Don't let me give myself food poisoning!

February 27, 2012 4:05 PM

Jar of chili leaking and pressurized. Is it still edible?

Bought a mason jar of venison chili at the farmers' market one week ago today. Put it in the cupboard, not the fridge. Just now I noticed that the shelf it was on was had a small puddle and the leak was coming from the lid of the jar. I opened the jar and it kind of popped a little like the contents were under pressure. It made enough of a pop to make a little mess on the counter.

Is the chili still good to eat if I cook it right now? I can't go by smell because I'm not exactly sure how it's supposed to smell in the first place. Does the pressurization mean that something was growing in there? Should I have refrigerated it or eaten it that day?

posted by thecjm to Food & Drink (17 answers total)

Response by poster: P.S. While I was writing this question I cooked the chili on the stovetop. I am holding off on consuming it, though, until I get an answer.
posted by thecjm at 4:08 PM on February 27, 2012

Best answer: It can be spoiled without smelling bad. "When in doubt, throw it out."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:11 PM on February 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I would say no, and I am less than picky about my food. You left meat at room temperature for a week(!). You're looking at a nasty case of food poisoning, don't do it.
posted by zug at 4:13 PM on February 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: No, I wouldn't eat that.
posted by fshgrl at 4:14 PM on February 27, 2012

Best answer: Canned things that are leaking and have positive pressure are suspect of botulism. The bad thing with botulism is its toxin, which is not affected by heating it up. Do not eat. Tell person you bought it from.
posted by sciencegeek at 4:14 PM on February 27, 2012 [9 favorites]

Best answer: That doesn't sound great - I'm probably more inclined than most to opt for "sure, eat it" for these questions, but in this case I'd let it go. That's not the direction air pressure should go when you open a sealed jar.
posted by ethand at 4:14 PM on February 27, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks all! Proceeding to chuck out the chili right now.
posted by thecjm at 4:15 PM on February 27, 2012

Jesus, no. No no no no no. That's meat, at room temperature, not properly sealed and producing gas. Nooooooo.
posted by smoke at 4:16 PM on February 27, 2012

Don't buy canned good at farmers' markets....you don't know if they've been canned properly....
posted by dfriedman at 4:18 PM on February 27, 2012

Response by poster: I guess my brain saw the mason jar and thought that canning=preservative method, instead of it being a case of mason jar=cute and reusable container for perishable meaty foodstuff.
posted by thecjm at 4:20 PM on February 27, 2012

FWIW, if it wasn't pressure-canned, just putting it in a mason jar isn't any safer than putting it in tupperware. (And even if it was pressure-canned, something obviously didn't work right!)

I second the suggestion to tell the guy you bought it from. Not in a "fuck you" sort of way or even necessarily an "I want a refund" sort of way, just "Hey, guy, make sure you're telling your customers to refrigerate this stuff! I didn't think to because of the can, and mine went bad."
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:53 PM on February 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Ugh. Not to beat a dead deer—I see you've already resolved against eating the stuff—but I'd like to elaborate on what sciencegeek and ethand said about the pressure in the jar. Meats and other low-acid foods must undergo pressure canning in order to be safely preserved. (Most home canning of things like jams and pickles is done in a large pot of boiling water; home pressure canning involves a large pressure cooker.) The purpose of pressure canning is to raise the temperature of the food above the boiling point in order to kill the Clostridium botulinum spores that cause botulism. "Pressure canning" does not put pressure into the jars; on the contrary, as the jars and their contents cool down, the contents shrink a tiny bit, causing negative pressure inside the jar that holds the lid on tight. The lid on a jar of canned food should be a little difficult to remove. The popping sound when you open a properly-canned jar, whether it was pressure-canned or merely canned in a boiling water bath, is not pressure inside escaping outward; it's air getting sucked into the negatively-pressured jar. (This is why commercial bottles of salsa, jam, juice, etc have the button on the lid. A raised button means the seal has been broken; before the seal is broken, the negative pressure inside the bottle pulls the button down.) Any time you see a metal can bulging, or a jar with its lid bulging and/or leaking the contents, throw the food out. Food that explodes out of the jar and and makes a mess on the counter like your chili is very, very suspect.

In order for home cooks to pressure can foods safely, they must be sticklers for detail and must be willing to see the process through rigorously. (As the UGA link above indicates, for example, if your pressure cooker drops below the correct pressure in the middle of the process, you can't just bring it back up to the correct pressure and finish cooking; you have to re-start your timer.) Low-acid food that is canned by a non-pressurized process, or improperly pressure canned, is arguably more dangerous than food that is put into tupperware, to use nebulawindphone's example: the canning process removes oxygen from the jar, discouraging the growth of spoilage bacteria that create obvious bad smells, but allows the anaerobic botulinum spores to flourish.

Finally, in case anyone's not clear on the topic, I want to point out in the case of botulism, "a nasty case of food poisoning" does not mean a day of barfing. It means paralysis and potentially death if you don't get treatment before the muscles that control your breathing get paralyzed.
posted by Orinda at 5:10 PM on February 27, 2012 [15 favorites]

Response by poster: What kind of cleaning should I be doing to the cutting board that this sprayed when it opened and the pot I put it in beyond the normal scrub with soap and water?
posted by thecjm at 5:18 PM on February 27, 2012

The CDC's cleanup recommendations:

Wipe up spills using a bleach solution (use ¼ cup bleach for each 2 cups of water). Completely cover the spill with the bleach solution. Place a layer of paper towels, 5 to 10 towels thick, on top of the bleach. Let the towels sit for at least 15 minutes, then put the paper towels in the trash. Wipe up any remaining liquid with new paper towels. Clean the area with liquid soap and water to remove the bleach. Wash hands with soap and running water for at least 2 minutes. Sponges, cloths, rags and gloves that may have come into contact with contaminated food or containers should be discarded with the food.

posted by Orinda at 5:43 PM on February 27, 2012

Response by poster: Yeah I've already thrown out the kitchen sponge I used to clean up the leak and have sprayed everything down with antibacterial kitchen spray that the splash came in contact with. I'll make sure to bleach the cutting board and counter before I use them. I'm getting a little paranoid now but am doing what I can to avoid any cross-contamination.
posted by thecjm at 5:48 PM on February 27, 2012

A note, not entirely related to the question, but to botulism in general:

the baby of a friend of mine had infant botulism. He was lucky that his mother was extremely persistent with urgent care and ER through multiple visits - symptoms are fairly vague (constipation, weak breast feeding, floppiness) and it is unusual enough that it wasn't taken seriously for quite a while. He still ended up in intensive care for a long stay (more than a month) and was lucky to not have any lasting side effects. We, as adults, eat things that have C. botulinum in them in small amounts with no problems, but infants with undeveloped immune and digestive systems can't handle it. This is why you can't feed babies honey. My friend has no idea how her kid got botulism (no honey, no other obvious source), and this is an extremely rare event, but it is still scary as all heck.
posted by sciencegeek at 7:59 PM on February 27, 2012

I want to point out in the case of botulism, "a nasty case of food poisoning" does not mean a day of barfing. It means paralysis and potentially death if you don't get treatment before the muscles that control your breathing get paralyzed.

And this happens because the (non-boiling-degradable) toxin that C. botulinum makes is Botulinus Toxin aka BoTox, the long-term muscle paralyzing agent commonly used cosmetically. It works every bit as well on your diaphragm as it does on your eyebrows.
posted by flabdablet at 8:44 PM on February 27, 2012 [1 favorite]