[Sca-cooks] Food Safety / Food Preservation question

[Daniel Myers]

On Jul 11, 2006, at 8:32 PM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

>
> On Jul 11, 2006, at 8:03 PM, Daniel Myers wrote:
>
>>
>> Ok, so I've had this piece of uncooked venison sitting on the counter
>> at room temperature for about a week ...
>>
>> It's (I hope) not as bad as it sounds.  I had a fresh deer roast
>> handy on the same day I came across a reference to salting venison,
>> so I thought, "What the heck," and practically buried it in salt.
>> About 8 hours later I poured off the scary looking liquid that had
>> accumulated in the pan and repacked it with fresh salt.
>>
>> The meat's lost a notable amount of volume, and has darkened in color
>> a bit, but otherwise appears ok.  It doesn't smell bad at all (in
>> fact, it smells better than raw venison usually does).
>>
>> So my question is this:  Is there any way of knowing if this stuff is
>> safe to eat before I go to the trouble of boiling it to remove the
>> salt and cooking it and risking making myself horribly ill?
>>
>> - Doc
>
> It's _probably_ fine. My only caveat would be that your doctor and
> your insurance carrier would tell you you're crazy, and if you fed it
> to anyone else, your attorney would say the same, but the main area
> in which your technique differs from most tried-and-true methods
> where the meat really needed to be preserved, is that this isn't the
> period between November and January in the Northern hemisphere, and
> room temperature is generally considered a little high: generally you
> want around 50-60 degrees F.

Interesting point about the season.  I'd thought much the same, then  
I came across this in Menagier:

"And if you want to salt it in summer, you should put coarse salt to  
dissolve in water, then soak the venison in it, and after dry it in  
the sun."

So evidently they were salting stuff in the summer as well.  Menagier  
didn't say how long the meat should be left in the brine before  
drying.  How long does it take before something is salted enough to  
be preserved?

As an aside, the package of chicken that was once inadvertently left  
in the garage many summers back ... that was almost too nasty to get  
close enough to throw it away.

> Was this meat fresh when you started? I wonder about provenance when
> I hear about large chunks of fresh big game in July. Or by any chance
> is this a farmed product?
>
> I ask because there are claims out there that meat that has been
> frozen behaves somewhat differently than fresh meat when salted. I
> see you say it's fresh, though. You might think about sticking a
> knife or skewer into the thickest part of it, withdrawing it, and
> smelling or tasting the part that went in. I'm not sure if a week is
> enough time for the salt to have penetrated through to the center,
> and it could get funky in the middle at room temperature.

This was indeed hunted in the autumn and frozen (professionally  
butchered and packaged).  The portion of meat in question was  
completely thawed in the fridge before I started, and was about an  
inch thick.

It sounds like if meat is still frozen at the center then the salt  
doesn't get all the way through, allowing the center to go bad after  
thawing.

Before I do anything with it, I'll cut it in half to check the center  
- and I'll most definitely go by the old rule of thumb - "when in  
doubt, throw it out".  Still, it's an interesting experiment so far.

- Doc


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