Green curry food safety question

I am making a Thai green curry with tofu for dinner guests on Sunday. If I make it in the early afternoon and plan to serve it at 7:00, should I still refrigerate it? Or is it OK at room temperature since there is no meat or dairy involved? Thank you for any advice.

I think you should be fine. I've never heard of anything like that going bad in a few hours at room temperature.

Well, Alton brown would probably be donning rubber gloves and sealing it in two containers in your "chill chest" but it you bring it up to a simmer, covered, and leave it covered, it should stay on the stove/counter just fine for a few hours.

Does Thai improve with a reheat? Indian certainly does, and most stews worldwide will. I'd be concerned about your tofu and veggies breaking down too much.

If you reheat it before serving, you have nothing to worry about.

The rule of thumb is no more than two hours at room temperature. The reheat temperature is 165 degrees to be on the safe side.
Paulette

if it was that big a problem, you'd never be ably to buy any food from the back of thai grocery

Thank you all.

d4v3 wrote:If you reheat it before serving, you have nothing to worry about.

Well, this is not completely true. While you may kill off the bad bugs by reheating, any poisons they might have released into the food will still be there and able to get you sick. I doubt a few hours on the counter will be enough time to do anything nasty, but simply reheating food is not insurance against getting sick.

THAT SAID, I leave stews and soups and foods on the counter sometimes for 24 hours at a time without ever having gotten sick. (I'm terrible with food safety unless I'm cooking for others). I think you'll be fine, but the strict food safety advice would be to refrigerate it.

Binko wrote:Well, this is not completely true. While you may kill off the bad bugs by reheating, any poisons they might have released into the food will still be there and able to get you sick.

My reply was based on the parameters of the question. I certainly didn't mean to imply you could leave something out for a week, then boil it and be OK. I should have elaborated a little more. If you simmer a dish then leave it covered on a counter for a few hours, there is no real chance that any kind of Botulinum or other toxins are going to accumulate in that short amount of time. After simmering, the vessel and the food are pretty much sterile. Reheating will indeed kill any bacteria (if any) that happen to breed. Like you, I have left stuff on the stove all night without ever getting sick. It is even possible that refrigerating something that is hot for such a short amount of time may actually keep it in the "danger zone" for a longer period of time by cooling it off faster. Bean curd is actually susceptible to bacterial contamination because of the high protein content.

I just wanted to clarify for other posters, because lord knows, I've heard many people think that as long as something is boiled vigorously, they're safe from getting sick. You certainly don't need food sitting out for week to get sick. Overnight will do it. Staphylococcus, for instance, will start producing toxins that can't be boiled out within an hour or two of food sitting at room temp. There is a short-incubation form of it that is associated with fried-rice that has been held at room temperature for a few hours.

I think 99.9% chance that the poster will be fine, but in dispensing any sort of health-related advice on a public food forum, I'd rather err on the side of caution. FDA guidelines say that anything held longer than two hours at room temp (or one hour on a hot summer day) must be gotten out of the temperature danger zone. Two hours is being conservative, obviously, but I've read reports of Staph illness developing in food being left out for four or five hours (and food absolutely can develop staph overnight). With making the food "early afternoon" and serving it at 7 p.m., it's not entirely impossible for there to be food safety issues.

Like I said, I'd eat it without hesitation, but I personally would not take a chance serving it to anybody very young, elderly, or with a compromised immune system.