How long is too long to keep refrigerated left overs?

I freeze all leftovers immediately! Anything my wife and I cannot eat, I freeze in a plastic container or plastic bag in single or two portion sizes, which, if you are diligent, you can even label with the date so you know when you froze it (see a photo of my freezer, below). Especially meats, which, in the refrigerator go first rancid, then spoiled.

Meats, in general, freeze well without much change in texture. Many cakes and breads freeze well (but must be eaten reasonably soon before ice crystals form. ) Now certain items do not freeze well, so those I make sure to eat on the day its made or the day we go out to eat.

For example salad does not freeze well, so I always finish this if I can. However, if you are really frugal, then you can even freeze salad for another day, but then it is better cooked and served hot. (This last bit of advice comes from a 90 year old woman who lived through the Great Depression.) I have mentioned that I eat a lot of bananas elsewhere, and if I notice these are going to go bad, (and I cannot finish the batch) then I will freeze them too, but then I used them in the oatmeal-banana mixture I usually cook for myself in the mornings.

I have also used frozen bananas in smoothies. If they start going brown, then the only thing you can do is make banana bread, and then freeze this! Certain foods change texture quite bit after freezing.

For example, tofu turns into a sponge. At first I did not think this was appetizing, but my opinion has changed and if it is cooked in a little bit of leftover gravy, even this is edible. The important thing is planning.

While I prefer to eat all foods fresh, sometimes this is just not convenient. You may be shopping at Walmart's Sam's Club where everything comes in large portions. Then you may even need an additional freezer.

When the North Pole was revisited by later explorers, they found that the provisions left by the earlier explorers were still edible even though it was many years later. I understand even mastodons/wooly mammoths, even though frozen thousands of years ago, can still be eaten.So with proper freezing techniques, and a low temperature, you need not worry about your food spoiling in the freezer. As the frozen food gets older, ice crystals form around the food as it dessicates and it gets freezer burn.

It is still edible and can just be cut away. Just because a meat has freezer burn is no reason to discard the whole piece. Again, (my friend who lived through the Great Depression) once served at a party a whole salmon she had brined and made into Gravlax.

She told me she had purchased it already with the freezer burn on it, at a tremendous discount, something like $.50/pound. Since she enjoys throwing parties, she wants to have plenty of food on hand and she goes to places where they sell food past the expiration dates. To avoid freezer burn you first freeze the meat (I alway freeze in portion sizes) and when it is rock solid, I dip it in very cold water (that I have chilled in the refrigerator for this purpose).

This forms an icy glaze on the food to prevent freezer burn.At Thanksgiving time, when there is a lot of leftover turkey, I will make soup from the bones and put the turkey into containers, and then cover with turkey broth so that the turkey does not get freezer burn. If you do not have enough freezer space, you can use other methods of preservation, such as salting the meat, smoking it, pickling it, drying it (which can be done with fruits and vegetables too) or even fermenting it. When I was growing up, my father would make a type of air cured ham famous in Shanghai, by brining pork hams after Thanksgiving when the weather was cold (I grew up north of New York City), and then hang them up under the eaves in the cold winter sun.In the spring, he would take them down, when the flies started laying their eggs.

He would then cut off the outer fatty layer, which often had maggots crawling on them, and discard. The meat was steamed or boiled and was delicious, somewhat similar in flavor to Smithfield Ham or Serrano ham from Spain but not as dense. He would boiled the ham bone in water making a delicious broth in which to cook whole chickens (When I was growing up, it was my job to take care of the chickens and ducks, which we kept for their eggs which we also salted if we had too many to eat.

Those were the days. ) duenhsiyen.

From a food safety standpoint if you properly store it and reheat it to the proper temperature you can safely keep food in the refrigerator for 3 or 4 days. Longer if you freeze it. After two day most foods start to change in texture and/or flavor and end up going in the trash.

In our house we have a 3-5 day window where we consider refrigerated leftovers safe (leftovers in the freezer go longer). My wife and I always disagreed about this, so we've done a fair bit of research. The Mayo Clinic's website had an answer to this that suggests that 4 days is a good general rule.

The two keys that they note on their website are: 1. To "refrigerate food quickly..minimize the time a food is in the "danger zone" — between 40 F (4 C) and 140 F (60 C) — when bacteria can multiply. " 2."Reheat food thoroughly...set the temperatures no lower than 325 F.

" My wife plays it safe and goes with 3-4 days and I'll usually stretch things out more to 4-5, but four days seems pretty reasonable.

I have a loosely lived by 3 day rule too. I try to get to the leftovers around every three days because eating leftovers to me is where I get the real value from my grocery shopping. The more leftovers I eat completely the lower my overall household food cost becomes.

For a basic example if I buy something and get one meal out of it + leftovers but do not eat the leftovers I feel like the grocery store won the value game, if I buy something and get one meal out of it + leftovers and I actually eat the leftovers I feel like I am breaking even on the cost, If I buy something and get one meal out of it + leftovers and use those leftovers to create and eat 2+ additional meals then I feel like I win the grocery value game. I like to win the grocery value game although it is not an exact science in my house at all. I have nothing but fuzzy math to back up any of this, it is more a feeling of additional value I am getting when I create new meals and eat those meals from the leftovers my kitchen creates.

The way I see it... I have 3 days to win the "leftovers add value" grocery game.

I determine how long to keep refrigerated left overs by smell, taste and how hungry I am at the time. Usually I do not know how long it has been in there.

When it comes to leftovers, I could keep them refrigerated as long as I think they still are safe to eat. For example, the meat dishes could be kept longer than the veggies. If they don’t contain tomato sauces, then the longer they can be kept inside the fridge.

I also just make sure that the fridge is maintaining the needed coldness and I often check if the door isn’t left open as I have kids who often open the fridge to get something to eat or drink. For meat dishes, I can cook other dishes out of them. For veggies, a 3-day is already a maximum because it loses its good taste when kept longer and esp.

If you are using tomatoes in them except for raw veggies salads. In these difficult times, we shouldn’t just throw foods away easily. See some helpful sites: Guide to home refrigeration and the correct storage of cooked and fresh food items helpwithcooking.com/food-storage/refrige... How To Use Leftovers Safely whatscookingamerica.net/Poultry/leftover....

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.