Left broth on stove

I've done it and used the broth before without getting sick. I do remember from microbiology or some other class that you can get sick from toxins released by the organisms and heating wont help with that.

a trick for next time, put the pot in the oven at 200 all night

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it will kill e coli and botulism, etc,

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Botulism is a toxin that is released by microbes. Once released it is not affected by boiling.

Man, I don't think I'd eat that. Broth is an IDEAL medium for bacterial growth. It's one of the things real microbiologists use to rapidly grow bacteria in a lab.

As others have said, the bacteria per se aren't the problem. It's the toxins they produce that are. Unfortunately, while the bacteria aren't usually heat stable, the toxins typically are. Cooking won't make tainted broth safe because the temperature at which the toxins are broken down and rendered safe is above the boiling point of water, so you'll just boil off the water and make the poison even more concentrated. Even more fun is that some of the nastiest and most effective toxins are also some of the most heat stable. Even more fun than that is that C. botulinum itself is heat stable. Try to boil it to kill it, and it'll just make spores and survive because that's how it rolls.

Incidentally, this is why canning often takes place in pressure cookers and medical instruments are autoclaved and not just boiled. The additional pressure makes water boil at a high enough temperature to kill C. botulinum and other heat resistant pathogens. The autoclave gets hot enough to actually break down many of the toxins. An open pot of water boiling on a stove just won't get hot enough.

I'd pour that down the drain and buy some from the store. Next time, chill it quickly to below 40F or hold it at elevated temperatures above 150F or so to avoid bacterial growth. Keeping it cold doesn't kill anything, but it keeps it from reproducing. So, if it's clean and you swiftly bring the temp down, the bacteria that do get in it don't have time to put enough poison out to make you sick before they go into suspended animation. Keeping it hot will kill any non-heat resistant bacteria that get into it almost instantly, and any heat resistant bacteria that float into it will go directly into a spore stage where they are dormant and won't reproduce. It's when it sits for extended periods of time between cold and hot (sounds a lot like your science experiment that you conducted) where you're asking for trouble.

What about my two quarts of turkey stock, in the fridge since a couple days after Thanksgiving? Can I boil it and then freeze it?

Darla, toss that stuff. I'd be nervous that it's still even in my fridge that long.

You people and your safe living.