I made kubideh kabobs with saffron rice for my fiance and I last night, and it was a huge success. However, my fiance wished we had some mast o khiar (yogurt-cucumber sauce) to go with it, as what we would normally get from a kabob takeout place. Now, given that this is the first time Persian food has ever been made in this house, I have concerns about any reasonably sized batch of this yogurt sauce being consumed in time. Assuming that all of the following ingredients are fresh and well within their use by date, roughly how long might this be safely stored in a refrigerator? The common components are plain yogurt and seedless cucumber. The latter might be diced or grated. Fresh mint is a commonly found, though many recipes do not use it either. Any advice would be most welcome!
Shelf life of a yogurt product
cucumbersfood-safetyyogurt
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Working in a professional kitchen where we cooked eggs in various styles. I would say from my experience:
- Hard boiled eggs will keep for 4 days refrigerated in the shell, before they become unpalatable.
- Soft boiled eggs(hard whites, creamy yolks) will keep in the shell, refrigerated for 2 days.
- Poached eggs, properly cooled in ice water and drained, refrigerated will keep from one morning to the next or aprox 36hrs.
- Hard boiled egg whites (separated from peeled eggs, immediately cooled in icebath after boiling) can keep on parchment, drained of excess water, and wrapped in cellophane for 2.5 days. These can be used to make deviled eggs to order for example.
- Hard boiled yokes, kept dry and seperately from the whites can be used to make sauces, salad dressings, deviled egg mix etc. but this only keeps 24-36 hours, in a fully refrigerated environment. So, if it's being used during a dinner service, coming in and out for each order, toss the leftovers at the end of the night.
- Short-order eggs (fried, sunny side up, over easy, scrambled, omelets) made from fresh eggs, once it gets cold, forget it, it will smell nasty and taste pretty icky.
- Premix egg or egg white stuff that comes in a carton is heavily pasteurized, it will keep on a buffet (hot hold) as scrambled eggs or omelets for a few hours and may still be eatable later but also icky.
- Mayonnaise and Caesar dressing made with fresh raw egg yolks shouldn't be used for more than 48 hours. Even if it's kept refrigerated most of that time. A lot of restaurants make their own and I've seen several places keep it far longer than they should. But to be on the safe side, 1-2 services. So you want to make a small portion, not a huge batch.
There are three major things that will effect the "natural" shelf life of the compote, in that they could extend it considerably past the normal shelf life of the ingredients individually:
How sweet is it? If it is sufficiently sugary, to the level of a jam or jelly, the sugar in the compote will act as a preservative.
This is because any bacteria or mold that try to colonize the product will be dessicated, as water exits their cells into the sugar medium via osmosis.
The problem here is that sugar is hydrophylic, and will easily attract water from the environment when the jar is opened, or when a wet spoon is put into it. If the surface becomes diluted with water, and thus the sugar is less concentrated, mold can get a foothold. So this kind of product is best stored in the refrigerator once opened.
How acid is it? Very, very acidic foods are less hospitable to most pathogens.
How salty is it? This one doesn't usually apply to compote recipes, but high enough salt levels also make foods inhospitable to most pathogens, again due to the dessication of their cells via osmotic pressure.
The specific recipe you linked to--at least the compote portion itself, excluding the vinegar syrup and the rest of the recipe--appears to have none of the characteristics that lead to a long shelf life. It should be held no longer than its most vulnerable ingredient, which would be the weak sugar syrup, so it is probably good for several days to a week in the refrigerator.
Now, in general, things named compotes tend to be far sweeter, and far more acidic than the recipe you have linked to.
In these cases, as ElindilTheTall points out, a very, very sweet recipe (jelly-like or jam-like sweetness) will last for many weeks in the refrigerator, and a couple of weeks at least at normal room temperature.
Finally, many compotes are amenable to home canning, if they are sufficiently acidic.
Canning has risks, especially for botulism, so you should only use recipes and methods from a very reputable source when doing canning, to ensure that the product is sufficiently acidic to be safe for the canning method used. Follow all of the techniques and prescriptions in the methods, as well, but I won't turn this into an essay on canning, which is not my area of expertise.
For those compotes that are properly canned, you should get an indefinite shelf life prior to opening, as long as the seal on the canning jar remains intact.
Best Answer
Mast O Khiar, as you mention mainly consist of plain yogurt and cucumbers and most recipe do not require much more than that. Because of such, the shelf life for the yogurt product will be the shelf life of the yogurt itself. If it is a store bought yogurt, then the shelf life should be about 2 weeks in the refrigerator.
Make sure to store the sauce in an air-tight container. Most tubberware should work. Those soup containers from Chinese takeout orders work perfectly.
EDIT: After a bit of a debate in cooking chat, I decided to change my answer a little. The reason I said 2 week is because personally I had eaten 2 week old Mast O Khiar. However it could be recipe dependant so it could be different for a different recipe.
However it is very easy to tell whether yogurt OR cucumber is bad.
Mast O Khiar should have a very fresh/clean aroma. When yogurt turn bad, it releases a rancid smell. If it smells bad, dont eat it.
If you see fuzzy mold it's a good idea to throw it out.