FOOD NEWS
You Accidentally Left Your Soup Out Overnight. Is It Still Safe To Eat?
By Tom Maxwell
If you've accidentally left soup out overnight, you may wonder if it's still safe to eat. While you can technically eat it after boiling it again, it'll be pretty much inedible.
According to the USDA, temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees F are the "danger zone" of food storage, especially for cooked foods that stay there for more than two hours.
They become a petri dish for bacteria that can cause various food-borne illnesses, including Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, and C. botulinum.
Boiling soup kills bacteria, but it needs to boil vigorously for 10 minutes to inactivate (not destroy) the botulinum spores, which can cause paralysis.
Botulism spores germinate below 130 degrees F. By the time your soup is at room temperature, the spores have doubled every hour and a half or every 15 minutes at body temperature.
Food poisoning is something to be avoided. Sometimes, the wisest thing a cook can do is throw out something they've labored over, lest it bring harm instead of nourishment.