"best before date"

herbs & spices won't spoil, they will just lose their potency

yeah, long out of date herbs mostly just don't taste of anything

Clearing out a kitchen cupboard leaves me with 3 christmas puddings and 2 christmas cakes with best before dates of either 2009 or 2011. Anything to be done with these? I feel sure they'd be edible, but as evidenced by my having them all that long, I'm not the person to eat them, even if they weren't hideously out of date. Will birds eat them safely?

I also still have the mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce with a best before date of December 2003, I hear it was a good vintage.

Will birds eat them safely?

birds pay no attention to "best before" dates. they habitually evaluate potential food using their senses, including smell. if it is unsafe, they'll ignore it.

I guess. I wasn't sure if all the sugar or other ingredients might be bad for them.

Googling suggest it's perfectly fine - birds are going to love me! http://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/rspb-news/news/387421-get-stuffed-how-to-feed-your-garden-birds-this-christmas

I just had some roast broccoli that is 2 weeks out of date. It was very green and firm and tasted and smelled good. In fact it was much better than some of that ropey produce Abel & Cole used to send at a not very reasonable price. I was reading graphic descriptions of hunger and struggling to subsist on rotten potatoes in the Klemperer dairies earlier and feel like sell by dates are pure decadence.

expired or no, barely discernible as broccoli is terrible anyway

:D

finally outdid myself lol (1995)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eic-oUmXgAEV7yA?format=jpg&name=900x900

as, discovered in a weird little cupboard in the block cellar being cleared out

"the long 90s"

let us know how it tastes

I made wild rice at my folks house a few years ago, and added a chicken bullion cube. The rice ended up tasting like pee and I think it was because the bullion had expired in 1975. I still give my stepmom a hard time about it.

Still, useful to know that if you're short of wee, old chicken bouillon provides a ready substitute.

there was that case where scientists tested tins from a 19th century shipwreck for microbial growth and they were declared safe for consumption.

tbf "deliciously rich" is an all-time all-purpose slogan

Honey makes a mockery out of vacuum sealed tinned food. Just put it in a ceramic vase and it'll be reet 3000 years later.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/07/21/11/drink-bones.jpg

https://www.innit.com/public/products/images/00037600000048-mOceuyyMH1imIw-0_s500.jpg

Okay, serious question: I have two 2.5 ounce jars.. one is "Best by" 12/05/18, the other is 01/17/19. Visually the meat inside the jars looks fine, and they've been stored in a cool, dark cupboard. What's the collective opinion?

edible

deliciously rich

also post the outcome

the five year best by date is a part of the excessive consumption and waste of the modern era, as long as the seal is intact it should be good for 30-40 years at least! But tbh I'm completely fronting here and get a bit uneasy when my tinned goods are a couple of months past the BBE date.

I once had a tin of tomatoes that exploded and painted my kitchen wall when I opened it. And this had another year on its BBE date.

I don't crave dried beef, and see it almost as part of my long-term survival cache should we have an earthquake or something. I think desperation will season the meat quite nicely.

Going purely by what a corporation decided to print on a label years ago seems like insufficient data. The main thing is the food item itself, which can be consulted easily enough by opening it, sniffing it, inspecting it for mold or discoloration, and tasting a small sample, if you are still unsure.

Bacteria or mold can render food toxic but they'd normally be really obvious. Oxidation is more subtle and more likely, but would normally just make the food unpalatable rather than toxic.

I stayed at a house in the Cotswolds late last year and it was like the family had simply abandoned the place: fusty clothes in the wardrobes, photographs everywhere, a stupendously complete collection of Wisdens. The scullery was magnificent; my favourite find being a tin of clams, best before November 1986. I wasn't brave enough to open it.

How can you tell if food has botulism?
You cannot see, smell, or taste botulinum toxin – but taking even a small taste of food containing this toxin can be deadly.

the aimless project has always been to wipe out the rest of ilx by this precise and fiendish method, years in the planning and now at last come to serendipitous fruition

theoretically, botulism could be present in tinned food well within its 'best by' date, but happily the food safety regulations required for commercially tinned food make botulism basically non-existent. It still happens occasionally in home-canned foods.

I remember when a jar of one of those pointless Lloyd Grossman sauces gave somebody botulism and I imagined the doctor talking to the patient in a L G voice!

"who dies in a hospital like this?"

yeah the best by date has nothing to do with botulism. heat kills botulism during the canning process so if a can is properly sealed it won't be there, and going a few years past the date is not going to cause the can to unseal. the date is more for quality than for safety imo. nutrients break down, etc.

there is some chain grocery store that sells food past the date but i forgot what it's called. i wish i had one near me tbh.

Last week i spied some half-price brie. I looked to see what the date on it was. It promised one on the side of the box but there was none. I bought it, of course.

I used to habitually drink out of date beer as my friend's dad was a landlord and we took the cans that were too old to sell

instructions on tin of standard issue Brit early 20th century army emergency ration tinned beef that is still probably edible: "Concentrated beef, 4 ounces. Remove lid. The beef can be eaten dry, with or without biscuits. Dump a quarter of this tin into boiling water and it will make make one pint of excellent beef tea."

"beef tea" is not good on any date

there is some chain grocery store that sells food past the date but i forgot what it's called. i wish i had one near me tbh.

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Monday, September 21, 2020 9:54 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ooh I bet we could come up with a name.

Better Best Forgotten
Eat By, Schmeat By
Vintage Victuals
Expirations

My bravery is very food dependent. Like why does rice have an expiration date?

But on other items, I adhere pretty close to the best before date, like with yogurt, while my wife will easily do a week past the date if there are no other signs of spoilage.

Ooh I bet we could come up with a name.

xp. have had brown rice go smelly and weird after a year in the cupboard. I much prefer white rice and so sometimes if I have brown rice for one particular dish it tends to languish between uses. I believe white rice keeps longer as I have found old bags of white rice in the back of cupboards while moving that have been edible despite years of sitting - open - and uneaten.

My old Swedish grandmother used to set aside a little milk to let it go bad... as a special treat. Apparently she enjoyed spoiled milk.

“beef tea” sounds like a celebrity feud podcast

white rice goes stale but very, very slowly. brown rice retains the germ, which has oils, so brown rice can and will go rancid on you.

"I can and will go rancid on you" – Liam Ricin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjExPRUBkA&ab_channel=NewEnglandWildlife%26More

opening old tinned foods

even tins from the 50's/60's can have bled dangerous amounts of lead into the food contents.

this is extremely my shit

Huh, I eat mostly white rice, so I've never realized brown rice went bad quicker.

so does whole wheat flour for the same reason. and walnuts if you forget about them in the cabinet for too long. they all get that same smell!