Unplanned Brisket Cook

[jfmorris]

Ok guys and gals, need some quick advice.

Apparently SOMEONE (not me! and no one else in the house apparently either!) did not fully close one of the refrigerators in the garage when they got something out, and the door was left cracked about 2 inches for many hours. The stuff in the top freezer was fine, all food on the top shelf of the fridge was warm to the touch due to proximity to the incandescent lights up there, and food farther down was progressively colder, with the stuff at the bottom measuring about 50F on the IR thermometer.

I had a 13.5# Costco USDA Prime brisket wet aging on the bottom shelf....

My thoughts are I am ok, even if it sat at 50F overnight, since it was still in the Cryopac, but that I need to cook it today. The meat was 50F to 55F internal at various spots when I pulled it out of the cryopac. I sure did not plan an unbrined unplanned cook like this, but do you think it will be ok, considering I am taking this thing to 195F to 203F? I probably and going to run the cooker a little hotter (275F) and crutch at 150F, just to try to compress the cooking time to have this for dinner, assuming the consensus is that I am safe cooking a brisket that might have been sitting above normal fridge temps for 8 hours or more.

[Troutman]

My wife tried to stuff a bunch of meat into my garage freezer a few months ago and we had a similar incident. I just re-froze what had gotten a bit thawed and never looked back. I'm still here to tell the tale. I would not worry too much about the brisket if it were me. Remember you are cooking that bad boy to at least 195-205* IT so that should kill most of the little meanies anyway. Good luck !!

[Mosca]

Hasn't been thawed long enough for bacteria to spit out the bad chemicals.

[EdF]

That'd be my guess as well.

[jfmorris]

Well, it was never frozen, it was in the fridge at 34F, just got up to 50 or 55 due to the open door. I'm cooking it and won't worry about it. I had planned to cook it Saturday, so its a few days early!

[Steve R.]

I would be much more concerned if it was out of the cryovac. I'm not a microbiologist, and I don't even play one on tv, but I'm thinking the lack of oxygen in that bag means you're fine.

[jfmorris]

There was no funky smell or anything when I opened the cryovac and rinsed the meat, which actually is surprising considered it had been in the fridge for 3 weeks. If certainly had less smell than the last brisket I wet aged for 30 days. I just wish I had planned the cook so that I would have dry brined it. As it was, I rubbed it down with a heavy coat of Montreal Steak seasoning and slapped it on the Performer with the SNS. I was going to use the stick burner too, but cannot get much work done if I have to deal with fire management all day. The SNS gives me a much more hands off cook... One reason I went for 13.5# instead of larger was just in case I wanted to fit it on the Performer.

[Rod]

There's always Meathead's "When in doubt, throw it out". For me, if I took the chance I'm not sure how much I would enjoy eating it with that lurking in the back of my mind.

[HorseDoctor]

Have an awesome cook! You'll be fine! Enjoy!

[jfmorris]

Yep gonna quit worrying about it! It's already up to 152F in the flat, so one advantage of warming up was that it is in fact cooking quicker.

[Donw]

You will be fine. Only bacteria I would be worried about in an anaerobic cyro-pak environment will be killed by cooking to brisket temps. And the incubation stage of those is several days and you are talking about hours above 40.

[jfmorris]

Thanks - I'm gonna stop worrying about it and enjoy the cook.

[PappyBBQ]

Set a place for me.. I'll be over for dinner!

[jfmorris]

Haha you bet!

[jfmorris]

I just flipped it over, as I had it fat cap down, and the meat side has some nice bark build up - I got to looking at the SNS website recommends cooking fat cap up - makes sense since the temperature gradient inside the kettle is about 50F from the grate to the top of the dome.

Looks like I am hitting the first stall, as it has been stuck at 155 or so for a while now. It was at 160 but I repositioned the probe when I flipped it and found a cooler spot apparently.

This is about 3.5 hours into the cook.



Due to the unplanned nature of the cook and desire for dinner tonight, I'm probably gonna commit sacrilege and foil wrap this brisket in an hour or two, so that I can push through and get it done and at least 1 hour of cambro time by dinner tonight.

[holehogg]

Sounds like everything is under control.

[jfmorris]

Ok, it's wrapped in foil and the SNS is reloaded with charcoal, and I've opened vents up, hopefully gonna bust through this stall soon.

[RonB]

I have said this many times before. When in doubt, let your MIL taste it. If she doesn't get sick, it should be safe.

[EdF]

Confucius say ... ;-)

[ribeyeguy]

With something like this I always look at the worst case scenario. If it's gone bad it's just barely bad, not green, moldy meat bad. In this state it's going to taste great regardless if it's bad or not. Absolute worst case is you're sick for a day, 2 at most. Weighing those factors in I'd eat it.

2 days of the runs and a bit of vomiting is well worth a great brisket meal in my book. Hope it turns out well!

[EdF]

That was kind of my thinking in this case.

[jfmorris]

Argh! I don't know what is going on, but I just had a brand new probe go "bad" with the Smoke in mid cook, and jump from reading 175F to 300+ degrees! I connect it to my Dot and it reads right. Connect it back to the Smoke and it jumps all over the place. I just bought a new probe recently as one of my older ones started doing this too. It would work with the Dot but not the Smoke. Doesn't matter which input I connect it to either - the air probe reads right on both Smoke inputs and the Dot.

I see one of those Maverick 4 probe devices in my future... I've been very frustrated by the flakey nature of my Smoke Gateway too lately. About every other cook I have to reinstall the app on my iPhone for it to show anything, yet I get alerts of low/high pit alarms on the lock screen. Very bad app. I've always loved Thermoworks products until recently too.