Food Safety for Leftovers

By Denise Derrer of Indiana State Board of Animal Health

Grandma is bringing over her famous green bean casserole and Aunt Betty can’t call it Thanksgiving without sweet potatoes smothered in mini marshmallows.  Oh, the variety of food is endless at the holidays.  

Unfortunately, the size of our stomachs and pants is not.  At the end of the feasting you survey what remains.  You just can’t fathom throwing away the extra food from those yummy dishes so you divide them into various storage containers and go about your holiday. 

Fast forward a few days and you’re staring at your bulging refrigerator trying to decide if it’s safe to eat Grammy’s leftover green bean casserole.  Remember, leftovers can be kept for 3 to 5 days, so you think you’re safe.  But wait.  Now you can’t remember which foods were eaten at which get-together—and they spanned the entire weekend. 

This problem can be solved easily and quickly.  Simply take the time to write the date on the outside of all your storage containers. 

The hustle and bustle of preparing for the Thanksgiving feast does not leave any time to sit down, let alone create labels.  Take this time to get your kids involved.  While the adults are busy preparing food over a hot stove, ask the youngsters to make leftovers labels.  HolidayFoodSafety.org has printable labels and the “consume by” date can be written in the blank space.   

Store your leftovers in shallow containers.  That will allow the food to cool quicker, so it gets to a safe storing temperature faster.  And don’t over-load your fridge.  The cool air needs room to circulate around the food.    

When you initially pick your foods, choose those that sit well at room temperature.  Be sure to put the remaining provisions back in the refrigerator within two hours after dinner is served.  Don’t forget, the danger zone for prepared foods is between 40 ˚F and 140 ˚F.  Keeping your fridge at or below 40 ˚F inhibits the growth of potentially harmful bacteria.

Sit back and rest easy this holiday knowing that chilling and storing food properly is one of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of food borne illness.  

What do I do with THIS?

Guest Post by Marybeth of Real Farmwives of America & Friends and Alarm Clock Wars

In January, I undertook a new challenge. An Iron Chef Challenge. My friend Ott, A. over at A Latte with Ott, A was running an Iron Chef Challenge for all her bloggy friends. And the theme for January was duck! I love duck! I had only cooked it once before, a whole roast duck, and I loved that I had an excuse to try it again!

So I hit the cookbooks, and found a recipe for duck breast that looked yummy. Off to the local grocery store, where there was no duck breast to be found. Only a whole duck.

Hmmm.

Okay, so scrap the duck breast recipe, and look for a recipe that used the whole duck. I had done a whole roasted duck before, so I wanted to try something different.

I am a huge Alton Brown fan, and have yet to try a recipe from him that I didn’t like, so I cruised the Food Network website to find an AB recipe I could try. Oh, and did I find one! Mighty Duck! (Who can resist with a name like that?)

The problem? This is not a recipe for a whole duck. This is a recipe for a quartered duck. But I didn’t have a quartered duck… I had a whole duck!

Lucky for me, AB gives detailed directions on how to quarter a whole duck.

Lucky for you, I took pictures while I quartered my duck!

(Although AB says “a chicken is not a duck,” this technique will also work for a chicken, or a turkey, or whatever other kind of poultry you’re trying to quarter. Just substitute your poultry of choice wherever you see the word “duck.”)

Start with a thawed duck (sorry for stating the obvious here, but, hey, you never know!), and assemble the rest of your tools. You will need: a large cutting board, kitchen shears, and a large knife. I also had a cheat sheet. Unwrap your duck, and take out the giblets and the pop up timer (if there is one). Rinse off the duck so it is clean and shiny.

Put the duck on your cutting board, breast side down, and use your kitchen shears to cut off the wings. (Now he just looks sad.)

Pull the big flap of neck skin out of the way. (You can cut it off if you want to.) Using your kitchen shears again, cut through the ribs on either side of the backbone. Start from the neck and work your way back. When you’ve got the backbone free from the ribs and the meat, take it out.

Now put the duck breast side up on your cutting board. You should be able to spread it out so it’s kind of flat.

Again, with the kitchen shears, cut the duck in half, right down the middle of the breast bone. Now you should have two halves of a duck.

Next we need to separate the legs from the breasts. You should be able to see a division between the leg and the breast where there is not much meat. Use your big knife to make a crescent-shaped cut around the top of the leg. (We’re keeping the thigh and the drumstick together here, so don’t worry about separating those two parts.)

Do this step again for the other half, and, voila! Quartered duck! Great job!!

Just in case this didn’t get you quite the information you need, or if you want the details on how “a chicken is not a duck,” Alton Brown has a fantastic video detailing the entire process, with a chicken. Although, really, even if you are an expert in breaking down a chicken, this video is worth watching, for pure entertainment value alone! “Quoth the chicken, ‘fry some more!’”

You gotta love anyone who incorporates great literature into fried chicken! Oh, and the pan-fried chicken recipe is wonderful, too, although it’s just teased in the video. (If you want to skip right to the meat of the matter, the breaking down demonstration starts around 3:50 into the video clip.)