I cooked a slab of pork belly overnight in my sous vide two days ago. Normally I’d heat it in the oven to crisp up the crackling pretty much straight away, but something came up and I instead wrapped the pork straight out of the sous vide in cling wrap and put it in the fridge. It’s been in the fridge now for 48 hours.
I’d like to pop it in the oven this evening but I’m wondering if it’s likely to be still safe to eat, or is the fact of (1) sous vide cooking, (2) long time in the fridge, (3) pork, and (4) reheating potentially problematic. Am I being too cautious?
If the sous vide got the center of the pork to 130 for 112 minutes or 140 degrees for 11 minutes (or more) and it went straight to the fridge without sitting out on the counter, then you’re good by food safety standards.
One of the benefits of sous vide cooking is that the food can be kept in the refrigerator in the unopened package for two to three weeks without loss of quality. Chill the cooked (pasteurized) meat in an ice water bath to reduce the temperature through the danger zone quickly.
I’m somewhat puzzled by your sequence of events – “wrapped the pork straight out of the sous vide in cling wrap”. If you mean you opened the vacuum sealed bag, got interrupted, and then wrapped up the meat, it’s just another piece of cooked meat that will last a few days in the fridge. If the bag was still vacuum sealed, the contents are pasteurized and will last much longer.
OP here - I’m no master cook, but one thing I’ve learned about pork is that to get good crackling the rind must be as dry as possible before hitting the oven. With conventional roast pork I use salt to bring out the moisture, and I generally also let the cut sit in the fridge uncovered for a few hours to enable the rind to dry out still further. Last time I did pork belly in the sous vide, I took the meat out of the bag and it was awash in fat and juices. I didn’t focus on drying it out and the crackling was dismal. So on this occasion I wanted to bust it out of the bag then get it as dry as possible before returning to the fridge to hold until I could roast it off.
We ate it last night. Same issue with the crackling. Soft and yucky even after an extended stay in a very hot oven. I guess I could flatten the rind overnight and fry off in a pan, or deep fry briefly, so maybe I’ll regroup and give that a try…
