Can I eat this: smoked sausage edition.
September 24, 2011 3:58 PM   Subscribe

Can I eat this, part umpteen gazillion.

Pre-cooked smoked sausages, sold vacuum-sealed in plastic. The sell-by date is not until November. The catch is, I opened the sealed package maybe two weeks ago, and put the rest of the sausages back in the fridge unsealed. Food or poison?
posted by nebulawindphone to Food & Drink (11 answers total)
 
As with nearly everything, just cook it first and the worst that can happen is it'll be rancis and taste bad.

I probably wouldn't even heat them again.
posted by cmoj at 4:03 PM on September 24, 2011


Food. I've done this before.
posted by raisingsand at 4:03 PM on September 24, 2011


Eat 'em, they're good.
posted by easily confused at 4:07 PM on September 24, 2011


Food. These sound basically like hot dogs, which I only realized this summer are actually supposed to go bad eventually.
posted by MadamM at 4:13 PM on September 24, 2011


I've done this. You'll be fine.
posted by pemberkins at 4:18 PM on September 24, 2011


Two weeks is pushing it for unsealed sausages, even cooked and refrigerated.

Sausages and Food Safety (USDA)
posted by vohk at 4:20 PM on September 24, 2011 [3 favorites]


looks and smells fine? i'd eat it.
posted by juliapangolin at 4:48 PM on September 24, 2011 [1 favorite]


Smoked and precooked? The USDA sheet that Vohk linked doesn't say anything about precooked sausages (vacuum sealed or not). I think they might be sufficiently divorced from being meat at that point that they are out of the USDA's domain by that point.

Probably as safe to eat as when you bought them.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:22 PM on September 24, 2011


Shouldn't make a bit of difference.
posted by Miko at 7:40 PM on September 24, 2011


That link above says, "The following storage times should be followed for maximum quality." The salt and spices and (probably) preservatives in the sausage would, in my amateur opinion, make them perfectly safe to eat.
posted by wnissen at 10:12 PM on September 24, 2011


This is the first time I haven't been able to find any results at StillTasty.com, which is the ultimate arbiter of all "Can I eat it?" disputes. I tried just searching on sausages but I don't see anything that matches the kind you're describing.

Maybe you can search StillTasty for the brand name, or other description?

The closest answer I found there was 7 days. My experience is that after a week in those circumstances, the sausages tend to get unpleasantly slimy.

(Personally I'd throw it out. It's just sausage, it's not worth the possible consequences.)
posted by ErikaB at 11:06 AM on September 25, 2011


« Older Are lawsuits really such a hassle?   |   Car buying has never been so difficult.. Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.