Can I Eat It? Pot Roast

December 23, 2014 12:08 PM

My wife accidentally left a pot roast (beef) thawing overnight last night. It was still covered in ice when I went to bed around 11PM, and it was thawed (but still cold to the touch) this morning, when we put it back in the refrigerator. Will we die if we eat this?
posted by mkb to Food & Drink (38 answers total)

A properly conservative person would probably not eat that, and you couldn't serve it in a restaurant.

I would eat it, though, because if it was covered in ice on the outside last night, it was probably still frozen in the middle this morning.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:14 PM on December 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

They say not to do that. I wouldn't hesitate to eat it.

It's not ground meat, so you really only have to worry about surface bacteria, and those die.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:15 PM on December 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

I've left all kinds of beef out thawing that long and I still seem to be alive and lacking food poisoning. It's almost certainly fine.

(Exercise more caution for elderly people or anyone with major health issues.)
posted by Ashlyth at 12:16 PM on December 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Cold to the touch? Probably even colder inside? Heck yes.
posted by Melismata at 12:17 PM on December 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

I would eat that pot roast without hesitation.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:18 PM on December 23, 2014

Yes.
posted by telstar at 12:20 PM on December 23, 2014

You're going to cook this for hours like a pot roast, right? No problem.
posted by beagle at 12:23 PM on December 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

If you cook the living Christ out of it, it should be fine.
posted by starbreaker at 12:28 PM on December 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

I don't cook meat much myself, but anecdotally, when I went to visit relatives in New Zealand, it appeared that my aunt-in-law's general strategy for dinner was to take whatever meat she planned to serve out of the freezer in the morning when she left for work, leaving it defrosting on the countertop all day and making dinner with it that night (they eat meat every night, pretty much). She apparently has used this method for years and years with no issues. And personally - I'd eat it, if I ate pot roast.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 12:40 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

If it was still cold it'll be fine. Eat it.
posted by stellathon at 12:42 PM on December 23, 2014

Can I eat it? Yes. I would. Yummy.

Will we die if we eat this? Probably not. I mean, eventually yes, but it would be unlikely to follow the pot roast dinner by any interpretation of immediacy.

Should we be serving this to others (elderly, infirm and/or paying customers?) Well no, if you want to follow lawful food preparation guidelines. But if all diners are comfortable with the 5 second rule, they should be comfortable with this.
posted by dness2 at 12:43 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'd totally eat it.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 12:45 PM on December 23, 2014

You shouldn't eat that. Fortunately, I'm here for you, I'll swing by on my way home from work and take it off your hands.

(Yes, totally cook it and eat it.)
posted by disconnect at 12:47 PM on December 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

If the outside was cold to the touch, the inside was probably still near-frozen. I'd eat it.
posted by zug at 12:47 PM on December 23, 2014

In Australia that's how we all defrost meat.
posted by taff at 12:49 PM on December 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

That's always how I defrost my meat! Take it out of the freezer in the morning and leave it to defrost during the day! Possibly not on hot summer days, but at this time of year I think it's all good!

I'm very much still alive :)
posted by JenThePro at 12:51 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yet another person who defrosts meat this way, because my mom defrosts meat this way, and none of us are dead yet. You can eat that.
posted by yasaman at 12:54 PM on December 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

If you'd just pulled it out of the fridge, and touched it, it would be cold and you would have no qualms. It sat on the counter a long time, you touched it, and it was cold. Your qualms are unnecessary.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:58 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think this is fine. I mean, if this was a beef tenderloin you were going to serve rare, then nopenopenope. But a pot roast you are going to cook for a long time? Sure, no problem.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:59 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I would eat it if I prepared it myself, and I would eat it if made by a friend who explained the circumstances under which it was thawed and cooked, but I would probably err on the side of not serving it to guests.

tl;dr eat it and report back for posterity
posted by poffin boffin at 1:06 PM on December 23, 2014

Was it shrink-wrapped? Eat it. If not...eat it.
posted by Gungho at 1:10 PM on December 23, 2014

10/10 would eat
posted by cotton dress sock at 1:39 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yup, in mah belly.
posted by quince at 1:43 PM on December 23, 2014

Oh yeah, go right on ahead. Cook the beast, enjoy. Frankly thawing meat this way was de rigeur for decades.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 2:14 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

What time should I show up for dinner?
posted by Sunburnt at 2:34 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I would eat it because "leave on counter overnight OR for most of the day" is precisely how I thaw.
posted by smangosbubbles at 3:45 PM on December 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is how my mom thawed out all the meat we ate when I was growing up. We all survived with no ill effects.
posted by makonan at 6:40 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

*I* wouldn't eat. Not a big pot roast fan.

Should be safe for you to eat though.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:02 PM on December 23, 2014

Assuming you do the standard pot roast preparation of completely searing the outside then cooking it for a very long time, it should be fine.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:29 PM on December 23, 2014

I did a food safety course in high school and as far as I recall, you can safely leave food in the danger zone (6-60 degrees celcius) for six hours, though I think that food safety regulations usually say four hours to be safe. But this is assuming that food is warm or at least room temperature, so would be the perfect temp to allow bacteria to grow. Food safety regs frown upon defrosting meat out of the fridge.

Since your roast was frozen to start off with (so, well below the danger zone), was probably not left out for much longer than six hours, and was still cold when put back into the fridge, I think that your roast is fine to eat. And I'm the person in my household who is most paranoid about food. The other night we left leftover salad with sprouts out overnight, so I threw it out the next morning and my boyfriend was mad with me because he still wanted to eat it.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 9:53 PM on December 23, 2014

I would, however, check with a meat thermometer that the meat gets up to the appropriate temperature before you take it out of the oven. Just to be safe, because this week would be a crappy time to get sick.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 10:01 PM on December 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

You actually want the meat to be at room temp before it goes in the oven so that the muscle fibres have a chance to relax before being zapped with heat reducing toughness. Gordon Ramsay told me so last night on the tubes. It will also reduce the amount of cooking time in the oven.

You having yorkshire pudding with that?
posted by redindiaink at 10:17 PM on December 23, 2014

I'd eat it. Doesn't even ping the questionable-food-o-meter for me.

I'd rinse the outside of the piece of meat just to remove any surface bacteria, but that's more about keeping the countertop and cooking surfaces clean than food safety per se, since you're going to cook it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:24 PM on December 23, 2014

Please don't rinse raw meat. All it does is splash bacteria around your kitchen.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 5:38 AM on December 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Oh, hey! We ate this and it was fine. I used nearly more than a bottle of wine for braising liquid; that may have helped.
posted by mkb at 9:18 AM on January 1, 2015

Yay! Great news. Was it scrumptious?
(Australians would have just drunk the wine.)
posted by taff at 11:01 AM on January 1, 2015

Response by poster: Yes, even the picky child eaters agreed. Eaters who are children, that is, not eaters of children.
posted by mkb at 6:30 PM on January 1, 2015

Children need much longer marinading.
posted by taff at 8:45 PM on January 1, 2015 [2 favorites]