I bought a nearly 3-lb roast a week or 2 ago. It sat in the bottom of the fridge for a day or 2, then went into the freezer before it’s sell-by date. There it’s been, until a couple days ago when I put it in the fridge to thaw.
It’s brown. There’s a lot of blood in this package, so there’s a blood smell, but nothing sour or ammonia-like. The blood is also brown. The roast is brown about a half-inch all the way around, and is the traditional, “boy that looks good” red inside. No odd texture or feel to the outside. It feels as firm as the inside, and is not slimy.
I know it is difficult to tell from a description, but the brown-ness is disconcerting to me, though there’s nothing else about it that makes me think it’s bad. I’ve cut it into pieces and I’m going to throw it into a crock-pot. Thought I’d put it on high for a few hours until it’s fully boiling hot, then turn it down to low.
Thanks folks. Everything seemed OK except the color was darker than I’m used to. I threw it in the slow-cooker. Might as well cook it now, rather than give it more time to possibly go ‘off’.
Sounds fine to me. Sometimes I intentionally “age” my beef roasts or steaks a bit longer, though I usually coat them in salt and loosely wrap in paper towelling.
(As an aside, I hate when I’ve forgotten something I’m thawing. Had to pitch some pork chops yesterday because they got buried in the fridge. They most certainly did not smell fine )
It would be. It’s not unknown to hang beef for much longer than you’ve kept yours in the fridge or freezer, nor was it unusual, in living memory, to keep meat in a “meat safe” in the coolest place in the house, before there were fridges or freezers. A day or two beyond the sell-by date is nothing - that’s just a CYA device on the supermarket’s part.
In the grocery store I work at, we used to cryo-vac all our meat. Since this sucked all the oxygen out (which is a good thing), it would make the meat look brown. Apparently this was unappealing to our customers as the meat didn’t have that red look to it that oxidizing meat does so they went to just plastic wrapping the meat. If I get some meat done there, I ask them to cryo-vac it.
This says both oxygen and CO can cause the red color, and that CO keeps it red for ages, but doesn’t say why it turns brown over time with just oxygen.
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