Fire died on Pork Butt

pkimer

Put on a 7.5 lb pork butt last night. When I fell asleep at 1 am the meat temp was about 130 and the fire was still burning 225 steady. Woke up at 7 am, fire's dead and meat temp was 104 degrees. Pretty sure it hit 140 before the fire died. It's a loss, though, right?

tulocay

You will get lots of opinions on this. Mine is, toss and do a turbo butt.

smokesniffer

I think I wouldn't take the chance, I would do a different one. I would suggest bumping the temp up to 250-260. The fire will stay lit better. Good Luck and enjoy the pork butt.

Little Steven

OK. If you believe in the four hour conservative minimum danger zone.(which I don't) Chamber heat is 225 at 1 am. Eggs don't cool from the exterior quickly. You need to think surface meat temp. Whatever heat it had internally (the meat) would transfer to the exterior. Forget the time it was in the danger zone on the way up because it was Pasteurised at 225*. There is no reason at all to toss that meat.

Cowdogs

I agree with Steven.  I also think the 4 hours the meat will spend at 180-200 degrees is going to give an additional margin of safety.  But here's the thing, if YOU are worried about it then you won't enjoy the meal.  In the end, that is reason enough to toss it.

pkimer

Thanks for all opinions. Me eating it is one thing but don't want to send family to the hospital. Think I'll save it and test it on myself. I'm putting a second smaller one on I can do faster and watch closely.

Little Steven

Bet you $100 you don't get sick.

SenecaTheYounger

If the internal temperature had already reached 130, you could have pulled that roast off the egg at 1am and rested it about a half hour before slicing and eating it as a roast, well before it would be "done" enough for pulled pork.  It would have risen to maybe 135-140 by that time, and been entirely safe to eat at that moment.

But you left that already fully cooked and safe meat inside the egg, and let it go further, cooking MORE.  So, what exactly could happen inside a closed egg, in the conditions which stephen related (225 environment coasting down to ambient temperature), which would cause the meat to become dangerous?

It astounds me how little people today understand about the food they prepare, cook, and serve, and that people are debating these things as though it is opinion, rather than simple logical fact.

If a person does not understand when their food is safe or not, they ought not to be cooking and serving food in the first place.

Realize that the industry standards are designed to permit you to spill highly resistant strains of fecal bacteria onto the meat during slaughter, give it to a 15 year old teenager who coughs and sneezes over it to prepare it, then cook it in an oven whose thermometer is perhaps less than optimally calibrated, leave it out on a picnic table in the sun for a few hours, serving it to the elderly, and STILL be "safe".  Perhaps that's an extreme, but there is more than enough conservative room in these times and temperatures to cover much of that foolishness.

In fact, the mere fact that the meat was at 125 or so for a number of hours means it is pasteurized to begin with.  it never even needs to be taken to 140.

Follow that up with the fact that the only bacteria we care about, the very stuff we are trying to kill off, is the fecal bacteria spilled ON the meat (not in the meat) during slaughter. This is not opinion, it is simple fact, and clearly stated in just about every industry and federal document or study relating to this topic.

Which means, after all that time in your grill, the meat was ready to eat and safe THEN, and would require willful re-contamination to become unsafe in the short time the fire was out.

"When in doubt, throw it out" is literally an admission that a person does not understand the situation, and due to that, would rather throw out perfectly good food than expose their self and guests to an IMAGINED risk.

It is the literal equivalent of saying "I don't know if stepping on a crack really will break my mother's back, but I am not taking any chances".

That said.  Don
't listen to an idiot on the internet.  And you must assume everyone here is an idiot, including me.

Which means: throw it out, because you will sit there the whole time questioning everything I just said, and you will worry that someone is going to get liquid shits from your food.

I can tell you I would be eating it.

I know some can't comprehend how it all works, but what I can't comprehend is how that pork butt got contaminated again after you had already cooked it.

PNWFoodie

The more I learn about nutrition and the art and science of cooking, the less I worry about the "rules". I no longer care about "use by" or "best buy" or "buy before" dates...and I no longer care about a few hours at room (or slightly higher or cooler) temp. I now trust my senses. If it smells "off" or the texture is "off", then I toss it. If it look and smells good, I trust it. We here in America seem to have been "educated" to the point where we fear our food. It's ridiculous. I would say enjoy the roast...and if you really wanted pulled pork, continue the cook. But that's just my opinion....

SenecaTheYounger

@PNWFoodie

Before she passed, my wife went from thinking "sell by" meant that it was bad the next day, to buying so-called "expired" meat and other foods as a part of near-religious fervor to try to keep from wasting food. 

She, like all of us, had been told by "someone" in her past that food went 'bad' and needed to be thrown out after the sell-by date, because it was unsafe.

Her sister still throws out food after an arbitrary three days in the refrigerator.

I have no qualms saying that I think people who do so, and who throw out food on the sell-by date (or use-by, or best-by dates) aren't merely overly cautious, they are suckers, and uneducated about their food.

The best two things which ever happened to the food industry were 1.) their being allowed to determine the date at which their own food is no longer warranted to be still in perfect condition (which is what a sell-by date is), and 2.) that unthinking Americans turned that date into an "expiration" date, at which they throw it out.

Little Steven

I guess if you think back a couple of hundred years some of the "rules" we adhere to today would seem pretty weird. I worked at Canada Packers fourty years ago and it was the largest unrefrigerated packing house in North America. Nobody died.