-2

I had my corned beef in the slow cooker on warm for 2 and a quarter hours before I saw it was not on high. I then turned it to high and continued to cook it. Is it still safe to eat?

Aaronut
  • 54,811
  • 24
  • 191
  • 303
user23827
  • 1
  • 1
  • 2
    Was this raw corned beef, or canned/prepared? – Aaronut Mar 16 '14 at 22:10
  • 1
    corning is a preserving method (heavy salting, although I don't know how similar today's corned brisket from the store is to the original) and you've only slightly gone over the time that the USDA recommends for leaving food out (2hrs between 40F and 140F) ... so if it were me, where I know I'm not cooking for pregnant or immune compromised people (and the little kids won't touch it), and the temperature was still relatively cool, I'd remove 90% of the liquid, and heat that up on the stove (to get it up to temp faster) and pour it back into the cooker. – Joe Mar 21 '14 at 01:10

2 Answers2

0

The rule of thumb is to never allow food to stay in the danger zone (40F-140F) for more than four hours - but that's total time, including service, unless you cook it long enough to pasteurize it. (Douglas Baldwin has pasteurization times for meats of various thicknesses at various temperatures, mostly for sous vide cooking, but you can still apply it to other cooking methods.)

DrRandy
  • 319
  • 1
  • 6
  • 1
    Actually I believe the FDA advice is 2 hours. – ElendilTheTall Jun 19 '14 at 12:15
  • @ElendilTheTall Agreed, referencing http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/34670/how-do-i-know-if-food-left-at-room-temperature-is-still-safe-to-eat What's not clear to me from the OP's question is what temperature the beef actually sat at. "Warm" on a slow cooker may be very different depending on make and model. – logophobe Jun 19 '14 at 21:11
-5

of course, why not? you were applying heat

melissa
  • 1
  • 1
    Heat only makes food safe when the food is at above 60 Celsius (the temperature at which many bacteria die). Below that, there are zones where it is actually more dangerous than at room temperature. – rumtscho Mar 18 '14 at 17:00
  • 1
    This is not only a bad answer, it is downright dangerous. – razumny Mar 18 '14 at 19:04
  • 1
    @razumny Yup, as reflected by the score and rumtscho's comment. That's why we don't generally delete things like this: they are answers, they're just *wrong* answers. – Cascabel Mar 18 '14 at 21:10