Simply, as the title says I’d like to know if it is safe to store raw meat alongside pre-cooked produce (ie. ready-made pies) in the fridge. Given the ready-made pies still need to be cooked to a high temperature – would this be considered safe?
Meat – Is it safe to store raw meat alongside pre-cooked produce (ie. ready-made pies) in the fridge
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As you mention, cooking the steak to medium rare does indeed kill the bacteria on the surface of the steak which is where most of the risk of contamination exists, so immediately after you've cooked the steak, if you eat it, you're probably pretty safe unless there happened to be bad organisms living inside the meat.
Assuming that you've got a good piece of meat, with nothing terrible inside it, after you cook the meat, what you need to worry about most is bacteria that you introduce to the meat, and so to answer your question, cutting meat shouldn't affect the safety of storing meat after cooking at all (as long as you use a clean knife/cutting board).
While cooking the meat does initially kill all of the surface bacteria, the fact that the surface was once cooked doesn't really do anything to deter new bacteria from moving in and going to town on the meat. What this means is that you need to be very careful to keep meat in sanitary conditions regardless of whether the exposed surface has been previously cooked or not if you're planning to eat it without cooking it again.
So, to recap, if you take a piece of meat where all bacteria has been killed via cooking, and seal it without introducing new bacteria, you should be safe to eat it.
The one remaining issue is that we're not talking about a steak that's necessarily had all bacteria killed. There's a possibility that some bacteria survived the cooking inside the meat. If this is the case, you may be safe to eat the meat right away if there are very few of these bacteria present (depending on what they are), but the longer you wait - even if you seal the whole thing up - the longer you're giving those bacteria to multiply into large enough quantities that they can destroy the meat and/or sicken you. To avoid this, you want to put the meat in the refrigerator, as soon as possible to slow bacterial action, and eat it as soon as possible. Like John, I've had success with around 3-5 days, but it really depends on what you're starting with, so I'd highly recommend that you have a good look/sniff before you eat to see if there are any signs of spoilage and discard if so. Again, this is a risk whether you cut the meat or not, so that isn't really a factor here.
Regarding partially eaten steaks, this is just introducing one more place where bacteria can get on the steak before it's sealed up and refrigerated. I could see this being no issue (if you're cutting off a piece of the steak, and sealing/refrigerating the rest while eating), or a significant issue if you're cutting the steak with utensils that have been in your mouth, or worse, trying to store a piece of steak that's been in your mouth. In those cases you're almost certainly introducing more bacteria and decreasing the amount of time you'll have before spoilage occurs.
So, in summary, cut the meat if you like - that should make no difference. Get it sealed up as soon as possible without exposing it to anything non-sterile. Put it in the refrigerator as soon as possible. Throw it out if at any point you detect spoilage. Following these steps you should be safe to keep your leftovers for 3-5 days and only rarely need to discard spoiled food.
Play it safe.
It has been said:
You probably will be ok, but the safer method is just to cook it the night before and refrigerate it. Toss the whole thing in an insulated lunch container, and you should have no problems. Even if the temperature creeps up into the danger zone, it shouldn't be there more than an hour or two before lunch time, and should still be cool enough not to cause an issue. – JSM Aug 21 at 17:44
I happen to disagree with this advice, personally. While it may be OK, is this something worth trying to find out?
Here is an excerpt from an FDA research paper about pathogenic bacteria in food handling
Growth rates of pathogens are highly temperature dependent. Ordinarily, pathogenic bacteria growth is relatively slow at temperatures below 70°F (21.1°C). In most cases, growth is very slow below 50°F (10°C), and 40°F (4.4°C) is below the minimum growth temperature of most pathogenic bacteria, although there are some exceptions. On the other hand, pathogenic bacteria grow relatively fast at temperatures above 70°F (21.1°C).
Think of a real-world example, say a soda can. You get the can out of the machine at a temperature around 35°F-40°C, which is refrigeration temperature. You set it naked (i.e., no "can cushy") on a table and just leave it there. Within 1-1.5 hours or so, it will be very close to room temperature, which on average is about 70°F to 73°F. That's when your fish will begin growing bacteria more rapidly, which it would continue to do until you are ready to eat it.
TL;DR
At the very least put and ice pack or other method of absorbing heat inside your lunchbox. Always play it safe when it comes to pathogens.
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Best Answer
Ideally, you'd store all meat tightly wrapped and/or in air-tight containers. Further, you'd store the meat on the bottom shelf of the fridge, and the ready-to-eat food above it—just in case the meat leaks juices out, it won't be able to drip onto the ready-to-eat foods. That's perfectly safe, and indeed is what's required in a commercial fridge.
The idea is to avoid any chance of cross-contamination. You don't want juice from the meat dripping or splashing (when you move it, for example) onto anything else.
You also want your pies tightly wrapped, to avoid them drying out or picking up off flavors.
Now, if cross-contamination were to occur, you'd want to use that pie quickly, and when reheating it, you need to make sure to bring its internal temperature—measured with a food thermometer in a few spots—up to 165°F/74°C (just like if you were cooking chicken). I suspect your normal pie reheating doesn't do that.