Is it safe (or salvagable)?


 
PeterD

PeterD

TVWBB Super Fan
So Murphy struck today. I did two overnight butts for a party in South Jersey today. I pulled the first one and left the second one whole, wrapped everything in foil and headed off to the party...only to get stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on the Turnpike. By the time I got where I was going, everybody'd eaten. About 3 or 4 sammies worth of mine were all that was taken and that's it. Leftovers were put in a tupperware container and sealed up.

The second butt was never pulled, but even 7 hours after coming off the smoker the internal temp was 115 when I took it out of the cooler and unwrapped it. The problem is it's dense and completely unpullable right now. Is this salvageable, and is it even safe to eat? I'd hate to have flushed $30 worth of meat down the drain and I'd like to be able to do something with it. Any ideas or am I just completely outta luck?
 
I can't really give you a definitive answer, but I think I'd pull it and try it. You obviously cooked it far past the point of anything bad in the raw meat, so your only concern is time in the danger zone while cooling. If it was 115 when you checked it after 7 hours (and probably 185 when it came off), that means it dropped about 10 degrees per hour. Time between 40 and 140 (or even 130) is your concern, and you were probably only in that range for 2-3 hours and 4 is the point where you pitch it. That's very rough, so hopefully someone that knows better can correct me if I'm wrong.
 
I'd foil it with some apple juice and maybe a beer and wrap tightly and put it in the oven and let it come back to temp 195-205° then take out and wrap it in a couple of old towels for an hour or two in the ice chest. I bet it pulls the moisture back in the meat and the cooler period will make it pull-able again. Worth a try and should hurt if you don't skimp on the moisture you add back to the foil reheat.
 
I was about to say the same thing as Robert. You just need to bring it to about 160. What I do when I don't pull the pork before refrigerating is, rather than leave it whole, I cut it into about four or five large chunks. Then I put each chunk in a foodsaver vacuum bag. I boil the pork in the bag and pull it when it's warmed through. I find that boil in the bag reheating gives me the moistest results.

Bill
 
Oh, I like that idea. What I wound up doing was putting the foiled butt into a 250* oven for about 3 hours, got the internal up to 185 or so and it pulled OK. Very dry (I didn't see the bit about using juice/beer/etc until after I'd done it last night). It's sitting in a couple of tupperware containers and will be portioned out into Foodsaver bags tonight and tomorrow; some frozen some refrigerated for this week's lunches. I ate a bunch of it around 11pm last night after it was finally shredded and so far so good :)
 
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I'm no expert on the matter but the meat can't be made safe by taking it to 160F again. From what I understand, raw meat can be mishandled pretty severely and then cooked because the spoilage bacteria will outnumber the pathogens. Cooked meat will just be attacked by pathogens that can't be made safe by pasteurization. Your meat is probably safe, but re-heating won't make a difference according to what I've read from Kevin's Safety Compilation Thread.

http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?8175-The-Kruger-Safety-Compilation-v0-1
 
Jon Des. said:
I can't really give you a definitive answer, but I think I'd pull it and try it. You obviously cooked it far past the point of anything bad in the raw meat, so your only concern is time in the danger zone while cooling. If it was 115 when you checked it after 7 hours (and probably 185 when it came off), that means it dropped about 10 degrees per hour. Time between 40 and 140 (or even 130) is your concern, and you were probably only in that range for 2-3 hours and 4 is the point where you pitch it. That's very rough, so hopefully someone that knows better can correct me if I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

Where I work we use 41-135/4 hrs... and the meat does not drop in average temps per hour....it depends on the heat that the cooler maintains, size of the meat, external temps, etc.... in any case if Peter doesn't know how long it's been between 135 and 115 it's probably safer to toss the meat.
 
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