Expert: Chris Manley - 2/17/2009

Question
I made chicken soup last night and cooked it for 5 hours. It's a recipe that
cooks for 12-24 hours. It was boiling hot so I turned it off at 11:00pm to rest
(with the lid on) before putting in the fridge and didn't realize until 7am this
morning that I had forgotten about it.  Our kitchen was approx. 60 degrees
last night. Also, the soup contains veggies and a small amount of pasta.
The entire chicken is still in the soup, bones and all. Can this be re-cooked
for another 7 hours and eaten?

Answer
The 8 hours that the soup was off the heat might be sufficient for enough bacteria to grow or produce toxin to make someone sick.  The difficult part is determining exactly when the soup cooled below 140 degrees.  

Once below 140 degrees bacterial growth might have occurred. I would guess that the soup was not below 140 degrees for more than 6 hours, and may be ok to use if reboiled, you will be taking some risk, although a small one that bacterial growth might have occurred.