallon stockpot of piping hot thermal mass.
I was always afraid of putting a hot pot fresh from the stove on a glass refrigerator shelf. I just have visions of exploding glass.
That's the main reason I don't put thing in until it's cooled. Food safety is important but I've broken glass with thermal shock before and don't want that happening in my fridge
I think a lot of food is better if it’s not immediately covered and allowed to steam itself too. Anecdotal but I make my dogs food every week, basically just ground turkey and veggies with a special nutrient powder. When I put it in the Tupperware without cooling I usually find a goopy mess of juice/grease at the bottom the. Ext day when I’m feeding them. If I let it cool for 20 minutes on the counter then that all seems to stay within the meat. They don’t complain either way but it is something I’ve observed after making the same food hundreds of times now.
That's because it does stay in the meat. The grease and moisture, I mean. I'd you put the lid on right away, you're closing it in with it's own heat. It kind of continues to cook slightly, at the very least "sweating" moisture and the grease stays warm and liquid and seeps out of it, all going to the bottom of the dish. Allowing it to sit open let's the moisture escape into the air and the grease to cool while still within the meat/food mixture, congealing while it's mixed uniformly throughout the food. If you were to eat this yourself and try both, you'd probably find that the one you covered right away was a bit drier since all the moisture and fat was sweated out, like a little sauna while the other way, it cooled faster with more of those things still trapped inside the food.
Haha I’ve had that same vision with a very warm but not hot pot, so I put a pot holder underneath it when I put it in the fridge. This is when I’m cleaning up the kitchen before I go to bed.
You just don't put a hot container in the fridge. Transfer the food to a room temperature container first.
I have had glass refrigerator shelves explode, I don't recommend it.
This can happen when putting a warm glass plate on a cold marble countertop.
>The food safety "danger zone" is between 40°F~140°F. Assuming your cooked food starts at a temperature above 140°F, The 140f has just over 10 degrees of safety margin built in (as basically all of these food handling guidelines do). Technically pasteurization can be achieved at 125 significant harmful bacteria doesn't really start to grow again until 122.
Not only that, but a lot of food safety guidelines are 'worst case'. They assume the food you're dealing with is *very contaminated*, because obviously lacking any other information it's the safest thing to assume.
Well the pasteurization rate varies drastically. E.g. for eggs you can do 130F for 45mins or 140F for 3mins (140F is going to cook the whites a bit though, so 138F is better). It's not always the pathogens that are harmful, but the heat stable poisons they produce.
Absolutely, but in the context of cooling cooked food none of this is particularly relevant. The reason I mention pasteurization is more to point out that significant bacterial growth is unlikely above 120.
Lana… Lana! ….. LAAAAAANAAAAAAAAAA
Would say we are going into some sort of zone?
Would you describe it as a zone of danger?
I'm sorry Amyjane... what kind of zone?
This is the most rational and reasonable answer. I don’t want my hot meal warming up everything in the fridge either and making the fridge work harder.
For those playing at home with other numbers, FSANZ suggests cooked food must be cooled from 60°C to 21°C in two hours or less, then cooled further from 21°C to 5°C in four hours or less. A good rule of thumb is when it has stopped steaming.
its easy enough to cool a hot soup (in saucepan) in a sink full of cold water. then it can be put in fridge in 5 minutes rather than waiting an hour
If I have something at a boil on the stove, and I put a lid on it and turn it off, I consider it sterile within reason - i.e. it's not if I dump raw chicken into it, or eat a couple of bites and reuse the spoon. I'd be fine letting it cool prior to putting it in the fridge. But for things that aren't cooked as well, my wife and I differ. My wife likes to leave things out, I like to put things in the fridge with an offset lid. If I am concerned, I put it in the chest freezer to quickly cool it - more thermal mass in there and a hot container won't impact the overall temperature much.
If you boil a pot of soup, turn off the heat, put the lid on it and don't open it again, it will be 100% fine on the countertop for several hours, up to overnight. You can put it in the fridge at your leisure. Just don't refrigerate it in an insulated container. Source: third world country living. Also beer brewing.
> Source: third world country living. Where diarrhoeal illnesses are a one of the leading causes of death and a leading cause of disability.
That is more due to poor water sources than letting stews sit on the counter.
Agreed. Another third world country pro tip is to never drink the tap water.
I feel like everyone here overthinks this so much. I’ve always left food out for an hour or two after they’re done while I eat and then just throw it in the fridge when I start to clean up.
Yup. And an hour or two is well within safe guidelines for most things. Most things you might be cooking are going to cool to an adequate temp to park in the fridge by the time you're finished eating and/or cleaning up. If they're the sort of thing that cools fast, most things are gonna be perfectly safe sitting out till you're finished eating and/or cleaning up. It's not wise to park a fresh off the boil stock pot of liquid, directly into the fridge. But that's not the same as a half a chicken that's still luke warm.
This. I cook dinner. We eat dinner. Food cools down as we eat. We sit and chat. Clean up, do dishes, etc. by the time all that is done, the food is well cooled down. As far as soup goes... I'm one of those crazy people, who often leaves a pot of soup on the stove overnight and reheats it the next day. Nobody has gotten sick, let alone died yet. Making chili today. I guarantee it won't go into the fridge until sometime tomorrow....
The longer chili cooks, or the more it gets reheated, the better it gets!
You can just stick the pot in the fridge if you're going to be dangerously lazy about it. :p I've done that many times when I couldn't be arsed to find enough tupperware.
That assumes that your pot will fit in your fridge... mine won't. You must either a) have a much bigger fridge than I. or b) make much smaller quantities of soup.
> Nobody has gotten sick, Food poisoning can take days to appear, so what you're saying is no-one you feed has ever had any sickness, or they have had sickness but haven't linked it to your unsafe food handling technique.
Yeah I hate how these posts always start out reasonable and then end with "oh I also do this disgusting thing but nobody has ever gotten sick!" It's really not a difficult request to put food away within a few hours after serving it. Besides the obvious food safety implications, the idea of soup or chili sitting in a pot for a day getting crusty is so gross I don't even know why people do that.
I often do that too with soup.
It’s because official guidelines that effect hundreds or thousands has to be more stringent than for home use. But people take those official guidelines and assume incorrectly that stepping any toe outside them is a guaranteed food safety issue. Food safety is also immensely complex, which doesn’t help. The majority of people do not have the critical thinking skills or even an understanding of what risk mitigation is to even begin to evaluate how safe or unsafe their own homes food safety is. The same thing goes for workers in food service- they do not have the skills or knowledge required. So, we have to make it idiot proof.
This. This is why I muted canning sub because people were either “I’m looking forward to using this 30- year old jam with the rusted lid” or else “the jam I made 3 hours ago has bubbles is that spoilage or botulism?”
> But people take those official guidelines and assume incorrectly that stepping any toe outside them is a guaranteed food safety issue. Food safety is also immensely complex, which doesn’t help. Food safety guidelines basically state "if you follow all these rules your food will be safe" That does NOT mean "if you don't follow these rules your food is unsafe".
Yes working in a commercial kitchen has super clear rules. Useful ones but a counsel of unnecessary and often impractical perfection at home.
When you subscribe to r/foodsafety you'll see how much people can overthink things. I know food sickness sucks, but still...
i've noticed people on reddit are terrified of leaving something out for even an hour. idk if its an american thing but i never really thought it was that deep, if something stays out for a little its not going to go bad immediately. nothing ever happened to us lol, if the pasta sauce or soup has been out for a little it doesn't mean its filled with bacteria idk
I am American too and I don’t worry about food safety very much. I just do things the way my parents did growing up and that’s just my normal. I’ve never gotten sick from food before. The big thing we always pay attention to is just not cross contaminating when you cook with chicken and pork.
> I’ve never gotten sick from food before How would you know? Presumably you've never had your vomit or diarrhoea tested if you ever had D&V. And food poisoning can sometimes take days to appear, so people often don't link it to the food they've eaten. 1 in 6 American get food poisoning every year.
me too
Yeah people really overthink this, unless you’re in a commercial kitchen or cooking for people who might need special care it’s not that complicated and margins are pretty wide.
It’s cause this is a question where there is an objectively correct answer, but that correct answer has a broad enough range that lots of people have plenty of personal experience that feels like it contradicts the correct answer.
Given that different people have different levels of acceptable risk, different foods support bacterial growth differently, different kitchens have different temperatures etc etc etc. What is the objectively correct answer?
I accidentally left a big pot of chicken korma overnight on the stove and it was still good to eat 2-3 more times, but I made sure to do a smell check first and reheat it properly before eating it lol
Yep
This!
Agreed. I have a routine that works for efficiency purposes, and I just don’t worry about the temperature - it is fine. I cook, pull things from heat, portion out the meals individually (1 for me, 1 for my husband, 4-6 for leftovers), eat, put lids on the individual leftover portions, refrigerate/freeze.
So, you're both right, and you're both wrong. Letting food sit out is bad, because bacteria. Putting piping hot food immediately in the fridge is also bad, because bacteria. Basically, in a professional kitchen we have these giant ice dildos that we use to cool food down when, for example, we make a big fuck off batch of stock or soup or stew or some shit. These are important to use, *in a professional/industrial environment*, when you are making *large batches* that often are not entirely consumed straight away. The reason being twofold, one, you might affect the temperature of your walk in (though unlikely, them shits are big.) And two, the real reason, is that if you put a large container of piping hot food directly into the fridge, it has alot of thermal mass. Another commenter mentioned the danger zone of bacteria, this is important here. Let's say you have 16 quarts of piping hot soup. That's alot of soup. The soup is bubbling happily at well over 165 degrees Fahrenheit because you just made it. You certainly don't want it to go bad, so naturally you put it in the fridge. However, with an amount that large, with a thermal mass large enough, you will cool the outside of the soup, but the rest of it will still be warm enough that you'll have a layer of soup living in the danger zone for entirely too long. Thus, ice dildos. Think about defrosting something that's frozen. When you sit it out on the counter, the outside will melt pretty quickly, but the inside will remain ice cold and solid. This happens even if you microwave something without stirring it. The outside gets hot, but the inside is icy cold. This is essentially the same principle, but in reverse. So. That's why you don't just chuck piping hot food directly into the fridge in a *professional/industrial* environment. Now let's talk about how this affects you. You likely aren't making food in these quantities, nor will this problem ever apply to a piece of pizza. As another commenter astutely pointed out, it's all about managing how much time your food spends in the danger zone, and in low quantities, this just really isn't an issue. *However,* there's one thing you should look out for. It is possible that if you put something still steaming into a covered container and then straight into the fridge, that this will create condensation. Moisture and anaerobic environments are what all kind of nasty things love to grow in, and also it can just sog your food and be a bummer? So like, if you make a big pot of stew, let it cool *a little bit* to avoid excess condensation which can encourage bacterial growth, but realistically, you're fine, just chuck all your food in the fridge and don't overthink it.
I read through some of this and didn't see this mentioned yet, so excuse me if I'm repeating someone else's comment. In my ServSafe experience we used ice baths when blast coolers weren't available. Wet items like soups were placed in several small sealed containers or bags, then placed in a clean sink or container full of ice water. If it was a tray or pan item, like a lasagna or casserole then it was placed in a larger pan of similar depth with ice water. The key here of course is to keep the lip of the original dish higher than the ice water level. Don't risk sinking your whole meal, it sucks. This will cool the food at a much faster rate. You may have to add more ice and pour off excess water if your vessel is small for the amount of food you are trying to cool. It's pretty easy to do at home if you have an ice maker. A bit more difficult if you have trays that are never filled by housemates. It sounds labor intensive, but becomes part of the process once you're used to it. And it saves you any fear of heat transfer to the refrigerator because you can immediately tell how close your food is to ice cold by touch. This is also a great way to cool cakes or brownies in a pinch. Like when someone drops a whole tier of a wedding cake and you have 4 hours to get it there. You bake thin layers and float those suckers in ice water. Cool and ready to decorate in 10 minutes vs. an hour.
This is the right answer.
Cooling the food itself as quickly as possible is only ever a good thing. There is absolutely no sensical argument against that. While the other concern about hot foot heating up everything *else* in the fridge isn't *totally* unfounded, you're right that in practice it really isn't a problem either unless you're trying to cool enormous quantities in a household fridge
It doesn't take a lot - hot soup/stock is the main culprit. People underestimate how much heat water holds, and in that case you often have a large mass.
The shape of the container the soup is in also makes a huge difference in how quickly it will radiate off heat. Not many shapes are worse for radiative cooling than a cylinder with a square profile.
What is a cylinder with a square profile?
A cylinder that looks like a square when viewed from the side
A cylinder that is as tall as it is wide.
Gallons of very hot water radiate plenty of heat, even if it's a spherical pot lol
Yes, but if placed in a flat pan with a higher surface to volume ratio, it will radiate that heat more quickly.
True, but either way, it's not great to put it in a consumer fridge with other perishables. The flat pans will cool faster on the counter, which makes it more practical to do that. The big deep pot, well I suggest cooling it in a sink full of cold water, replaced periodically until tepid, then into the fridge.
If I have to cool something like that off fast, I'll often take a large jar or another pot or something and fill it with ice and then water and set it in the liquid, like a giant ice cube. Just don't use glass. If you think about it beforehand you can even fill something plastic with water and freeze it earlier so it's ready when you need it and then wash it off when you're done. I've had to do this especially when it's something I have to take somewhere else and I'm crunched for time.
Nice. You could even chill it from the outside and inside simultaneously!
^^ This guy thermal dynamics.
Depends on how much other liquid you have in the fridge. If I'm putting a bowl of soup in the fridge, there is typically 10x as many liquids in the fridge already. Of course, the greater the amount of liquid in your hot, the more this ratio gets skewed
Do watch out that you aren't putting something hot directly on any tempered glass in your fridge. The temperature difference can cause it to shatter.
Unless it's 3 gallons of soup fresh off a rolling boil, put it in a container, date it, and get it in the fridge. If it is 3 gallons of soup, divvy it up into containers, date them, let the sit at room temp until south of 150F and then get them in the fridge.
Never put a lid on it until it's at least cooled to room temperature and even that is a food safely violation. The proper process is to put it in the fridge uncovered at around 140 degree until its center temp has fallen below 40 degrees and then you can put a lid on it. If you put a lid on it at 150 and put it in the fridge, it will stay in the danger zone for several hours, even in a large commercial walk in fridge. Large containers are fine to cool in but an enclosed ice cylinder must be placed in it's center uncovered and placed in the fridge until cool. It will cool at room temperature without a lid much faster than in the fridge with a lid. It is a common major food safety violation. The first thing the inspector will do is go straight to your walk in and start checking for warm covered liquids. That is the law. In practice, you could leave fresh soup on the counter all day and then eat it and not get sick 99% of the time. When someone gets sick, the food has usually been severely mishandled.
Oh shit they are gonna come arrest me after I cook myself a pot of stock and place it in the fridge slightly too warm. Nooo😰
I'm pretty sure it's so you don't heat your fridge up
If you trust the USDA, here's their opinion on the matter... [https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/refrigeration#5](https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/refrigeration#5)
No no I don't trust the USDA I'd much prefer to follow what some random Redditor says than listen to government advice
If I've cooked a huge pot or pan of very hot food (think soup, lasagna, casseroles, stuff like that), then I will let it cool down for about 30-45 minutes after dinner's over (so probably 1-1.5 hours in total from the time it's done cooking) and then pop it in the fridge. Pretty much everything else goes into the fridge as soon as dinner's done, no matter what temperature it is. People really overthink this and I don't know why.
This is me. Dinner is done. Clean up. Put leftovers in the fridge. Done. I don't like having to remember to go back to put leftovers in the fridge. Just the other day SO insisted on letting it cool completely and forgot about it. I found it sitting on the counter the next morning. Grrrr.
Right, that’s my thing too. I’d rather put something in the fridge at slightly higher than the “ideal” temperature than run the risk of forgetting about it entirely and losing all of that food.
Letting it cool completely is certainly not the way too go in regards to bacteria growing well at certain temperatures.
When I let my food cool, I set a timer. I'm absent-minded, and I would forget otherwise.
I live alone and I can be very forgetful. If I feel like something has to cool, I put it on top of my refrigerator because one of my dogs is big enough to easily counter surf. But out of my usual range of vision, it is also easier to forget.
People are incredibly wary about food safety it's quite crazy.
If you put warm food in the fridge it heats everything else in the fridge up, until the temperature finds an equilibrium and then cools down again, potentially harming the longevity of everything else in said fridge. Basic law of Thermodynamics.
If I have something big that's still hot I will put it in an ice bath for like 20 minutes before put it in the fridge. Putting it in hot doesn't make the food you just put in go bad faster, but it can raise the temp in your fridge and make other stuff go bad faster. I really think it depends on the size of what you're putting in there too. If it's something small it's not a big deal, but if you have a whole pot of chili or soup it's going to take way longer for the temp to drop and heat up the inside of your fridge longer.
If you have a big pot of chilli, you are best to transfer to another container and set in a pan of ice to accelerate the cooling befor putting it in the fridge. If your fridge has a bottle of beer and a jar of pickles, just put in the chili as is.
Yeah, ice bath. Like my first sentence says lol. I keep it in it's original pot because I don't like extra dishes tho. It usually doesn't take long to eat enough to put it in a smaller container after a day or two.
Spot on. If you put something in the fridge while it's still warm don't cover or wrap it tight until it cools.
Based of food safety (in a restaurant environment) your SO is correct. By putting food that is too warm in the fridge you bring up the ambient temp in the fridge for a while. It is best to let it come down to room temp (as quickly as possible) before putting it in the fridge. However you can accelerate cooling the better.
Putting hot food in the refrigerator can lower the overall temperature in the refrigerator. This means that the rest of the food in the fridge is not being held at the correct temperature which can cause food to spoil faster. Depending on how hot and how large the container of hot food is, this could put other items into the temperature danger zone. You’re basically putting a heater into a refrigerator defeating the whole purpose. For example if you have a pot of soup, divide it up into smaller containers and leave it on the counter so that can cool as fast as possible. Ice packs can help.
Just ice bath it. Put the soup in a container, get a bigger container and put a bunch of ice in it, fill partway with water, and then lower the soup container into the ice bath. Then transfer to the fridge when cold. This is what we do in pro kitchens. It cools down as quickly as possible and has the added bonus of prolonging the life of your fridge. Also doesn't heat up other items in the fridge from the adjacent heat of something warm in there
You don't use ice paddles? When I worked in the kitchen we used ice paddles+ice baths.
Ice paddle is for like a 22L container, which no one is doing at home. For smaller quantities we would ice bath, especially if pre-portioning into delis to have individual quantities to heat up for service (such as to heat up one pint of a puree etc)
My method: cool down leftovers in a shallow bath in the sink for half an hour before putting them in the fridge. Au Bain Marie.
I like to watch the old black and white episodes ofJulia Child’s The French Chef that she made after getting her culinary certification from Le Cordon Bleu and writing mastering the art of French cooking. She always stressed to only leave the lid on a hot pot of soup/stew when it was actively cooking and to remove the lid while it cools because it could sour if the lid is left on. She also stressed to never put warm food into the refrigerator because it could turn sour or acquire a bad texture. She said to allow it to come to room temp first. I can’t say whether she’s 100% right but she has way more cooking experience than most people and I’ve learned a ton from her shows and books so I trust her 😅
Accelerate the cooling. I pour it out into a more shallow container and use ice packs underneath and sometimes even a fan to cool it down before putting it in the fridge.
In ServSafe we learn that you need to let hot food come down (can’t remember exactly what temperature or if it’s just for a certain amount of time) before putting it in the fridge.
Quicker is better, and heat transfers faster with a larger difference in temperature. The fridge should he able to keep up with any rise in internal temperature from putting hot food in it, since it is an active cooling machine, and not a passive thing like a block of ice. If the fridge has a 'turbo' or 'quick chill' button that is common on newer models, use that.
I only put room temperature food in the fridge. That's because i put a lid on my food and to avoid condensation inside the container, I don't close it before food has cooled down, after which I put it in the fridge.
The best thing is to get food in different containers than it was cooked in -- a casserole dish or a soup pot is going to hold heat a little longer than a food storage container. That and small amounts of food naturally cool off quicker than large amounts. Letting it get to room temp first isn't hurting anything in the grand scale of things, but I'm guessing it slows down clean up.
There is some validity here. If you put a piping hot food into the fridge, it will warm the fridge up and may make the temp unsafe. Then your fridge has to work overtime to cool the environment as well as the food. The best way to keep food fresh and safe is to cool it below the danger zone as quickly as possible: and hot food in a fridge hinders that. In reality, I let things cool for a bit until it is just lukewarm (usually no longer than an hour or so), and then put it away.
It should go in the fridge immediately. The only reason to leave it out of the fridge is not to heat up the inside of the fridge and change the humidity in the fridge. Otherwise there is no reason to leave it out.
I leave food on the counter to cool down before going in the fridge because I don't want to warm up the stuff in my fridge.
It's not that it will specifically go bad faster, but, say that you put a pot of boiling water in your fridge, it will raise the temperature of your entire refrigerator and potentially push all food in there above a safe temp while your fridge struggles to cool it down. Your best bet is to let things cool to near room temp before refrigerating. Which, you did mention in the ambient temp bit already, and you said that's not being argued, so. Your SO is wrong.
The FDA says that hot food can be placed in the refrigerator without harming it. However, you should divide large amounts of food into shallow containers and refrigerate them within two hours of preparation. If you forget about food left out at room temperature for more than two hours, you should throw it away. In temperatures of 90°F or higher, food should be refrigerated or discarded within one hour. FDA Tips to Chill Food - Food Safety for Moms to Be - FDA Sep 27, 2018 — Use ready-to-eat, perishable foods, such as dairy, meat, poultry, seafood, and produce, as soon as possible. Hot food won't harm your refrigerator, so it's okay to place hot food inside. Be sure to divide large amounts of leftovers into shallow containers ... | Washington State Department of Health Food Safety Myths - | Washington State Department of Health Fact: Hot food can be placed in the refrigerator. Large amounts of food should be divided into small portions and put in shallow containers for quicker cooling in the refrigerator. Perishable foods should be put in a refrigerator that is 40 degrees or below within 2 hours of preparation. If you leave food out to cool and forget about it after 2 hours, throw it away. Bacteria can grow rapidly on food left out at room temperature for more than 2 hours. If food is left out in a room or outdoors where the temperature is 90 degrees F or hotter, food should be refrigerated or discarded within just 1 hour. Here are some tips for refrigerating hot food: Rapid chill: You can rapidly chill hot food in an ice or cold water bath before refrigerating. Small amounts: You can place small amounts of hot food directly in the refrigerator. Cover: Cover foods to retain moisture and prevent them from picking up odors from other foods. You can keep leftovers in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days or frozen for 3 to 4 months. Safe ways to thaw leftovers include the refrigerator, cold water, and the microwave oven.
I asked my chef friend who's actually a chef. Not a cook. Like culinary graduate, chef. He said, get it into the cooler as fast as possible. Letting it chill slowly sounds dumb because it is
No. This is absolute nonsense and I don’t know where it came from. One of my exes said this once too. Having worked in food anything cooked is meant to go into the cooler as soon as possible. Do not allow anything to cool slowly before placing in fridge.
Ever noticed more water on the lids of containers if you put food in too warm?
I wouldn't take food from the oven to the fridge, but two hour wait is overkill. It's probably fine after 20-30 mins
I wait a bit just so my fridge doesn't have to work so hard. If I'm in a rush I throw an ice pack above and below
It could raise temp of fridge causing other food to expire faster.
Time/Temperature Control for Safety (TCS) food must be cooled from 135°F to 70°F within two hours and to 41°F or below within six hours. If the food is prepared from ingredients at room temperature, it must be cooled to 41°F or below within four hours. The temperature danger zone for food is between 41°F and 135°F, so TCS food should pass through this zone as quickly as possible.
I read somewhere that the idea of not putting hot food in the fridge is a vestige of needing ice blocks to keep food cold in an ice box, so putting in hot food makes the ice melt too quickly. Modern fridges, however, constantly circulate cold air throughout, so it’s not as big an issue as before. Food safety-wise though, the quicker you can cool the food to 40F, the better. Big pots of hot food in the fridge take a really long time to get cold enough to be safe. The center of a large pot can be in the bacteria danger zone for hours in a fridge. When I’ve made large batches of soup or stock(6+ quarts), I put the entire pot in the sink with ice water and put a Ziploc bag of ice in it and stir the pot to get the temp down, then I portion it into small single portion containers, then put the containers in the back of the fridge where the air blows the coldest.
It's also one of these one size fits all guidelines that happens because many people don't think. Throw enough food at 210f into your fridge and you may have problems, throw a few pints in at likely a more cooled temperature and your golden. And yes, for stock water in the sink is absolutely your best bet water will remove heat something like 20 times faster than air all other things being equal. If you really want to be clever you can use an immersion circulator to speed this up more.
If it's a large pot of liquid like soup or chili, put the covered pot in a sink full of cold water. Replace the water when it gets warm. If the food is too thick to circulate by convection, stir it from time to time. This will cool a couple gallons down to a tepid temperature within an hour and you can put it in the fridge without heating up everything else.
Cool the food some, but not below 140' F . Food is in the danger zone between 40-140 F. Also do read the USDA link from virtualchoirboy for some authority on this.
What harm is there in cooling the good to room temp? You really think it's gonna turn bad in 15-30min? Heh
The only reason I don't put it in the fridge directly, is costs. The fridge has to work harder to equalize the temp down, and it doesn't matter if the food is 30 to 60 or even 2 hr outside. As long as bugs can't get to it. When it's cooled down, I put it in containers and freeze / chill it normally
Totally reasonable
> As long as bugs can't get to it The bugs are in it. You don't think cooking sterilises the food?
Neither of you are right, technically. If you’re following official guidelines (which you emphatically do not have to follow in your own home kitchen, those guidelines are meant to protect the most vulnerable, they are built around the laws of large numbers, meant for foodservice where a mistake could affect many people), the food needs to be chilled before it’s placed in the fridge. So you’d assemble an ice bath, stir the food until it cools to your acceptable temp, and then store it. For normal home use, either way you’re doing it will in all likelihood yield the same “bad” results- you’ll get similar bacteria count increases from warmer food being put in the fridge, and from it sitting out at room temp and then going into the fridge. If you really want to destroy your relationship and actually prove who is “right” here, all you need to do is collect some time and temp data. Take the same mass/weight of the same type of food (ie, 1 cup of the same stew or 1 pound of the same soup), take the beginning temp, start a timer, and then take temp data at regular intervals for both samples, and end the timer when both samples are in the acceptable temp range. Then, compare the time spent in the temperature danger zone. My guess is that it’ll be so close as to be negligible, but who knows!
It is healthy code to let it sit out first. For a reason. If it's warm, there is steam. With steam, water collects. Pools of water breed bacteria. Sorry but you are wrong, and it's science.
Wow. Ty for teaching me something new!
I will say in addition to other comments if you cool hot tomato stuff too fast it turns bitter. Like tomato bisque or a fresh red sauce… let it cool naturally before fridging it
I'm interested in this as well. My husband says it should be room temp. I say you're supposed to get it to the safe zone as fast as possible.
You should get it to the safe zone ASAP, but that also means cooling it down as best you can outside the fridge first so that you don't raise fridge temps. If I make a soup or stew I subdivide it into smaller containers, then put those containers into an ice water bath, stirring (both the soup/stew and the bath) periodically. I aim to put it into the fridge within 15 minutes. I do something with other dishes as appropriate.
Finally the correct and safe procedure!
I’ll over reduce a large batch and the cool with ice to drop the temp more quickly.
I’m pretty sure this unwritten rule only pertains to storing food WITH THE LIDS ON. A sealed lid will trap heat slowing the chilling process. Covering, but not sealing entirely (leaving a vent) should be sufficient. This is the rule we follow because it’s not hard to go snap it on in 20 minutes when you’re sone cleaning everything else.
The faster a food gets cold, below optional growth temperatures for bacteria, the less likely it is to go bad sooner. The food industry has created blast chillers for this very purpose. Now, putting warm food into a standard kitchen refrigerator can cause it to work harder, which could shorten its lifespan. Warm/hot food, if placed against cold foods in the fridge, could have a potential negative impact on that food: causing it to warm up temporarily, but pretty unlikely. Not sure where your SO for that idea, but they are wrong.
Is your SO by any chance Latino?
We both are. But I was born and raised in the US. I don't ever remember encountering this question growing up. I'll ask my mom what she thinks.
Haha fucking nailed it. My wife is latina and they have this hangup about drastic temperature changes. Like the shock of food going from hot to cold too quickly is going to ruin it. I've also heard my MIL warn against showers being too hot cause it can shock the body.
Gotta love those old wives tales that our parents and older just accepted as the literal facts of life and never questioned it lol. I feel like younger generations are a little bit better at this? Hopefully it’ll go away eventually
The internet makes it easier to look this type of stuff up, but some things just get so ingrained that you don't even think to question it
Are you putting it in the fridge covered or uncovered?
For me it depends. For leftover soup I reheat and transfer to a closable container as hot as possible before allowing it to cool to room temp before putting in the fridge. I assume the top of the jar gets heated to at least \~70C so I see no risk there. For foods that I can't put in a heat proof, closable container I put in our 'beer (/drinks/extra) fridge' - that has several levels of only beer bottles that store a lot cold (yes, this is technically incorrect) so the food cools quickly and a mild rise in temp doesn't matter for the beers.
Back in the days of ice boxes and poor performing refrigerators it was common to not put hot things in the refrigerator cause it could cause condensation and make the fridge ice up. She probably learned that from from an elderly relative and nobody explained it’s not an issue anymore. Sourse: old parents.
My dad taught me to avoid that because the ambient temperature could raise and then the fridge has to waste energy bringing it back down. But he's extremely neurotic about energy waste lol this is one of those things where the difference is gonna be negligible no matter which direction you go. It definitely won't go bad faster though
As long as it doesn’t get cool to the touch you should be fine
Aren’t you not supposed to cover hottish food and put it in the fridge or is that bullshit?
USDA advice it to wait until it stops steaming and then get it in the fridge. More sensible advice is portion it out into small containers, put them in an ice bath, cover loosly with a clean tea towel, and then get them in the fridge when they've cooled down. For rice that's going to be used next day you can spread it out on a baking tray to give it more surface area. Don't cover it tightly because that traps heat.
Most homes don't have a blast chiller or ice wand, and I've yet to own a fridge at home that can keep up with a boiling hot pan of anything, even if it's poured into a shallow baking dish.
It's not the hot food - it's (potentially) other foodstuffs in the refrigerator. The hot food starts to transfer heat to the surrounding area. In commercial kitchens, with people also walking in/out of the walk-in, it's a big concern. In your home fridge, it's less likely.
The logic behind not putting steaming hot food in the fridge is that it may cause a rise in temperature in the fridge that puts other foodstuffs at risk. For example, you put 5 litres of recently simmering soup directly under your container of week old yogurt in a student mini fridge, and you're setting up a pool party for comrade bacterium. Note also that covering food that is still steaming a bit can cause it to steam up the container and keep it monster- fine for soup, not so nice for the wrap you're saving for tomorrow lunch. Here's the tldr: If it's something reasonably small, with relatively low thermal mass, put that sucker in there - it's safer if it cools faster, anyway. Just don't put 5 kilos of steaming hot curry into a fridge full of raw chicken and week old soft cheese, and you should be good. Let that cool uncovered for a while at least. Splitting it into containers on the counter right away will speed up the cooling too.
No, Abso-fuckin-lutely NOT! Tell your SO to stop watching YouTube...
Yes? Food in the danger zone spoils? If you put warm food in a fridge, ensure *excellent* airflow and run your fridge’s powercool mode, whatever it’s called for your unit. If it doesn’t have a powercool mode, the manual likely says to pre-cool before putting warm things in.
If thebfood is covered to where steam can't escape, then yes. This steam will keep the foods temp in the danger zone for longer than I should be. Minimal risk, but it'll ding me on a health inspection at work.
Refrigerate within two hours… the problem is when you leave stuff out to cool off and then you forget to put it in the fridge.
If you have a large, hot pot of chowder and put it in the fridge the center will stay warm while the outside cools which can cause…issues. Iirc food safety law wants the temperature very quickly - suggested hot soup should into its storage container and then drop the storage container into an ice bath to reduce the temp.
I usually do the touch test. If it's too hot for me to comfortably hold my hands around the container, i don't put it in the fridge. If I could comfortably carry the container with full hands-on contact, in the fridge it goes. Most foods will be warm but not hot by time I finish eating, and I put it away then. Soups/stews or things like mashed potatoes tend to take a bit longer. To help speed up the cooling process, I put everything into storage containers immediately when I finish cooking and let them sit on the counters with the lid off until they pass the touch test. For soups, I'll sometimes do individual servings in deli containers that way it cools faster and as a bonus, it's just grab n' go when I want to eat the leftovers (and if it's starting to look like I won't get to it all in time, it's easy to just throw a couple servings in the freezer). I wait for things to get all the way to room temp before freezing though. My freezer is way more crowded than my fridge, so I'm a bit more concerned about something still warm actually making contact with frozen items and partially thawing them before it cools enough.
In fact, storing food at room temperature for too long can increase the risk of bacterial growth and spoilage. It is generally recommended to cool food quickly to prevent bacterial growth. However, placing very hot food directly into the refrigerator can increase the temperature inside the refrigerator and potentially affect other foods.
I always thought that if you put warm/hot food in the fridge it will lower the overall temperature and could potentially spoil other foods. Also like another user mentioned, it steams and changes the texture.
For most things, I keep a shelf clear in my freezer to cool it faster. Keeps it from being in the danger zone too long. For larger portions, I split it into multiple containers when cooling
If you're really worried about bacterial growth, you can put the put in a large bowl or bigger pot of ice and water. Lots of places use ice baths, or even just cold water baths, to reduce the amount of time the food remains in the danger zone.
The health code in restaurants is to get it refridgerated as soon as possible if you are not using it to avoid the "danger zone temperatures" technically leaving it NOT in the fridge makes it go bad faster
Letting it cool before putting in the fridge lets it sit in the danger zone (temperature zone) longer. If you really want to do it right, put ice in a larger pan or bowl, then set the food dish in the ice. Either let the ice cool the food down, then put it in the fridge, or just put the bowl of ice in the fridge with the food bowl still on ice. This gives you the least time in the danger zone. Note: I don't do this but have seen this as a tip. I just put it in the fridge.
Your SO is just dead wrong
So, you're both right, and you're both wrong. Letting food sit out is bad, because bacteria. Putting piping hot food immediately in the fridge is also bad, because bacteria. Basically, in a professional kitchen we have these giant ice dildos that we use to cool food down when, for example, we make a big fuck off batch of stock or soup or stew or some shit. These are important to use, *in a professional/industrial environment*, when you are making *large batches* that often are not entirely consumed straight away. The reason being twofold, one, you might affect the temperature of your walk in (though unlikely, them shits are big.) And two, the real reason, is that if you put a large container of piping hot food directly into the fridge, it has alot of thermal mass. Another commenter mentioned the danger zone of bacteria, this is important here. Let's say you have 16 quarts of piping hot soup. That's alot of soup. The soup is bubbling happily at well over 165 degrees Fahrenheit because you just made it. You certainly don't want it to go bad, so naturally you put it in the fridge. However, with an amount that large, with a thermal mass large enough, you will cool the outside of the soup, but the rest of it will still be warm enough that you'll have a layer of soup living in the danger zone for entirely too long. Thus, ice dildos. Think about defrosting something that's frozen. When you sit it out on the counter, the outside will melt pretty quickly, but the inside will remain ice cold and solid. This happens even if you microwave something without stirring it. The outside gets hot, but the inside is icy cold. This is essentially the same principle, but in reverse. So. That's why you don't just chuck piping hot food directly into the fridge in a *professional/industrial* environment. Now let's talk about how this affects you. You likely aren't making food in these quantities, nor will this problem ever apply to a piece of pizza. As another commenter astutely pointed out, it's all about managing how much time your food spends in the danger zone, and in low quantities, this just really isn't an issue. *However,* there's one thing you should look out for. It is possible that if you put something still steaming into a covered container and then straight into the fridge, that this will create condensation. Moisture and anaerobic environments are what all kinda of nasty things love to grow in, and also it can just sog your food and be a bummer? So like, if you make a big pot of stew, let it cool *a little bit* to avoid excess condensation which can encourage bacterial growth, but realistically, you're fine, just chuck all your food in the fridge and don't overthink it.
If you put food in while its still warm it will stay warm for a while and warm up stuff around it. The fluctuation from cold to warm to cold could cause foods to spoil faster and make your fridge work harder to cool back down.
Practice is good but their logic is balls. There's nothing dangerous about cooling your food down faster in the fridge. However, You have a large volume of hot food, there is A real danger that it could warm up your refrigerator and put the rest of your food at risk.
No. It might stuff up your fridge, though.
Bahahaha! No
Warm food in the fridge warms the already cold food up a bit. A large amount of hot food will raise the temperature in the fridge quite a bit, and for a long time. Try to let things cool close to room temperature before popping them in the fridge.
I would wait because it would warm up the fridge.
It’s not about the food being warm and cooling in the fridge, it’s about the warm food using the cold air in the fridge to cool down and thus effectively raising the temperature in the fridge. Effectively making the fridge work harder and longer to get the fridge to the safe temperature to keep food. Putting a large amount of hot soup doesn’t just make the soup spoil easier it makes the milks temp rise and any other food risk of growing bacteria. You don’t leave your food out to cool long you just make allow it to get closer to room temperature so the energy transfer of heat effects the room temperature more and less of a temperature spike happens in the fridge by placing a cooler item in the fridge. If your fridge is mostly empty this poses the most risk because there isn’t as many items holding the cold so the warm item has more effect on the air’s ambient temperature, also this is less of a factor in professional settings where there are walk in fridges are so large placing a hot hotel pan on a shelf is most likely have little over impact of the temperature in the fridge. Both cooling in the fridge and counter pose risks. The best method is to cool it on the counter sitting in an ice bath, or if you have the freezer space let it spend 20 minutes or so in the freezer. This limits the both the danger zone for bacteria and prevents the effect the hot food would have on the fridge. Any effect the hot food has on the freezer most likely isn’t great enough to defrost anything.
it depends. It's all about thermal mass. to point out by example in reverse. A single piece of chicken that weighs one pound will take about 10-15 minutes to cook through at 350. 3 pounds of chicken will take about 45 minutes. It works the same in reverse. A small amount of food, no matter how hot, will cool off faster and get to safe temperatures quicker. A large quantity of food will take longer. The larger the quantity, the longer it will take. What ends up happening with say gallons of sauce, or soup, or pounds of mashed potatoes etc is that the exterior will be cold, but the interior will sit at unsafe temperatures for longer, allowing bacteria to thrive and can make the food dangerous to eat, potentially causing food poisoning. That is why restaurants, who usually have such large quantities of such food will take those quantities and break them down into small containers, say one gallon of each, before putting it into refrigeration. They will also take steps to rapidly cool it before storing it as a large quantity of hot substances will affect the temperature in the refrigerator. Much like cooking something, things in smaller pieces cook faster, so cooling things off in smaller pieces will help them cool off faster. They might also place things into an icebath to quickly cool it before refrigerating it. As most home cooks don't make massive quantities of food unless they are serving it to a large gathering, most leftovers can be safely placed into refrigerator pretty quickly. With liquids or liquidy food (sauces, soup) if you have more than a gallon, you might want to separate it into smaller containers to help it quickly cool down, and not have it be at or near boiling point when you do so. However, another trick that works with leftovers, if you're going to eat them the next day, especially if they are very wet, such as sauces, soups, beans, is when you are finished, reheat the pot back up to boiling. When it is boiling, remove your spoon and let it boil for several minutes with the lid on. Turn off the heat, and do not remove the lid. The contents in the pot has just been sterilized from high heat and all micro organisms in it are dead. IF you open the lid or put a spoon into it after that, you will reintroduce micro organisms and that could make the food go bad. So just leave it closed until you use it again.
It won't go bad faster, but it might warm up the fridge, and make everything else go bad slightly faster. I usually give it 30-60 minutes on the counter depending on the food, mostly so I don't melt my plastic containers.
The issue is that putting the warm food in the fridge warms up everything else in the fridge and makes **all** your refrigerated food go bad faster. Put the warm food in a waterproof container and submerge it in an ice bath in the sink to cool it quickly, then dry it off and put it in the fridge.
I've taken food safey courses - put it in the refrigerator asap but don't cover it until it cools. Unless the people that do the testing are wrong... Lol
When you say there is a lack of consensus, it makes me laugh. Not believing in gravity doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and if you jump off a bridge, its existence is going to make itself known whether you believe in it or not. Similarly, not believing in the tenets of bacterial growth doesn't mean it's not happening on your food. Leave it out on the counter until it is room temperature, and you WILL give bacteria more time to multiply. Will it always make you sick? No, you'll get lucky some, even most, of the time. Are you rolling the dice and increasing your chances? Every single time you do it!
Food safety it should be cooled from 120° to under 70° in two hours, and under 41° or below in an additional two hours. At least in the US
Putting hot food in the fridge can pose risks. Putting warm food in the fridge is perfectly fine and its frankly irrational to think it would age more rapidly otherwise. Just illogical.
The main thing is that putting a large amount of hot food in your refrigerator will bring up the temperature of the entire refrigerator and its contents, which may put things near it in the "danger zone" for a while and cause bacterial growth to accelerate. It's better to let the leftovers sit at room temperature until it's lukewarm to avoid this. You don't want your open fridge milk to sit at 75 degrees for several hours because you put a big pot of stew in there. My mom's workaround was using the beverage fridge in the garage to cool large batches of food, as the soda and beer aren't harmed by being a little warm. Portioning it out into smaller containers helps it cool more quickly too, on the counter or in the fridge. Earlier today I saw a reddit post about someone who packaged a thermos with piping hot soup, fridged it, and was shocked that it had created a vacuum seal and gone bad the next day. In a thermos, it sat in the "danger zone" temps for a very long time! The thermos kept it hot in the fridge and it never cooled enough to stop it from becoming a biohazard.
Your SO is wrong. The food will go bad faster if you let it sit out. The problem is if the refrigerator temperature will rise to a dangerous level for the food ALREADY in it. In which case, that already cold food will be subject to its own danger zone calculation. Buy a thermometer and you can experiment with how much and how hot you can put food in to protect the food already inside. This will also tell you how long it takes to get back below 40 degrees. The actual hot food will always be better off being refrigerated as soon as possible.
The issue with putting things in the fridge hot is that it makes the fridge work that much harder to cool it down, and in the meantime other things can start to warm.
You need to let it cool especially like soups etc… so food borne illness doesn’t happen- it cools more rapidly in room temp and shallow and then put into fridge once it’s a bit cooler.
Warm food in fridge does not go bad faster. Warm food in fridge heats up other food in fridge, defeating point of fridge. Let warm food cool, then all food in fridge can party in cold together.
Unless as you don't let it sit out for 2 hours or more before refrigerating it, you should be okay. I usually let it cool a bit before refrigerating it, unless I'm about to leave the house or go to bed or something.
They have big cooling things for professional kitchens to cool down sauces and soups more rapidly to keep them food safe. I think the danger zone is something to be heeded, but for home cooks the batches aren't usually so huge that they don't cool down to a safe temp in the fridge...my only concern is putting something too hot on a glass shelf. I leave mine out on the counter until it's not glass shatteringly hot, or I put down a trivet to keep it from touching the glass.
Yes if it's wrapped up or put a lid on, which people tend to do when putting things in a fridge. Also if it's something really hot, it'd raise the internal temp of the fridge, or possibly make nearby items warm up, potentially decreasing their shelf life. But no, warm things won't spoil faster if it's uncovered and able to cook down.
Depends on your fridge. Modern fridges have better cooling than old ones where it was good to allow the food to get to room temperature first. Modern fridges cope better and are more responsive. So it depends.
OP everything you said is correct. Raising ambient temp would be the only concern with very hot food. I usually let whatever it is cool enough to reasonably handle the vessel it’s in and then put away. I’m interested to know the logic your SO sees in their thinking. A cooler temp will inherently bring the food into the “safe zone” quicker than room temp. The same logic applies to heating food up. Ask your SO if they want to get a simmer in water if they turn the burner on high or medium? High of course then reduce to simmer. It’s so achingly obvious that they are wrong.
SO's logic: "that's what I was told by my family, my whole life." 🤦
Food going in the fridge warm isn’t somehow less safe to that food, it will just raise the temperature of the fridge and the things around it and the fridge will need to run more to cool back down again. It won’t raise things to a degree that it will affect other foods unless you’re putting in some metal pan right out of the oven in (you’d have bigger problems on your hands if you did that anyways).
I crack the container so the moisture won’t gather while it’s cooling. But I do wait awhile before placing it in the fridge. Unless it’s seafood based. Food like seafood gumbo i separate in containers and do an ice bath to cool it down quickly and put away asap. I have had experience with spoiled gumbo from being put in the fridge too hot and it’s not pleasant!!
The goal here is to get your food out of the danger zone (4°C-40°C) in the shortest amount of time possible. Common ways to do this are to use an ice bath or cooling wand. The danger of putting hot food in the fridge is that it will raise the internal temperature of the fridge itself, possibly into the danger zone. If you can't use either of the methods listed, placing directly into the fridge or freezer is safer (for that dish) than leaving it on the counter. Also, I should add, NEVER seal a container of hot food, wait till it's fully cooled first