The deal with pre-washed lettuce
Am I supposed to wash triple washed salad?
No. It has already been washed thrice. If you are suspicious of industrial food processes and you want to be extra careful, you should STILL not wash your pre-washed greens.
Why? Because you’re more likely to recontaminate your salad greens than you are to improve their condition. What was the point of washing leafy greens in the first place? Let me answer for you.
Pesticides. If your leafy greens say “organic” anywhere on the packaging, then it means no chemical pesticides were used when they were grown. Hooray. If not, that’s a good reason to wash your vegetables. Pesticides won’t give you food poisoning but they’re not meant to be eaten and they’re probably really bad for us.
Bacteria. Leafy greens typically grow in fields, close to the ground. Sometimes, people and livestock poop in these fields near where these plants are grown. Or fields are irrigated with water contaminated with fecal matter. This is pretty irresponsible agriculture and increasingly rare, but when a man’s gotta go...
During heavy rain, fecal matter can get splashed onto crops. During dry conditions, bacteria-riddled dust can rain down upon crops like a malignant fairy dust. Either scenario could introduce bacteria — specifically Salmonella and E. Coli — onto the greens. It’s unlikely, but if it does happen, then that bacteria should be physically removed / killed before those crops become food.
This is not how you kill bacteria
Rinsing leafy greens will remove most of the bad stuff. Applying a mild sanitizer solution on top of that compensates for any serious negligence that took place upstream in the supply chain. This is what happened when your salad greens were “triple washed.” They are safe.
Ok. What if I buy sketchy-looking greens? How do I wash them to ensure I’m not eating turds?
Do this:
Put your greens in a colander nested inside a large bowl or pot. Place the pot into the sink. Don’t wash your leafy greens directly in the sink unless you just cleaned and sanitized it, which I’m guessing you didn’t, you filthy animal, so use a bowl.
Let the tap run until the bowl is full of water. Slosh the greens around with your hands. Pretend the greens are dry-clean only garment that you are defiantly hand washing. Be gentle and also get the gunk out.
Lift the colander from the bowl and dump out the water.
Repeat. Repeat.
You can sanitize your greens but it’s unnecessary and you’re more likely to screw it up than get it right.
But I really want to sanitize my greens.
Jesus, fine. Do this instead of a third rinse:
Make a diluted bleach solution (1 tsp of bleach per gallon of water, no more no less.)
Submerge your colander of veggies in the solution for a minute. You can touch the water, don’t be scared. At this dilution, the bleach won’t burn skin / stain clothes.
Remove the colander and let the greens air dry. Don’t rinse off your leafy greens after removing them from the sanitizer solution — the sanitizer needs time to do its thing and the bleach will evaporate as your greens dry.
Congratulations! You have just prepared greens so safe you could dress a wound in them.
Nom
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Buffet intelligence
What’s the most perilous thing to eat at a breakfast buffet? (Assuming we live in a covid-free world where buffets are a thing.)
Once I walked across the border to Mexico for the sole purpose of eating at a renowned hotel buffet. I ate a large volume of cantaloupe, among other foods. Then I walked back across the border and drove home. 36 hours later I violently expelled a ton of content from multiple directions. It’s hard to know for certain, but I suspect it was the cantaloupe.
The moral of this story is: avoid cut fruit at buffets, especially melon, especially if has been sitting out for a while or is not kept on ice and visibly replaced often. Once fruit is cut, it opens up its own mini-buffet of bacterial growth. Whole fruits are fine—especially fruits that require peeling, like oranges and bananas— but I’m not sure what kind of psychopath angles toward whole fruit at a buffet.
As a general rule I’m tempted to say: “Eat anything that you see with your own eyes coming fresh out of the kitchen,” but this, alas, could lure you into a false sense of safety. I’ve worked in kitchens. It is not unheard of for stale buffet items to be whisked away and “refreshed”, aka re-plated. Putting an unsafe piece of food on a new plate does not transform it into a safe food.
Lastly: anything fried is a safe bet, since high heat kills bacteria. This is the one instance in which piling your plate with crispy oil-drenched brown morsels is arguably a healthy and prudent choice. Make the most of it.
Pick your poison
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Leftover pizza
I ordered pizza last night, ate a few slices and then left it out on the counter overnight. It is now 10 a.m. and I am hungry but scared. The pizza looks like leftover pizza. Can I eat it?
My professional answer is “No, you probably shouldn’t.” My personal answer is yes, I would eat every slice.
Pizza is a fairly safe food for the simple reason that pizza ovens are incredibly hot, and heat kills bacteria. Assuming there weren’t too many filthy raw toppings added to your order, that pie was pretty safe when it came out the oven.
The concern here, of course, is that bacteria could have grown rapidly on the pizza while it was out on the counter all night. Where did this bacteria come from? Anywhere— but probably from you, at the moment when you pulled the slices apart with your grubby little hands. A bit of bacteria on your pizza wouldn’t have been an issue if you’d remembered to refrigerate it. But alas, you were stoned, and who can blame you?
To err on the side of caution, take a few precautions: Microwave leftover slices until they are piping hot. Throw away any pizza that has shellfish on it — improperly stored shellfish can lead to toxin formation, which won’t be destroyed in the microwave and could make you stupid sick. Finally, wash your goddamn hands.
One more thing. The onset of foodborne illness is typically more delayed than people realize. If you have food poisoning it’s highly likely that the culprit was not the last thing you ate. More likely, it was something from 2-4 days ago. So, go for it — in the unlikely chance that the pizza does make you sick, you will most likely mis-attribute the cause to something else which did not actually make you sick. Leftover pizza is a wonderful breakfast and ignorance is bliss.
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Tomatoes in the fridge
Do I need to refrigerate tomatoes?
No. But if you slice them up and don’t eat them then refrigerate the cut pieces.
This applies to pretty much all produce — don’t refrigerate the whole piece, do refrigerate it once it’s been cut into.
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