Help roaster oven quit in the night! [duplicate]
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Possible Duplicate:
How long can cooked food be safely stored at room/warm temperature?
I put 2 large pork roasts into my roaster oven to cook overnight for pulled pork today. I started it around 8:30 p.m. and cooked it for an hour and a half at 350 then turned it down to 250 to cook all night. Sometime in the night my roaster oven bit the dust and when I awoke at 7:00 a.m. this morning and went to check on it, the oven wasn't working, and the meat was not completely cooked and had cooled to an internal temp of 80 degrees. I quickly put it in the regular oven to finish cooking, but will it be safe to eat? I just don't know how long it had been off. This was over $30.00 of meat and I hate to waste it. I can cook it all day today, would you risk eating it?
Best Answer
I wouldn't eat it.
The usual guideline is that food shouldn't spend more than 2 hours in the "danger zone," i.e. the temperature range in which bacteria can grow -- 40-140°F. It sounds like your pork may have spent a lot more than 2 hours in this range, so you should toss it.
It may hurt to toss $30 worth of meat, and it's possible that nobody will get sick from eating this pork. But if someone does get sick, you (and they) will certainly wish that you had thrown the pork away. And if they get very sick, they may require a trip to the doctor or even the hospital, and that'll cost a whole lot more than $30.
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Roaster Oven Tip
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