A Best Before / Use By thread...

[Cudzoziemiec]

My son will reject milk as smelling or tasting "tangy" when I'm happy to use it and before it's passed the use by date. He's always been like that, I don't know if reflects a greater susceptibility to gone-off milk or is just a taste thing. He doesn't like cheese either.

[Lightning Phil]

Sniff test is my go to test for my milk

[Peter]

Be interesting to see how they react when people start using the sniff test BEFORE they've bought the milk.......

[Kim]

Also, the sniff test is widely variable from nose to nose.

Wonder if anyone's studied the effects of COVID on food poisoning...

[rogerzilla]

Pasteurised milk goes off in quite a nasty, pungent way.  It doesn't turn to cheese.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Be interesting to see how they react when people start using the sniff test BEFORE they've bought the milk.......

[L CC]

Off milk makes great scones. I write on the container in fat black marker SCONE MILK just in case. My children tell me it's a favourite childhood memory- mum appears to be poisoning us with dodgy milk again. It didn't stop them eating the scones mind.

[rafletcher]

Off milk makes great scones.

Ditto soda bread.

[T42]

Yesterday I whipped cream that had been open since its expiry date of 29/12/21.  It took a bit longer to whip because a lot of the fat had formed a plug at the top of the bottle, but it worked and tasted OK.  And neither of us has the runs this morning.

[Basil]

Off milk makes great scones.

Ditto soda bread.

My mum would use it to make Devil's Food Cake. 

[Marco Stefano]

My tin of black treacle gets opened every other year whan I make two year's supply of Xmas pudds.
I think it is about 12 years old now, it will last longer than I can manage to stir up the pudds.

Black treacle has (IME) a Dire Warning on the lid saying "dispose of after xxxyyyy date".

Black treacle (and molasses) undergoes Maillard reactions over time, which can cause a lot of CO2 production, amongst other things. I'd recommend handling the tin carefully (don't take it from the cupboard & thump it down on a worktop) and opening carefully (safety specs not overkill). I remember a complaint demanding kitchen repainting after an exploding old tin covered the customer's ceiling with treacle...

[Wowbagger]

Anything with a very high sugar or salt content won't really go off, very few micro-organisms can survive the osmotic pressures and sugars are generally reluctant to oxidize at room temperature.

Though in some cases a layer of water forms on top that is lower in sugar and that can encourage microbial growth (hence the mould that can form on top of old jam).

With honey, the very top layer becoming dilute as a result of moisture absorption can quite rapidly ruin the rest of the tin - and I mean tin. When I kept bees, I lost at least one 44lb tin to this very annoying trait. There's probably a greater tendency for this to happen with rape honey: the glucose content is very high and it leads to early crystallisation. To get the stuff out of the comb, you have to put it in the extractor before the bees seal the cells. The usual test is to give the comb a shake. If a lot of nectar flies out, it's not ready. If only a couple of drops only do, that's the time to extract, but it will almost be a percentage point or two less concentrated than (say) rose bay willow herb or clover honey. Heather honey, being a thixotropic gel, won't come out of the comb via a centrifugal extractor, which is why it's usually sold as cut comb. If it's not cut comb, it's probably been extracted using an apple press, so the honeycomb can't be re-used.

[arabella]

So who else has been known to
1/ buy sour cream as it's meant to taste like that
2/ scrape the mould of the top of the sour cream/yoghurt and use the rest.  Or cut off the mouldy bits and eat the rest of the tomato/apple/etc
3/ same with jam
4/ re-boil jam that has gone alcoholic
5/ check whether the cat (other pets also available) will consume before using the rest

[nicknack]

So who else has been known to
1/ buy sour cream as it's meant to taste like that
2/ scrape the mould of the top of the sour cream/yoghurt and use the rest.  Or cut off the mouldy bits and eat the rest of the tomato/apple/etc
3/ same with jam
4/ re-boil jam that has gone alcoholic
5/ check whether the cat (other pets also available) will consume before using the rest

All yes, apart from the cat bit. We don't have one. But I guess we could try it on the mice that are currently sharing our accommodation.

[ian]

Beware on the sour cream one, as an advocate of it's supposed to be sour, I once shoved a big spoon of well past its use-by sour cream into my mouth to demonstrate the fact. This proved to be a significant and foolhardy mistake.

[hellymedic]

Wet dairy stuff can grow all sorts of nastiness and I avoid old things. I don't want Listeria…

Had a flapjack bite for supper's afters, BB 24 November 2021.
I think ice-axe incisors might have been useful...

[perpetual dan]

With the milk, I find the time the bottle’s been open as important as the date stamp. We don’t drink if fast enough to get through the enormous bottles the supermarket seem to prefer.

[Basil]

Which is why we buy ours in glass pint bottles.

[rafletcher]

I think also it's 'fridge dependent.  We normally buy skimmed milk, which last ages, much longer than the 3-4 days it takes us to go through 4 pints.  My wife has been drinking full milk as well recently, and an opened 4 pint bottle is lasting nearly 2 weeks with no ill effects.

My view is that the supply chain for supermarket milk is much, much better controlled in terms of termperature than that for bottled milk via dairies, and throughput is also much higher.

Plus all supermarkets still sell 2 pint containers, which are hardly huge.

[Mr Larrington]

I only get through a single pint a week and 1-pint wossnames of Mr Sainsbury’s House of Toothy Comestibles' own-brand semi-skilled have been thin on the ground shelf since the plague hit our shores.  I usually end up having to buy Graham's – either regular or organic – which is more expensive and thus hurts my Yorkshire soul.

[Kim]

I think also it's 'fridge dependent.

Very much so.  Mrs barakta's-mum's former residence had a fitted fridge which, like all fitted appliances, was kept in service well beyond its best before date on account of being such a pain to replace.  Milk would keep for a couple of days, which was consistent with it barely feeling cold inside.

[perpetual dan]

We have two pint bottles of each of semi and skimmed.  They last 3, maybe 4, days before they fail my smell test. Though supply to the local supermarket of the smaller bottles seems to be about once a week, judging by the regular empty shelves and dates on the bottles.

[hellymedic]

I mostly get milk in glass bottles from the milkman.
The date embossed on the foil lid is 'optimistic' but we usually finish the milk long before it.
I also keep  Sainsbury's two pint plastic semi-skimmed milk bottles in the freezer for top-ups.
This lasts longer than the glass bottles.

[perpetual dan]

We got milk delivered for a while. But the milkman comes here shortly after our bedtime (I hear them delivering to next door if I've stayed up late), so it might well be sat on the step getting warm for 8 hours before anyone gets it in. The prompt to stop getting it delivered was the second time the milk was taken, along with the bottle holder. Going to the shop before breakfast isn't something I'm enthusiastic about.

[L CC]

We (there are only 2 of us, no pets no visitors) get through 4 pints of full fat in just over a day.

https://youtu.be/29bR_PM37kU