I put a chicken stock on the stove yesterday afternoon and my husband turned off the stove after 3 hours. When I came home, I completely forgot about it and it sat on my stove overnight. I'm wondering if it's salvageable or if I should throw it out.
food safety 101 would tell you to toss.
if it were me? i'd get it up to boiling again for at least 15 minutes, portion and freeze.
but i have a magic kitchen.
*caveat: if my magic kitchen was super summer hot i would not bother and would toss.
The stock sat out at least 12 hours during the summer. Throw it out.
Personally, I would bring it back to a boil and use.
My rationale is the stock was not disturbed and constantly stirred. It just sat their cooling.
However, my general advice for people is if you don't feel comfortable using it, just toss it out for your peace of mind.
Of course the "official" answer is "toss it" (about 10 hours before you discovered it the next morning<lol>), but I assume you realize that and are asking for less-than-official, "what would YOU do?" comments...
Was it covered? If not, I'd probably toss it, basically on general principle, even though it's not really likely that random pathogenic bacteria would float in on an air current. (You might get a few mold spores or a something, but those wouldn't really be a problem even without re-boiling if you were using it soon, anyway...)
If it WAS covered, I'd figure it was probably pretty thoroughly "pasteurized" if not literally sterile under the lid after cooking for three hours, even if only at a low simmer, and 10-12 hours _probably_ isn't long enough for it to have soured or done anything else that it will make it taste unpleasant, even if it's not potentially dangerous. But with that latter possibility in mind, I'd definitely be sure to taste it after re-boiling and before using it for anything. If it gone off, there's no sense in waiting to find that out only after you've added whatever other ingredients you'd be using it with...
Toss it
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