Throw them out, right?

August 17, 2015 1:14 PM

Can I eat this, pork brats edition: Fridge (8hrs) to car (overnight) to fridge....throw them out, right?

Friend at work brought me six pork brats, raw, wrapped in white butcher paper. I put them into my fridge at work, where they stayed for 8 hours. I brought them home but then forgot to put them into the fridge at home. They stayed in my car in my garage overnight, 7pm-7am. Our temps that night were ~58F. I remembered in morning and threw them in the fridge. Throw them out, right? No way I should eat these even if I made sure to cook well? They smell fine. Just making sure my gut instinct is right here and I'm not needlessly throwing out edible food.

posted by rio to Food & Drink (21 answers total)

I'd eat them. Make sure they're well done.
posted by Bruce H. at 1:21 PM on August 17, 2015

Best answer: That's far too long for raw pork to spend in between 40 and 135 F. Cooking well would destroy most pathogens but not necessarily the toxins they've already created. Toss.
posted by telegraph at 1:25 PM on August 17, 2015 [16 favorites]

I would not eat them. Overnight in the danger zone is not a good place for raw meat to be.
posted by General Malaise at 1:25 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Raw meat? Overnight? Your gut is right. Please don't punish your gut.
posted by Metroid Baby at 1:29 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm usually an eat-it voter, but i would not eat this holy shit.
posted by emptythought at 1:33 PM on August 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

I would have said maaayyyybbbeee if they were pre-cooked and/or NOT PORK.

Don't do it.
posted by cooker girl at 1:46 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'd cut 'em into thin slices to maximize the cooking surface area and fry the heck out of them to kill whatever badness might have spawned but maybe you should listen to the people telling you emphatically not to eat them.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:49 PM on August 17, 2015

Too bad, but: toss.
posted by easily confused at 1:51 PM on August 17, 2015

I would not eat this.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:55 PM on August 17, 2015

At 58F overnight? If they smelled ok and felt ok, I'd eat them, but I wouldn't feed them to others.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 1:58 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

I wouldn't eat them.
posted by treachery, faith, and the great river at 2:00 PM on August 17, 2015

Best answer: The other day I left sticky rice (with pork sausage and other assorted ground meat) on the kitchen counter for 24 hours. It is very very hot here and I haven't been running the AC. It was about 25-27 in my apartment (77-80ish) during that time. I re-heated it super-thoroughly and ate it. It was delicious. I am fine.

That was just to give you an idea of how my eat-it scale is calibrated so you absolutely hear me when I say: I would not eat this. Raw ground meat? No way.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 2:16 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sausage isn't usually made from the freshest cuts to start with. Cooked prompty and then left out, yeah, I'll risk it. Left out raw? Not a chance.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:54 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Man, I hate to give up sausage. If it had been frozen, rather than refrigerated, I'd be tempted to eat them, since freezing substantially culls the bugs... but no, I'm afraid you have bad food. You should console yourself with a trip to the butchership.
posted by Sunburnt at 3:13 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Another usual "eat it" booster saying don't eat it. Que lastima.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:30 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Not worth the potential down-side. Toss and tell friend they were delicious.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:31 PM on August 17, 2015

Unrefrigerated + 12 Hours + Raw + Ground + Pork = NO
posted by HotToddy at 3:42 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was noshing gobbets of raw ground beef off the package while making meatballs yesterday, and I, too, would not eat this.
posted by DingoMutt at 3:51 PM on August 17, 2015

Best answer: No no no.

Cooking meat that has gone bad, even to well done, doesn't make it OK. Bacteria such as staphylococcus, for one, create heat-stable toxins that cooking at high heat does not destroy.

And having had a four-day intense bout of diarrhea and vomiting brought about by either staph or E.coli, food poisoning is not something you want to mess around with at all whatsoever.

Also, ground meat (such as brats) is even more prone to bacterial growth than normal meat because of the much greater surface area of the meat, so if you're going to be overly cautious about one kind of meat, make it ground meat.
posted by andrewesque at 8:21 PM on August 17, 2015

Best answer: They are garbage.

Ignore all advice that says "if they smell fine eat them," because not all pathogens release off odours. Bad smell can only tell you that something is definitively bad; absence of bad smell is not necessarily absence of contamination.

Ignore all advice that says "just cook 'em really hot," because the problem isn't only bacteria, it's the toxins that the bacteria release.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:44 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks all! Husband had grilled them by the time I got home. He knew what had happened but cooked them "really well." He was about to dig in when I showed him this thread. Your consensus resulted in six brats dumped into the trash. Taking Thorzdad's and sunburnt's advice as well. Thanks to all! Marked the most informative / explanatory answers best.
posted by rio at 9:32 PM on August 18, 2015