And so a bundle of meat spoiled in your refrigerator before you could melt it. You can tell considering it's a twenty-four hour period or 2 by the expiration appointment printed on the parcel, the meat has a foul, rotten olfactory property, and its surface has a slight greyish to greenish hue to it.

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Now, you found yourself wondering: should you throw it away—as your gut is kind of telling you to do—or will cooking it at a high enough temperature and for a long enough time brand information technology safe to eat?

Cooking spoiled meat won't make it safety to swallow. Though it can kill the leaner and molds that populated information technology, information technology won't get rid of the toxins and spores that they left in it. To avert food poisoning, throw out raw meat when it's past its expiration engagement or if you lot suspect that it's spoiled.

This is a adept matter to practise whenever you lot spot spoiled meat in the fridge or freezer since, unless it'due south discarded, other members of your household tin can also brand the error of cooking and eating it.

What Causes Meat to Spoil?

Meat, whether nosotros're talking beef, pork, lamb, poultry, or seafood, spoils because information technology gets overpopulated by molds and a genus of bacteria that feeds on the sugars and proteins in the muscle tissue. With the animal no longer alive, its cells take no way of protecting themselves against these microorganisms.

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Equally a byproduct of its feast, that bacteria breaks down the muscle tissue into amino acids and a number of foul-smelling compounds, including ammonia, amines, and hydrogen sulfide, which is what gives spoiled meat its confront-twitchingly foul smell.

Information technology also secretes harmful toxins that tin cause nutrient poisoning that volition stay stable when exposed to high heat, even after coming into contact with your scorching-hot grill's grates or the heat radiated by your skillet or oven during cooking. The molds can also be responsible for toxic, temperature-stable compounds in the meat.

So if you lot accept away one thing from reading this commodity, let information technology be this:

Though it'southward truthful that long enough exposure to a temperature of 140°F to 165°F will eliminate most of the microorganisms in raw meat, such as molds and leaner, it won't necessarily inactivate the poisons that they left inside information technology.

What Makes Spoiled Meat Unsafe to Eat?

Setting aside the mushy texture, off odor, and funky taste of spoiled meat for a 2d… at that place's a more pressing reason why you should never eat meat that'due south gone bad.

According to Johns Hopkins, spoiled meat can give you nutrient poisoning because of the toxins produced by the leaner that in one case grew in it. Mild cases of nutrient poisoning mimic the symptoms of a stomach flu; severe cases can result in hospitalization and death.

Known equallyPseudomonas fragi, those toxin-producing bacteria thrive at room temperature. Its activity slows down drastically at a temperature of forty°F in your fridge and almost grinds to a halt at 0°F in the freezer (Kenyon University).

The spoilage can happen faster or slower depending on the meat's pH, water content, storage temperature, oxygen availability, and the amount of microbes (bacteria, fungi, and others) already nowadays in the package before you lot bought it (Wiley Online Library).

So if you opened your fridge and found a spoiled brisket, don't risk information technology: recall of your and your family unit's health and throw it in the bin instead.

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All in all, fresh meat is 1 of those perishable foods that y'all never continue in the fridge or freezer for a long time. Programme your meals accordingly and, if y'all stocked up on your favorite cut of beef, pork, or lamb at a disbelieve at the grocery store, freeze them for long-term storage.

How Long Does Raw Meat Final?

Generally, raw meat lasts for two hours when left out at room temperature on the counter, 1-3 days in its original packaging in your fridge, and vi-9 months in a freezer bag or nutrient storage container in your freezer.

Though this applies to all kinds of meat, you should always sanity-cheque by looking at the expiration date, giving the thawed meat a whiff, and looking for a greyness to green hue on the surface, all of which are tell-tale signs of spoilage.

Keep in mind that freezing inactivates the leaner plant in meat, but it won't kill it. The bacterial breakdown will resume at full speed as soon every bit you've thawed the meat, so you lot should cook information technology immediately. For the same reasons, thaw meats overnight in your fridge and never go out them out on the counter for longer than an hour or two.

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Likewise, only freeze meats before their expiration engagement; freezing spoiled meat won't make information technology safe to eat in the outset place.

Founding Editor

When Jim isn't in the kitchen, he is unremarkably spending fourth dimension with family unit and friends, and working with the HCW editorial team to answer the questions he used to ask himself back when he was learning the ropes of cooking.