We all know what a rotten egg smells like, right?

January 26, 2023 11:43 AM

Kenji López Alt answers the eternal question: Should I eat this? (SLNYT) (Archive link)
posted by adamrice (25 comments total)

Half of the questions on AskMeFi just went away.
posted by conifer at 11:49 AM on January 26, 2023 [9 favorites]

Half of the questions on AskMeFi just went away.

A lot of his answers are more or less what people say in those threads anyways so somehow I doubt it.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:55 AM on January 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Vinegars, honey, vanilla or other extracts, sugar, salt, corn syrup and molasses will last virtually forever with little change in quality.

I feel like this is not necessarily true for all of these, but that the changes that occur to them are more annoying changes in form than spoilage per se:

• vinegars -- at least real ones rather than non-brewed condiments -- sometimes start forming a vinegar mother
• sugar and salt are susceptible to moisture-induced clumping
• honey tends to crystallize

posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:56 AM on January 26, 2023

Half of the questions on AskMeFi just went away.

Bah. This article doesn't even touch briefly on the shirt vs. lasagne issue.
posted by cortex at 11:59 AM on January 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

they didn’t even dare weigh in on the refrigerate your pizza or if it’s fine to leave it out all night and eat it in the morning (it’s not!!!)
posted by dis_integration at 12:07 PM on January 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

they didn’t even dare weigh in on the refrigerate your pizza or if it’s fine to leave it out all night and eat it in the morning (it’s not!!!)

Sorry, you meant to write "it's not a problem even a little bit!!!", right?
posted by curious nu at 12:20 PM on January 26, 2023 [17 favorites]

Still gonna defer to ask me about things like leftover kitfo.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:22 PM on January 26, 2023

Technically mefi's own.
posted by madcaptenor at 12:26 PM on January 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

A couple years back my sister was helping my parents pack up when they were getting ready to finally move out of our childhood home. She texted me photos of some Costco brownie mix she found in the garage with a 2005 expiration date. We had a good laugh (it was very on brand for my mom), but little did she know the joke was on her, she should have kept it for herself, it’s probably still good.
posted by The Gooch at 12:27 PM on January 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I had a good smile seeing this today. Yesterday there was an "article" going around facebook from McCormick's spices urging people to replace their old spices that showed up on a bunch of groups I'm in...The headline was super doomy, something like "WARNING, if you have expired spices in your cabinet..." and you had to dig really far down past the dire evil hand-wringing before you got to the bit about how they might be less effective.
posted by Mchelly at 12:42 PM on January 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Wait, sitting or standing has been resolved??!!?
posted by snofoam at 1:02 PM on January 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Disagree on the soda one - for diet sodas that contain aspartame (nutrasweet), if not stored properly do go bad. And not in a good way.
posted by plinth at 1:06 PM on January 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Diet sodas that contain aspartame were never good to begin with.
posted by box at 1:13 PM on January 26, 2023 [12 favorites]

A cook that doesn't disparage UHT milk? I didn't think I'd ever see the day.

(UHT is pretty much the only option around here if you want lactose-free or organic milk, and my household doesn't drink milk quickly enough to reliably go through a gallon before the regular stuff spoils.)
posted by Aleyn at 1:20 PM on January 26, 2023

AskMe does it better.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:20 PM on January 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

AskMe also routinely gets questions about meats, leftovers and prepared foods, while this is mostly about ingredients. Honestly wise to avoid addressing those as those are the most fraught ones I'd say.
posted by Aleyn at 1:23 PM on January 26, 2023

I've seen people say that white flour lasts more or less indefinitely, but I think it eventually loses the ability to form gluten. I once tried using year-old all-purpose flour for bread dough, but it had no elasticity; even after a long rise, the dough would tear instead of stretching.
posted by ectabo at 1:28 PM on January 26, 2023

Unless it's got sushi on it I'll eat pizza that's been sitting out all night. No prob.
posted by Liquidwolf at 6:02 PM on January 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

His answer on bread is completely the opposite to my experience! I’ve had fancy loaves (and home made sourdough ones) last far more than a week, in and out of the fridge. The worst that tends to happen is that I need to hack off the too-dry edges to get to the middle. In contrast, I usually keep cheap white pure-sliced loaves in the freezer, as they are best for emergency toast anyway, and can go violently Monday in a couple of days. Is UK crap bread very different to US crap bread?
posted by fizban at 12:35 AM on January 27, 2023

can go violently Monday in a couple of days

Is "Monday" an autocorrect for "mouldy", or a bit of slang I've not encountered before? (If the former, it's delightful and I think we should turn it into the latter.)

I'm in the UK and I've never managed to get any kind of bread to keep for more than a week outside the freezer: soft bread goes mouldy, crusty bread goes stale, usually within four days and often overnight. The unexpected week-long outlier is M&S tiger bread, which isn't a patch on Dutch supermarkets' tiger bread, but at least remains fit for toasting for long enough for me to actually finish the loaf.

I do also keep a loaf of supermarket sliced bread in the freezer for emergency toast purposes.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:00 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Once upon a time I wondered whether many-weeks-old eggs in my fridge were OK.

Then one day I cracked an egg that was rotten.

There is no such thing as an old egg. Either it's rotten, or it's fine. So so many "expiration" dates are fear mongering to create waste in the name of capitalism. Throw it away! Buy a new one! More plastic!
posted by Dashy at 5:18 AM on January 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yes, I smelled a rotten egg once, as a child, and I will never forget that smell. If it doesn’t smell like that, I consider it a good egg.
posted by wondermouse at 6:26 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you shake an old egg, and it feels like it's filled with liquid of uniform density instead of a white and a yolk, you might not want to investigate any further.
posted by box at 10:49 AM on January 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have no sense of smell, so the tip about the oil being sticky was nice. He doesn't say anything about raw beef, chicken, or pork though.
posted by Billy Rubin at 3:13 PM on January 27, 2023

We have ducks and a goose that all lay eggs. They do last a remarkably long time, but we also have had some go bad.

Sometimes they had a crack we didn't initially notice, sometimes a couple just got old.

You know immediately. You crack it and it's a moment of panic. You run with the egg in the bowl to get it out of the house.

Probably a worse smell than a rotting/melting potato.
posted by toddforbid at 3:52 PM on January 27, 2023 [5 favorites]