So, how long do you keep leftovers?

Your nose and naturally evolved disgust reaction will guide you. my wife doesn't agree but the human body can usually tell if something is safe to eat by sight, smell, and taste.

I can think of one more that didnt cause a disgust reaction with one of my ex-girlfriends

Not cool, mike. There are ladies on this forum and that is inappropriate.

I ate two week old brisket yeaterday and it was still great. Have one more sandwich left for lunch this week.

quality will wane before safety becomes a problem, if your fridge is at proper temps.

I may have a looser take on this stuff then most.  Once you dry age beef for a hundred days, it becomes awful difficult to believe that a cooked piece of chicken is going to somehow go 'bad' (where bad=unsafe) in a week. I told a story a few years ago about a 45-day steak I had eaten.  It had been hung to age before sale for the normal couple weeks.  Then it was aged 45 days by the shop I got it from.  I ate half, and tossed it in the meat bin.  Found it a month and a half later.  And ate it.

Someone would have to tell me what would be unsafe about it.  And that steer had last walked the earth some three and a half months before.

I think people have conflated the idea of bad/unpalatable and bad/unsafe. 

Americans love to throw out food well before it is time.  Heck, I have some French cookbooks here for pates, and after covering in butter or lard they say to 'store in a cool place for up to five weeks.  No mention of a refrigerator anywhere in the book.

even raw meats can go much further than we are used to thinking. Keep temps low, and you greatly reduce waste.

If someone is a carrier for Listeria, and coughs all over your meat, then you may have an issue.  But cooked foods and properly stored foods, no rush.  Except for maybe organ meats.  Even then, that';s why they made pate.  No one eats 4 pounds of pate in a sitting.  Just seal it with melted butter and set it back in the pantry. ...or, nowadays, the fridge, if you wanna.

I don't even think about it until 7 days. then if it smells ok, I'll still eat it. I don't eat fish after a day or 2 but that's not because it's rotten. I just don't like the taste or texture.

Travis - didn't mean to offend you. The ex was an RN and neither blood nor urine disgusted her. Only thing that did was mucus. I do agree with the smell test but then again I imagine some of stikes aged meat smells pungent but is probably delicious.

If it was cooked through then I draw the line at two weeks from when cooked provided it passes appearance, smell, and taste tests. But from reading war and survival stories you can go a LOT longer, depending on what your other options are before safety is a concern. And people have.

As an aside, I had the same question about bagels one time. The Costco ones would show mold before a week. But Lender's bagels would easily go longer and so I put a bag in the bread cupboard to see just how long. Three-plus YEARS later no mold, and though they were a little stiff they appeared edible. The 'cleaning lady' tossed 'em on me and ended my experiment.

i get mold even with 'preservatives'.  mold isn;t bad, fwiw. to be expected even (if you are doing things right)

USDA's position on mold: scrub it off.
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It's two days for me, then it's outta here.  The day before garbage day is a big fridge clean out day for me.

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