[Sca-cooks] Food Safety / Food Preservation question

Maggie MacDonald maggie5 at cox.net
Tue Jul 11 17:30:07 PDT 2006


At 05:03 PM 7/11/2006,Daniel Myers said something like:

>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
>
>
>-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>The Italians now eat many things which we think perfect carrion.
>-  Oliver Goldsmith, 1774
>-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Calafian cooks guild once did an experiment with something like 
that.   I think they used "The lord's salt" as the basis, theres a 
discussion on the florigelium at 
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MEATS/pickled-meats-msg.html

But as to sinking it into salt then letting it sit, isn't that how hams/etc 
were made? What was the average room temp where you did this? Is there any 
nasty green fuzz or off odors coming out of it?  My dad made us learn the 
hard way how to do hams and sausages, and .. well, we buried it in salt, 
injected it with salt, and did all sorts of rude things with salt.  As long 
as it doesn't smell bad or look bad, it sounds reasonably safe.

Let us know how it turns out?
Maggie




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