My wife and I recently got sick from old bacon. We didn’t realize it had expired Oct 30 and we ate some Dec 2. Bad GI upset. I checked the package yesterday and saw green mold spots. It went in the trash. It wasn’t moldy the last time we cooked bacon.
I bought a fresh package and it’s due to expire Dec 29. Three weeks from now.
I thought preserving meat by curing in salt made it last for a long time? Even centuries ago they cured meat with salt. No refrigeration and it was safe to eat. It’s the oldest method of preserving meat.
It doesn’t. The layer of grease on the outer surface of the bacon is subject to mold growth. When your bacon gets discolored growth on it, or feels sticky to the touch, just run hot tapwater on it and rub all the old grease off the surface, until it looks and feels normal… That’s what i do with cold cuts, too.
My mother kept a crock of old bacon grease next to the stove. When she needed frying grease, she’d spoon a bit out, and when finished, pour it from the pan back into the crock. It kept for decades, room temperature, uncovered.
Most bacon you get at the supermarket isn’t really cured in the old-fashioned sense (like a Virginia ham or a prosciutto that you can leave in the pantry till it’s ready for the soup pot). It’s more brined like cheap deli meat. That’s why it’s so wet. Also, there’s been a push in the past few decades to omit the nitrates or nitrites–I forget which–and those apparently are better at curing than plain old table salt. Most bacon also used to be more heavily smoked, which also helps preserve. Now I think most companies just inject with smoke flavoring.
I have had Eastern European bacon which is so heavily cured you can safely eat it raw. And it’s yummy! It’s called slanina or salo.
So, anyway, if I stock up on typical bacon, I freeze it. Then it’s good for ages. I also freeze the remainder on the rare occasion I don’t cook a whole package at once. If you do that, avoid touching it with bare fingers (just like cheese) so you don’t introduce additional germs. Sometimes I’ll just slice the package in half horizontally, wrap half in clingfilm, and toss it in the freezer. When you want your frozen bacon, just put the package in a bowl of water for ten minutes while you’re prepping other ingredients, and it should be thawed enough to proceed.
You ate something. You felt ill. You think it is because of the bacon?
Did you eat anything else in the 2 day time-frame? How do you know the bacon is the reason you felt ill?
Do you ever have a bad GI upset when you haven’t eaten old bacon? Is this the only time you ever had intestinal upset? Is this the only time you ate bacon that is old?
While I sympathize with your discomfort, there are a million reasons why this might occur. Can you narrow the cause down to a specific food? Or are you just wildly guessing and blaming anything in sight?
While it may very well have been something else, casting suspicion on the food that’s a month out of date and has mold spots isn’t exactly “wildly guessing”.
The green spots appeared on the bacon a few days after we ate from the package. It obviously had bacteria growing on it.
I checked the expiration date on a package of Canadian Bacon that we just bought. It’s 2/13/17. Much, much longer than the regular bacon we bought the same day. It expires 12/29.
I guess it all depends on how much preservatives the meat packer used.
Considering that you may have eaten many different foods, not all of which are 100% known and certified as edible, and considering that moldy substances do not automatically, 100%, make you sick, yes, this is wildly guessing.
Yep, even though I read (then reread) jtur’s post, I could still eat a whole heaping helping of bacon right now. Just not at his or ace’s house… and not if it’s that Canadian abomination “bacon”, either.
You ate some meat a full month past it’s ‘best before date’, and you’re wondering why it doesn’t last longer?
What? No matter how long it lasts, eating any meat product four weeks past its expiry date is beyond foolish. The problem is not it’s short shelf life but your inability to understand best before dates, it seems.
The dates would indicate it was good for several weeks. Sorry it wasn’t good for several weeks PLUS over a month, but that seems a wholly unreasonable expectation to me.
The bacon at the supermarket is, in no way, cured as the settlers did, to last all winter without refrigeration. How is a grown adult not aware of that? How can a grown adult serve meat a month past it’s eat by date, to another person, in good conscience?
And then bitch because it should keep longer? Um, no, just no!
The USDA has a strict mandate to give the absolutely most conservative food advice that it is possible to support at the most extreme fringe of the fraidy-cats. It’s called Covering Their Ass. If they said anything else, they would be blamed for every mild digestive disorder and there would be talk of impeachment…
The OP did not specify just how sick they got. Absent any comment to the contrary, I’m assuming it was a mild feeling of digestive upset and, at worst, maybe a fleeting irregularity of bowel movements, and felt fine after 12 hours or less…