At 7:30 last night I put some beef back ribs and a pork butt in the SV at 165°, and just now woke up to find that our power went out and the water is down to 104°. It looks like the power was off for 4-1/2 to five hours altogether.
Given the above, do I need to worry about food safety? Was I in the zone where the dreaded pathogens flourish and multiply?
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Oh man, that's a bummer. I am no food safety expert, but if your power is back on I would just crank em' back up and let it roll and the higher temp long enough to kill the bad bugs. No way I'd throw out all that food.
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Did the power go out 70 minutes ago, or did it go out at 3AM and your sous vide didn’t come back on for 5 hours? If it’s only been out an hour or so, crank that son of a gun back on and move forward. I mean, folks do sous vide for two days, I think you’ll be okay missing 90 minutes out of the middle.
I know there are some food safety nerds, er, I mean experts that could give you better info, but you might want to check the smell also. May have to rebag and reseal but even if it’s safe to eat you don’t want a funky smell.
It's not necessarily the bad organisms per se that you have to worry about. Some bacteria produce toxins that can make you sick and those toxins are not killed by cooking. I'd toss it.
While my family would classify me as a food safety nut and the federal regs would only allow holding for 4 hours I think you are safe for the following reasons.
1. The meat has already been pasteurized during the initial bath at 165F
2. It has not been exposed to any additional contamination due to the sealed environment.
3. Even after the power went out the bath continued above 140F for probably hours due to the volume of water it was sitting in and the water not being subjected to wind.
4. Continuing the bath at 165F will kill any new growth bacteria quickly.
That said, I believe you are safe.
A double check would be to look at the power company power outage map which may tell you the time the outage was detected or reported. That would give you a better idea of just how long the power was out.
The meat was in the bath for 5 hours before the power went out, and of course the water temperature would have dropped very gradually after the power loss. Who knows what temp the meat made it to, but Meathead taught me that hot water holds a lot more energy than hot air, so the meat may well have made it over 150°.
Has anyone tracked meat temp through the course of a sous vide?
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