Not sure it counts.
For my 30th birthday my father opened a bottle of 1878 Porto his father bought.
So it was 130 years old.
It was… Unreliable. Full taste, very sweet, much more liquorous than regular Porto. We drank it quickly, what was left was fully undrinkable only a few hours later, totally spoiled. But for half an our after being opened, it was truly the most amazing Porto I ever had.
It has been bottled before cars existed… Before electricity became widespread…
Really a lifetime experience.
Now its gone, but I keep the bottle for future storytelling.
Pasta that was four years past its date. Some pieces were a bit brittle and I think it went a little softer faster than what was usual but overall I didn’t notice any difference and I enjoyed it! 😃 Definitely don’t do this with already cooked pasta though! The pasta I had was raw and in a sealed bag.
I did a hamburger helper, probably 5 months ago, where the liquid cheese sauce was supposed to be white… but was more off white/sickly yellow… needless to say I only ate as much as I needed and threw the rest out. 😂
I did the best I could to support the ‘we don’t waste food in this house’ mantra. I’m sure it was fine, but i lost my appetite merely from the thought of it.
Oh good gosh I just about lost my appetite too reading this 😂 glad you were okay though!
I figured it’d be alright until the cheese came out a little off in color. Didn’t smell weird… but, I didn’t trust myself to ‘taste’ it, I wolfed down what I could stomach before I could taste it, and tossed the rest.
The shitty thing was that I had dedicated so much time to cooking everything else, once the cheese came out I had already invested too much in my sunk cost fallacy.
A guy I used to work with would put a discounted cause it’s about to go out of data’s salad on his van dashboard, in a [British] summer, leave it there for up to 6 weeks, then eat it.
Salt. What are the chances that my 2.5 billion year old salt will actually go bad in a few months?
If we’re talking about ignoring a date printed on the package, salt. Dunno why it had a date printed on it at all.
If we’re talking about something that does eventually go bad, it would be some other spice that only rarely gets used, dunno which one though.
If we’re talking about something actually considered perishable, eggs.
Salt: in the ground for millions of years.
Mining company: dig that up and slap an expiry date on it
Same with (bottled) water. The same water that was around even before dinosaurs digested it, also has an expiration date. I assume it has to do with law: everything considered to be a food has to have an expiration date printed on it, no matter how ridiculous it seems.
I could see that having to do with the plastic bottle degrading.
I bought a cup of plain yogurt for some naan bread. However do to my natural laziness and the yogurt getting pushed to the back of the fridge I ended actually using it over a year past it’s expiration date. The yogurt looked fine, tasted fine (other than being very tangy) and ended up making some tasty naan bread.
Pasta, i think it was 10 years past expiration date. Packet was sealed and stored in a dry, cool dark cupboard. Once opened, it felt normal. After cooking, you could not feel any difference. It was Barilla.
Also, cookies. Dry cookies, like crackers. Expiration date was past, how much i don’t remember (years, anyway), but the cookies where just fine.
Same kitchen.
Stale chips. About a week or two past their best by date. They are very chewy and gross. But since I didn’t wanna waste them or go to the store, I put olive oil on them and seasoning and put them in an air fryer for a few minutes. They were bomb. Now I do this with regular salted chips. Add olive oil, seasoning Parm cheese etc.
There’s this brand of organic yogurt at my local shop that says “probably best before xx/xx/xxxx, but after that just lift the lid and have a sniff”
I think I remember 6 weeks as being absolutely fine once, and 3 weeks didn’t some other time.
Yogurt is always hit or miss for me, but for the most part we don’t use it that often, so I’d say my average time from open to scraping the bottom is around 4-5 weeks.
have a sniff
I just always do that instead of looking at dates on food. If it looks off, smells off, or tastes off I trash it (always checking in that order, of course). Seems fine, I eat it. Never had a problem doing that.
Well, never a food bourn illness problem. I had a big argument with a housemate about expired food. Shortly after she moved in, she promptly trashed any food that was any amount past expiration, and proudly informed me that she had cleaned out the fridge, saving me from eating pickles that were a whole 3 months past safe to eat. To be fair to her, half the things she trashed actually were bad, but the pickle jar went right back in the fridge. If you don’t want me eating pickles that have been in the trash, Amanda, then don’t throw out my perfectly good pickles! Good call on the bottle of ranch dressing though, I forgot that was in there and it looks nasty.
I have some spices that are probably pushing 10+ years old that are fine tossed, they’re probably just less flavorful than fresh ones.
My mum had these dried chili flakes, which were a few years past their best-by date. And honestly, I couldn’t imagine these really going bad, so long as they remain dry. I mainly tasted some before throwing it into my food to test whether it even still tasted hot. But yeah, they were good.
Never quite knew what to do with these, when I still lived there, but that made me consider buying some. I cook with more veggies now, where the chili really hits the spot.
This can of pineapple slices has been found in the back of the food cabinet in December 2020. Its expiration date was in July 2017. I did not open it. I carefully removed the can outside right into the trash bin. I didi’t want to risk an explosion of this fruit bomb.
I had this pack of hamburger buns that were absolutely in perfect shape months after their expiry. The inside of that pack much have been perfectly sterile.
a pack of sausages that were 3 years expired. I got a bunch of dried stuff that’s more than a decade old but still taste fine, but I don’t count those.
Yellow curry paste - About a year. I kept it well sealed. Never had issues.
Bread - my current loaf was “best. By 11/20.” There’s no mold and I’ve continued to have my slice with no issues. I store my bread in the fridge.
Chicken - I freeze chicken and will pull out a piece to defrost. I’ve pulled out some truly ancient chicken before. Still cooked up fine.
Furikake - I just ignore the expiration to be honest. I use it until I’m out, which can be months if not a year. But it’s just rice seasoning so I don’t think he could do much damage anyway.
The greatest - I don’t know. The most recent I used: I have this box of instant dark cocoa powder I bought around 5 years ago or so and it’s best before Sep 2023. I had a nice cup of hot cocoa with whiskey last night.
