re: How long will it take for a gumbo to cool after simmering?

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If your refrigerator isn't functioning properly maybe

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Right. I'm reading this thread trying to figure out what is happening. When I turn off gumbo (or red beans, etc) i take the cover off and let it sit on the stove for maybe an hour, then put it into the fridge.

I have a digital thermostat on my fridge and I've never seen it move even a degree higher.

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never understood the risks of putting gumbo into fridge too soon? I’ve always just let it sit a few hours and put it away...

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No risk to the gumbo. It just warms up the fridge and can lead to sour milk and spoiling other foods.

Cooks Illustrated did an experiment with putting hot items in a fridge, and it warmed it up over 40 for quite a while.

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just curious....why would leaving the gumbo on the stove to cool be preferable to putting in the fridge? I get that putting in an ice water bath is optimal but why leave it out? will it raise the temp of the fridge by that much for that long?

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Hot gumbo in a fridge can be bad news. Hot water has an absolutely massive amount of heat in it (just think about how long it takes a burner on high to boil a full pot of water) and the rate at which it will give up its heat to the air in your refrigerator is proportional to the difference in temperature between the hot gumbo and the cold air. If your fridge's machinery can't move the heat from inside the fridge into your kitchen faster than the gumbo gives heat up into the air inside the fridge, the gumbo's going to heat the fridge up, which in turn is going to heat up your milk, butter, cheese, meat, etc. Since your fridge is a fridge and not a freezer, it's going to be at around 32F, minimum. 40F is where some hardy nasties can start growing again, so there's not a lot of room for the fridge to heat up and still keep things nice and safe.

Since the rate at which the gumbo is going to give heat up to the fridge is proportional to temperature difference, the cooler the gumbo is when it goes into the fridge, the lower the rate of heat the fridge has to reject, meaning that at some gumbo temperature (depending on your pot, how much gumbo, etc., it'll be different for every situation) the fridge will be able to keep up without a large bulk temperature rise inside the fridge. It's a balancing act between waiting long enough for the gumbo to cool to a point where your fridge can keep up and not waiting so long to put the gumbo in the fridge that by the time the fridge gets it below 40F, your gumbo will have been in the 40-140F range long enough to grow nasties that might make you sick. Remember: your gumbo between 40 and 140F is a nice warm nutrient rich broth which, interestingly enough, is EXACTLY the kind of thing microbiologists cook up to put bacteria in when they want bacteria to really start multiplying.

That's why a lot of us use the icewater bath and cooling paddle method. It drops the temperature of the gumbo rapidly into a range where it can go into the fridge and you can drop a fresh cooling paddle in before it goes into the fridge to help cool it even quicker, checking off both the "won't heat my fridge up" box and "gumbo quickly dropped below 40F" box.

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Big Ziplock full of ice. Put the ziplock bag in the gumbo for 10,- 20 minuets. Remove ziplock, store gumbo.

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You'll do this until the first time the big Ziploc full of melted ice opens up in the pot and ruins the gumbo.

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How would that happen if sealed?

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Accidentally. It's not as if you plan it. Maybe the top is zipped, but a tooth over. Maybe the top is zipped, but is open right at the end and works its way open. Maybe it doesn't open at the top, but maybe a chicken bone pokes through the bag.

A pot of gumbo ruined by a gallon Ziploc of melted ice is the reason I abandoned cooling pots with bags of ice and have cooling paddles in my deep freezer at all times now.