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Kitchen Myths
Facts and fiction about food and cooking, by Peter Aitken
You can scrape surface mold off of home-canned jams and they will be safe to eat
Posted by on November 25, 2011
If you have anything growing on the surface of your homemade jarred jam, it’s a sure sign that the canning process did not work to sterilize the contents of the jar. You may think you can scrape it off and eat the clean-looking jam or jelly underneath, but that’s taking a chance. Molds often produce invisible, microscopic filaments that penetrate into the food and will remain behind when you scrape the visible mold away. These filaments can contain toxins that cause illness. Not worth the chance, in my opinion.
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Jelly, jam and most other foods I agree with ya. But what about cheese? My dad just cuts off the moldy part and eat the rest of the cheddar or swiss….what say you?
To be honest, I don’t know.
from what i have found hard cheese’s you are ok, but soft cheeses like mozzeralla through it away.
My Mother scraped the mold off jelly jam and cheese all my childhood and fed it to her family of seven. All living. ages 58-92. She learned to do that from her Mother and Mother-in-law who did it before her, etc.
Fungi (and molds are fungi) has a funny behavior in cheese, they don’t produce the toxin that the same specie would produce growing on cereals (bread, paistry), fruits or meat. That’s the reason blue cheeses (and white mold cheeses) are safe to eat.
About the post, I would not eat something contaminated (no matter with what) from origin. But something opened and with molds on surface is not unsafe to eat just removing the upper layer (I mean molds only on surface)
It is always better to be than sorry. I always ask this question, would I consume spoil milk.
It’s always better to be safe….than sorry. Buy another jar!
I scraped a small spot of mold off a home canned raspberry jam, and ate from beneath the surface… Will I get sick??