Here’s How Long You Can Keep a Takeaway Cai Png at Room Temperature Before It Goes Bad

Last Updated on 2024-04-11 , 11:30 am

This is pretty common in Singapore and Malaysia: you just bought a pack of cai png to the office, and your boss told you to do something urgent.

You forgot about your lunch until three hours later, when you see your cai png still on your table, untouched.

So, how long can you keep a cai png for?

The Best Time for Any Cooked Food

Well, here’s the bad news: generally, it isn’t safe to keep cooked food in room temperature for more than two hours.

Then you’re going to ask yourself: but those cai png hawkers leave their food there for hours mah! Won’t everyone have kena food poisoning?

Hold your horses, because if you’d have noticed, cai png stalls don’t just leave their dishes on a table.

Dishes are Always Heated

The reason why cai png dishes can be kept longer in the stall is that they’re continuously being heated (to be precise, at heat of more than 60 degree)—even if there’s no heat on the tray, the amount of food in one tray would have trapped the heat and leave them hot.

Of course, these are based on a conservative estimate—I mean, how common have we eaten packaged cai png that has been left in room temperature for more than two hours?

We’ve once consulted a cai png owner who has been selling cai png for more than twenty years, and here’s what she says: if you can, consume it within two hours. However, if not, just make sure you don’t open the package and stir it. The idea is to trap the heat within the package itself and not let it escape. Kind of like how they trap the heat in the stall.

So, how long is too long?

Well, for this, you’ll have to play by ear. If you feel that it’s too long, then discard it, since different dishes have different tolerance.

The best way is to smell the cai png before eating it.

There are some dishes that tend to go bad faster than others, so make sure you smell every single dish. Of course, the one that tends not to go bad early is the rice, so I’m pretty sure if the rice has gone bad, every single dish would smell like rotting fish by then.

And here’s one more tip—microwaving it isn’t going to help. It’ll just heat the food, but if it has been contaminated, then it has already been contaminated. You can’t turn back the time with a microwave oven.

Also, recooking won’t help. So don’t think that “cooking it again would kill off the bacteria or germs”.

You won’t want to experience food poisoning.

Now, we NSmen would finally understand why there’s always this “two-hour grace” for our out-rations, eh?

To know more about cai png and why it’s unhealthy, watch this video to the end: