I left frozen blueberries out for two nights - can I use them?

Personally, I would not use them for anything. I would throw them out. That is not based on any science. It’s based on having had food poisoning 5 times in my life.

Blueberries grow outdoors without refrigeration. I would make muffins.

But you decide. It’s not a big monetary loss if you throw them out. Your health won’t suffer from not eating them.

It doesn’t sound like much of a financial loss to me. If that’s the case, I’d just pitch the blueberries. Life’s too short to risk it over a couple a bucks.

Two days is enough time to both thaw and mold.

If you’re questioning it, it’s best to toss it. When in doubt, throw it out. Not worth risking your health to save a few bucks.

No risk.

There are two possible dangers here (and I use that word very lightly). The first is mold which would likely be visible and wouldn’t really give you food poisoning as much as just taste bad.

The second possibility is that they’ve started to ferment which isn’t exactly a catastrophe. After all that’s how wine is started to be made from both grapes and blueberries.

With either possibility, if you just sample one (or a little of the juice) you could tell pretty much right away.

If they don’t have that distinctive taste of mold or fermentation, you’re good to go.

Any type of fruit or fruit juice (if unprocessed) will eventually ferment. And that’s just not that big of a deal.

As a matter of fact, I’m probably really dating myself here with this reference, but I remember back in my college days (in upstate New York with Apple orchards nearby) in the Fall, we would pick up gallon jugs of unprocessed apple cider sold at local farmstsnds, bring it back to the dorms (which had a strict NO alcohol policy) let it sit for a few days and then enjoyed delicious hard (alcoholic) apple cider.

You couldn’t leave it too long past the initial fizzy fermenting stage or it would turn to vinegar (also not exactly poisonous).

So, I don’t see any danger in blueberries just naturally doing their thing.

@Hawaii_Jake

I’m willing to bet that the 5 times you had food poisoning that the culprits involved were likely meat or dairy.

It’s so easy for us in this day and age of every type of food being processed to death, to forget that back in earlier times people without modern day refrigeration methods used large amounts of the fruit seasonally avilable at harvest time to make their own booze and vinegar which they would keep down in the cellar and typically have enough to last all year until next harvest season.

The concept of having FRESH fruit available 24/7 all year long was unknown to them. So I guess you could say that their kitchens and storeroom were all filled with mini science experiments.

When you had huge amounts of fruit, that’s when jams Jellies booze and vinegar were made. In the times of the American frontier days , there simply wasn’t any going to the corner grocery store for a bottle of vinegar for salad dressing. You either had made your own or you do without.

(And vinegar also involves mold as part of the natural process. That big whitish clump of mold sitting in the jug was an essential part of what was needed to convert it into vinegar.) It was called “the mother” and people would save it for the next batch or share some with a neighbor if it had produced a particularly tasty batch of vinegar.

Back in those days it was pretty much left to chance and whatever organisms happened to be in the vicinity to jumpstart the fermentation process.

Nowadays pretty much every thing is super sanitized and controlled to produce the same taste in a product consistently.

Unless someone resorts to home brew they have no idea of the delicious surprises in store from the serendipity of randomness.

Anyhow, all that to say that fruits are the least likeliest to cause food poisoning of anything (with the exception of improperly done cans harboring botulism, but thats in a totally sealed environment, not left out on a kitchen counter.)

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced or even heard of food poisoning caused by fruit. I suppise I could be wrong about that but I highly doubt it.

Anyhow, the science of producing deliciousness from rapidly deteriorating large batches of fruit has been around for thousands of years. It’s not dangerous, it’s delicious :)

Or – in my previous succinct comment – no risk. :-)

Yes, but sometimes people don’t just take someone’s word for it. They want to know WHY :)

so together, we make a pretty good team.