Stored tinned food

ltcom

ltcom

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my boat is as hot as hell down below. Shelves are stocked with tins of corned beef, spam. Chicken in white sauce, soup and tins of veg. Just in best before date.
is it safe or wise to eat them ........ i hate waste....... but i dont want salmonella either. Can heat damge the tinned food? I thought not but i am ignorant of such things.
 
ltcom said:
my boat is as hot as hell down below. Shelves are stocked with tins of corned beef, spam. Chicken in white sauce, soup and tins of veg. Just in best before date.
is it safe or wise to eat them ........ i hate waste....... but i dont want salmonella either. Can heat damge the tinned food? I thought not but i am ignorant of such things.
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Find a locker with the bottom below the waterline. Even beer will be acceptably cool.
 
guernseyman said:
Find a locker with the bottom below the waterline. Even beer will be acceptably cool.
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Wot he said.
We spent 10 years sailing in the Med & Tropics and in that whole time with the exception of tonic water (those buggers were forever bursting) we only had about three tins go bad/off - their swelling up was the giveaway - so I suspect that yours'll survive a week of 30* in the UK
 
ltcom said:
my boat is as hot as hell down below. Shelves are stocked with tins of corned beef, spam. Chicken in white sauce, soup and tins of veg. Just in best before date.
is it safe or wise to eat them ........ i hate waste....... but i dont want salmonella either. Can heat damge the tinned food? I thought not but i am ignorant of such things.
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Safe limits must be on the internet somewhere. Have you looked?
 
Lots of US data.

heat limits for canned food - Google Search

Seems i must throw it all away. Yes i should have kept it in the bilge but i didn't. Boat dries on bilge keels though. Pains me to throw away money / food. This has been stored for nearly a year. Still in date just. Probably hit over 30 celcius on the shelves. Not worth food poisoning perhaps
 
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Canned goods are, pretty much by definition, sterile unless the can is swollen.
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The date limit is because a bureaucrat somewhere decided that there should be one, but the contents will be fine for a long time beyond the date. - IIRC, an expedition found some of Scot's cans in the Antarctic and they were edible after several decades. Naysayers will talk about botulism, but that's only an issue if the food wasn't sterilised properly by a home preserver. Yes, things do go wrong on the production line, but it's vanishingly rare these days, and it'll be obvious to anyone with a normal sense of smell before it gets anywhere near the taste test.
 
As Stemar .... if can is still not 'blown' - it should be ok.

For drinking water cans - there's a simple test ... we used this test for all DW on lifeboats / rafts ...

Hold can horizontal ... smack one end. If it makes a sharp crack sound as the water hits other end - its fine. If the sound is dull or can is 'blown' then can should be binned.

Unfortunately there is no similar test for food tins ..... but 'blown' can is the give away.
 
Stemar said:
Canned goods are, pretty much by definition, sterile unless the can is swollen.

The date limit is because a bureaucrat somewhere decided that there should be one, but the contents will be fine for a long time beyond the date. - IIRC, an expedition found some of Scot's cans in the Antarctic and they were edible after several decades...
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In 1976 I worked on a construction project where we unearthed a forgotten MOD bunker, which from the calendars and newspapers we found inside had been 'lost' since the early 1950s; the lads on site were eating corned beef butties and tinned peaches for lunch each day for weeks afterwards.
 
GoodOh. Make sure 1st aid box has tablets in it and give tins a look over and sniff and move lower down and hopefully no waste.
 
I think storage of tinned foods in these high temperatures is more likely to spoil the flavour or texture than introduce any bacteria unless, as has been said in previous posts, the can is swollen.
 
The canning process kills the bacteria. Unless the contents are exposed to air through a rupture or hole in the tin. As others have said the taste may be affected but the contents should still be safe.
lve been in some very hot local shops in Greece and they have tinned goods.
 
It is pretty dam hot in the tropics and shops with no aircon and the tins they sell all seem good and 5 years of keeping and using tins in the tropics in my boat and no problems. You would know a bad tin as soon as you've opened it.
 
If its not rusty and not blown I would eat it. Having said that I only now keep enough tinned food on board for a couple of nights or the next trip and at the end of the season I take it all home and we have an occaisional "boat tea" to use it up. Corned beef hash or pie is good grub especially after a couple of bottles of Hobgoblin !
 
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