pregnancy food safety question on roast beef

[~kellie~]

I’m cooking a roast beef in the slow cooker for Christmas day, which we want to eat cold.

I was just wondering what the safest way to prepare it was, seeing that there are 2 pregnant mummas eating it. If I cook it in the slow cooker, how long after turning it off should I put it in the fridge? Is it when it stops steaming? And would I be better to slice it first before refrigerating?

And then I am assuming its ok to eat it cold, as long as we eat it straight from the fridge?

Thanks

[tiffanny]

If it was me I would refridgerate it as soon as I turned it off. I work in an aged care facility in the kitchen and currently studying a cert 3 in hospitality. We have just done our food safety component which basically says any meat must be cooked to its internal temp maximum and you then need to have it cooled to certain temps in the following six hours. So having said all that I would let it rest for 10 mins maximum then slice and place on a large plate- the more surface area the quicker it will cool-less likely that bacteria will grow.

Hope that makes sense.

[~kellie~]

yep it does, thanks

[Spring Angel]

I could be wrong but I thought when UTD it was best to eat those sorts of food steaming hot.

I wouldn't eat cold roast meat myself.

[Asparagus and Lemons]

I was going to say the same thing, I got told that meat needs to be eaten hot, if chilled, it must be reheated to steaming to be able to eat it?

[Spring Angel]

hun, sorry to harp on but are you cooking it today?

I think with leftovers it must be eaten within the 12 -24 timeframe so it be that they can't eat it anyway.

I'm having the same dilema. All our food for the family Christmas is going to be cooked tomorrow to be served cold on Friday. It will need to be re-heated for me unless bub shows up in the next day

Spring x

[~kellie~]

spring - nope, its not cooked yet. was planning on doing it tomorrow afternoon for lunch on Friday.

Maybe my sis (who is also pregnant) and I will just have to reheat our serves on Friday and everyone else can have it cold?

[YoYo]

My midwife at the doctors here in Singapore said to me that if you are going to eat hot food, make sure it's REALLY hot, and if cold....really cold. When you are buying cold things from the shops the difference is you don't know what is going on behind the scenes, but cooking at home would be different IMO.

In Singas with it being hot ALL the time, leaving food out is a no no because bacteria grows very quickly. I think if you are cooking and cooling straight away, it will bascially stop that from happening, kind of like Tiffany said.

If you are going to eat the cold meat (well if it was me) I wouldn't let it sit on the plate outside (or in) for 30 mins before you dive in IYKWIM.

[~kellie~]

thats what I thought too Julia, but we might reheat just to be safe!