Nora Quinn
I cook for a family, most days, whether I feel like it or not, and I cannot stand wasting food. That second part is really why this site exists. I got fed up opening the fridge, finding a half-used tub of something, and having no clear idea whether it was still fine or a quiet health hazard. So I started keeping notes, checking the guidance properly, and writing the answers down in plain words. Crash Taste is those notes, tidied up.
I am not a chef, a nutritionist or a food scientist, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I am is someone who cooks a lot, throws away as little as I can manage, and would rather look up the real figure than guess. That is the whole qualification, and I think for these questions it is the right one. You do not need a title to tell you cooked rice keeps two days in the fridge. You need someone who has bothered to check and will tell you straight.
What you can expect from me
On anything to do with food safety, I lead with the answer and I keep the facts honest. Storage times, reheating, defrosting, use-by versus best-before: those are checked against the Food Standards Agency and NHS guidance, not rounded up to whatever sounds reassuring. If the safe answer is “two days” or “do not refreeze that”, that is what you will read, even when it is the annoying answer.
I also tell you where the rules stop and judgement starts. A lot of “is this off?” advice online leans on the sniff test, and the sniff test only goes so far. Some of the nastiest bacteria leave no smell at all. So I will tell you what to look and smell for, and then I will tell you the point at which none of that is enough and you should just bin it. In my kitchen the rule is simple: if I cannot remember when I cooked it, it goes. A wasted portion is cheaper than a bad night.
Where I write from experience, I say so. Which substitutions actually work and which ones only work on paper. Why I cool leftovers fast and get them in the fridge inside the hour rather than leaving the pan on the hob “to cool down”. The small habits that mean I throw less away. That part is me, not a guidance document, and I flag it as mine.
Honestly
My authority here is that I cook constantly, I hate waste, and I look things up when I am not sure. That is it. I would rather admit “check with the official guidance for your situation” than invent certainty I do not have, because on food safety a confident wrong answer is worse than no answer.
If you know a figure to be different, or you catch me in a mistake, please tell me at privacy@crashtaste.com. I would genuinely rather fix it than be wrong in front of everyone.
Nora