OK Hear my out - how do you know when sauce has gone bad?
My go-to sauce is made from the following -
Ketchup - basically indestructible
Mustard - see above
Vinegar - doesn't seem to go bad on the shelf
Molasses - lasts forever
Salt, pepper, some hot sauce
If all of these things last virtually forever when refrigerated, who do so many recipes say it will last two weeks or less in the fridge once combined?
Scotch: Current favorite- The Arran (anything by them), Glenmorangie 12yr Lasanta, sherry cask finished. The Balvenie Double Wood, also like Oban 18yr, and The Glenlivet Nadurra (Oloroso sherry cask finished) among others. Neat please.
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Location: Farwell, Michigan - near Clare (dead center of lower peninsula).
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I suspect recipes that say that are adding something else that can go bad quicker, such as a lot of sugar (can mold) or some rendered fat drippings or similar or what you put in when mixing it. Likely they're just being safe. If all the ingredients you add have a virtually indefinite shelf life, then it stands to reason your end product will as well. However, the flip side is those ingredients are all dirt cheap, so if it's been a long time and you're unsure, just toss it and make new.
Large Big Green Egg, Weber Performer Deluxe, Weber Smokey Joe Silver, Fireboard Drive, 3 DigiQs, lots of Thermapens, and too much other stuff to mention.
I would surmise, chemical reactions from mixing notwithstanding, that it depends on how you store your sauce. If vacuum sealed I think it would last longer than other storage options. That’s my only input.
While each is stable and safe as prepared at the factory, once they are mixed outside of that environment the possibility of contamination from utensils, dishes, storage method, personal sanitation, and environmental factors comes in to play. Even if acidic ingredients are mixed together the resulting pH may rise above the threshold of what is considered long term safe. Now, it is not going to kill you or make you sick off the bat, but 2 weeks is a good period to ensure it can’t.
It is similar to what is called the “Mayonnaise Myth.” Factory prepared mayo is made using eggs whose shells have been pasteurized, and the final pH of the product is well within the safe range. Leaving it out on the counter is not going to make you sick. However, mix it with other foods which might contain bacteria, leave it out on the counter, and it will get the blame every time even if the other food was the actual cause.. The other factor that supports the myth is that homemade mayonnaise, not factory produced mayonnaise, is made with raw eggs, and those eggshells could be contaminated in themselves and rendered the whole batch contaminated.
It is hard to dispute what others have said about the 2 weeks. Donw is hard to question in this area. I would only add that you will know when something is bad. You can just tell in most instances and I always trust my nose. To repeat what has been said so many times here, when in doubt throw it out….
I would just add that if you're bringing your sauce to a boil, it's pasteurized, so the remaining variable is your container. Mine come out of the dishwasher so I'm pretty confident. If one is concerned, one might boil or steam the container too. We keep hot sauces, bbq sauces as long as they last, sometimes many weeks.
After my very memorable battles with food poisoning I just won’t risk it. If there’s any doubt I will pass. My wife comes from a family with cast iron stomachs she can eat what she pleases but I don’t take chances.
texastweeter No it was Bagwell. I actually saw her dad eating home canned pickles from a jar that the lid was about to rust through from the inside out.
I have kept mine much longer with no ill effects but I never use "right from the bottle" I always decant what I want into a bowl for use, any left overs are disposed of.
Large Big Green Egg, Weber Performer Deluxe, Weber Smokey Joe Silver, Fireboard Drive, 3 DigiQs, lots of Thermapens, and too much other stuff to mention.
This is an issue for me when I make Meathead’s KC sauce. It makes a huge batch, even when scaled to 1/2, and I’m the only one in the household who uses bbq sauce at all. If I make a full batch, I’ll give half of it away, and the other half I keep in the fridge, and I put bbq sauce on as much stuff as I can.
My experience is that the shelf life of Meathead’s KC sauce, properly handled, is about a month. At that point the flavor has degraded and it has picked up refrigerator odors. But since you don’t want to eat it at that point, back it up to 3 weeks. I feel confident extrapolating that to other bbq sauces.
Jarred sauces: I’m pretty lax on that stuff, but still: at the 3 week point, my thought process is that half a jar of sauce is about $2-$3, and that’s not worth the risk.
Freezing stuff…. my experience on freezing proteins is that they last indefinitely. I just used ground beef from 3/21 to make a batch of taco meat, and it was excellent, with good color, smell, and flavor. My experience on freezing sauces is more mixed. The salsas that I made 7 months ago still taste okay, but the texture is runny and the heat is almost gone. I’d call them edible, but not desirable. Soups, chilis, stews, and heartier sauces like bolognese, are still okay up to about a year; at that point I’m thinking, “Do I really want to eat this, or should I just make a sandwich for dinner?”
Thanks everyone for the input. Good common sense. I used some older sauce last night for the wife and I but when we have guests next week a new batch will be a good idea.
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