I’m not sure if this should go in IMHO or not. It seems like there should be a factual answer, but what I’m most likely to get are anecdotes. Mods, do what you will.
Ok. so I made some chili in the crock pot, but forgot to turn it on. The meat (ground beef) was already cooked, and all the other beans and veggies were not. It got left there for about 24 hours, and then I noticed that the crock pot was not doing anything, realized that it was off, and turned it on. It then cooked on low for 8-10 hours, was removed, and refrigerated.
Everything I have found on the dangers of eating improperly prepared meat says that undercooking meat is the real danger. And it certainly wasn’t undercooked, just left out for a day. My thinking is that since it was not left out that long, it should be fine, especially because it was cooked after having been left out (and thus should have killed anything bad). My mother, on the other hand, claims that I will die a horrible death if I eat even one bite. I’d rather not throw away all this chili, but that horrible death thing doesn’t sound too promising either.
What’s the danger of eating meat that’s been left out, then cooked?
Some nasties are only a problem if they’re alive, but others (such as botulism) are worse. Suppose you had some bolulism bacteria in there. For the 24 hours that it was sitting out, the botu-bugs were growing happily and spewing out botutoxin, as is their wont. Now, you cook it thoroughly. You’ve killed all of the bacteria, so the problem isn’t getting any worse, but any toxins they produced are still there. Botulism can also be a big problem with canned beans, too, not just meat, by the way.
The long and the short of it is this: The chili is probably not toxic. However, it might be, and if it is, the only way you’d know it is by feeding it to something and waiting for it to die.
Well, on k2dave’s suggestion (and, depending on how you look at it, Chronos’s as well) I ate some.
Now we just have to see if I die.
Nothing yet.
Chronos, Wouldn’t the fact that the meat was cooked right before it was left out pretty much eliminate the chance of bugs in it? So all I really have to worry about is the other stuff.
I’m thinking you don’t use enough Habaneros or you wouldn’t even be asking this. The chili I make is so spicy it actually glows when I turn off all the lights. I generally try to make my chili hot enough to have a 4 year shelf life, unrefrigferated. That episode of the Simpsons where Homer eats the pepper and has halucinations… thats real, oh yes… thats real.
And even if there were no bacteria in the chili at the start of the 24 hours, I can guarantee you that there were plenty at the end of that time. You’re just lucky that there weren’t any of the nasty ones.
As of right now, I’m still kicking. Several sites I saw, though, said that the incubation period for various things like this could be as long as ten days. So we may have to wait a while for me to die.
