I'm not advocating for or against. There is always the chance of a problem: the cook might not have a good enough understanding of food-borne illness prevention and make mistakes--especially
after the meats are cooked, a not uncommon issue with barbecue; the cook might have a good understanding of the critical safety points but become lax due to being rushed, distracted, bored, or by taking ill-conceived shortcuts because of adopting an 'it's-never-happened-to-me-before' attitude; or the cook's food is perfectly safe but the customer either abuses it, creating a problem, or consumes some other food that is contaminated, on or around the time the cook's food was eaten, that causes the cook's perfectly fine food to become suspect.
Can't do much about the last possibility but one can certainly do a lot about the first two.
The same food safety issues apply whether you cook for just yourself, cook professionally in a restaurant, or cook and sell food under the table. A good understanding of food safety is not difficult at all. It's obviously more than the cavalier attitude one sometimes sees on the Net and TV. And it is more than simply knowing what 'the danger zone' is. And it is definitely more than 'when it doubt throw it out'--which is an attitude, not an understanding. It might be a fine attitude when a problem or question instantiates, but the problem I often see is that for those who've adopted this 'strategy'--well, they go no further--that's the sum of their approach. My concern with this is that without an understanding of the critical safety points
they don't doubt what they should be doubting in the first place. Avoidance--which is what this attitude is--does not replace knowledge, especially when the avoider makes no effort to understand what in his food prep, oooking and post-cook handling really needs to be avoided.
Foods that are cooked in advance to be reheated later or cooked foods that are further handled after cooking--like PP, of course, and many others--must be cooled relatively quickly, as I'm sure all here realize. Warm or hot foods should not be packed thickly into containers or bags and stuck in the fridge or freezer. (I mention this every chance I get because I do not see it mentioned nearly enough on food boards; it's important, and should be mentioned any time anyone posts advice for another, if germane, so that the knowledge of all reading the thread is increased by at least this point.)
Just FYI,
this thread and
this post cover a fair amount of ground on the subject.
