appreciate that.
I will toss it all
thanks
it might have been this phenomenon.
The 4 times I’ve had meat or duck smell sour over the past 3 years, it has been vacuum packed meat or duck.
Sour smell is different than ammonia smell
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I generally go by taste and don’t mind if there’s a little funky smell (like my aged steaks or roasts, I mean). Ground is going to get fully cooked anyway, vs a fresh steak that smells bad once the package is breached.
The ammonia is different, though, as honkman says. Did it persist or was it just on opening, then gone?
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I ended up throwing out all the remainder of the cooked meatballs and the 25 uncooked frozen meat.
The odor was very slight, compared to when I opened some frozen duck and frozen lamb, also vacuum packed, that smelled bad as soon as I opened the package.
The cooked meatballs were cooked until browned and I could not detect any off smell in the cooked ones. I suspect the veal was starting to go sour when it got packed.
The fresh beef and pork I mixed it with were very fresh with no odor.
I’m still not sure if it was ammonia or the lactic acid smell that I’m reading about. The raw meatball mixture didnt smell funny, so I would say the odor of the veal did dissipate.
I think I will avoid most vacuum packs of raw meat for a while.
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(post deleted by author)
This is a dangerous practice.
You should not work with thawed frozen products and then refreeze. It should be cooked before being frozen again.
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Pretty sure USDA says it’s okay if it wasn’t out of the fridge over 2 hours, and assuming fridge-thawed vs being out on the counter.
Screws up texture, though.
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I didn’t think the texture would be affected in a meatball made with thawed veal, fresh beef, fresh pork, bread, egg, parmesan, then frozen, to be fully cooked later.
It’s all moot since I threw the frozen raw meatballs out.
Thanks for you for your input.
I had not frozen raw meatballs made from either raw fresh meat or raw defrosted meat before. None of the meatballs I froze were cooked. I cooked 6 of the meatballs as soon as I made them, until they were crispy and the internal temp was 180⁰F.
The frozen raw meatballs that were made with 1/3 defrosted veal and 2/3 fresh pork and fresh beef went into the green bin in compostable green bag this morning.
…..
There are ways to refreeze refrigerated thawed beef and other ground meat, if you are comfortable doing so, and there is no hint of decay.
There was a hint of decay with my veal, so absolutely, refreezing the veal was a dumb thing for me to do.
I would not have asked about using the ground veal, or been worried about the ground veal, if I wasn’t on the fence or having second thoughts when I posted.
Yeah, sometimes it’s barely noticeable - and in your case most of the stuff is not previously frozen. But in the general case, each refreeze cycle damages the food’s cells (whether meat or veg) to a greater or lesser extent, because the ice crystals take up more volume than liquid water, and they’re jagged little guys.
The biggest factor - how quickly or slowly the food is frozen - was figured out by Clarence Birdseye who invented a double belt flash freezer system to freeze foods extremely quickly (and went on to become the founding father of an entire frozen foods industry).
Slow freezing means much larger crystals and more damage, and quick freezing the opposite. So if you’ve got a good freezer, didn’t have it open much on the day when you refroze an item, and didn’t shove a whole bunch of mass in there all at the same time, it really might be imperceptible.
I knew this but failed to think about it one day while breaking down a whole chuck roll… I put the various roasts, steaks, etc. in bags, then in a moment particularly lacking in brilliance, shoved all 35 pounds of beef into my (very good, but not that good) freezer.
I figured out my screwup when I pulled a 5 pound roast out and tossed into the fridge side to thaw, and saw when thawed that the bag had almost 11 ounces of liquid in it. For a 5 pound roast, you’d expect maybe an ounce or two. Took me a while to realize it was all my fault. The roast turned out pretty dry. Edible but not great.
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We have a quick freeze setting on our freezer. I should use it more often.
I’ve been wondering about intentionally aging meat, steaks in particular. I’ve never had dry-aged meat, as far as I know. But I do wet-age bavette steaks in the fridge for about two weeks before vacuum packing them for the freezer. An informal comparison showed they do get a lot more tender after aging, with no hint of spoilage. I used to just pop the butcher’s wrapped package in the fridge, over a plate to catch any drippings. A couple of articles I read recently say to vacuum-pack them first, and I tried that last time. The texture was about the same with both methods. The cooking chat in the Washington Post recently said in no uncertain terms, use or freeze before 3 or 4 days after purchasing.
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I’ve wondered about some of that, especially because I often “dry brine” a store bought steak for many days (which Judy Rodgers mentions in her Zuni Cafe cookbook) . I assumed commercial aging involves climate control I won’t achieve.
Any sources you care to share? Is the Wapo reference about aging meat at home?
No, the WaPo comment was from the moderator in response to a query about the safety of raw meat left in the fridge for a week. The mod said to toss it, but I do it often.
Dry aging involves hanging the meat in a humidity controlled fridge for up to a month. It shrinks and mold develops on the outside. The mold is cut off before cooking.
Here’s a summary of dry and wet aging. It uses the vacuum-pack first approach for wet aging.
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I guess this is a good place to put this. I have 2 portions of pulled pork made yesterday, to serve tomorrow after Palm Sunday service for 12 family members, including some smaller kids. So I made the major portion as per my usual seasoning, and a smaller portion for the kids and a pregnant niece with a delicate tummy with less spice (no black pepper, no red pepper flakes in the rub).
Church lets out about 12:15 and it’s a 30 minute drive back, and we need to get folks fed by 1:00, so I was trying to figure a way to gently heat the pulled pork to a serving temp by then to around 150F, without over-cooking it (gets fibrous and a dry mouthfeel if you reheat it back up around 190+ °F), but also keeping in mind the 2 hour 40-140F window for food safety. I was hoping my two slow cookers would handle the job but wanted to test. Between drive times and service, the pulled pork would be in the cookers for about 2:40. Here’s what I found.
I put cold tap water (55F) equal to the mass of each the two portions into each crock pot (one pot is much smaller and fits the smaller food amount just fine). This older, smaller one does not offer a “keep warm” setting, just low/high, so I set it to low. I do recognize that by design, the eventual final temp of low = high, it’s just that low is supposed to take longer to hit the final temp. The newer, larger one has a “keep warm” setting, so that’s what I set it to.
I was kind of surprised at the results, especially for the newer one.
1 Hour: Large, 122°F (on “keep warm”), small (on “low”) 126F.
2 Hour: Large, 170F (already shot past the ~ 150-ish I’d hoped), small 164F.
2.5 Hour: Large 184, small 183F.
3 Hour: Large, 190F, small 193F.
4 Hour, Large 203F (keep in mind this is the “keep warm” function, not low cook function), small 193F.
I switched the large from “keep warm” to “low” and let both ride for a 5th hour. The large pot stayed around 203F, meaning the “keep warm” function is functionally useless (Rival branded Crock Pot, if you’re interested) and the old small pot stayed at a steady 193F.
Just some data points. If you want to cook something and expect that at the end of the cook period it’ll go to a considerably lower than cooking temp “keep warm” temp (mine is programmed to do that), you might want to check and see what it’s actually doing. Mine is obviously just going to continue cooking at full temp despite saying it’s on the “keep warm” setting.
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ISTR discussions somewhere (possibly on HO, or maybe on CH) about how manufacturers of slow cookers have raised the ‘keep warm’ temperatures to well above 140F so they won’t be blamed for turning their cookers into petri dishes. It’s probably too late for you now, but I think I’d put the pulled pork into zipper bags and put them in the fridge for the time being. Set your cookers to ‘keep warm’ and fill them with water. When you get home, immerse the bags in the water - basically making a sous vide set-up. The mass of warm water should heat the PP pretty quickly without overcooking it.
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Oooh! I spy an acronym I’m not familiar with.
Love. It.
I Seem To Recall?
Hungry Onion?
Chowhound (RIP)?
Pulled Pork?
