Is this butt still good to cook?

A lot of folks feel you can get two weeks _max,from a butt,kept correctly.Sam's tends to keep the meat coolers at 28º.Sell by,often gives a max about 5 days.Many cooks ask to check the cartons for kill date-this gives you the window of about 2 wks max.Most cooks prefer to cook as fresh as possible.

Open it and check for any odor,and hopefully you are ok.

Know your meat supplier.

And if you open it and you do get an odor, take the butt out of the plastic wrap, wash all juices down the drain, dispose of the plastic wrap, rinse the butt and set it on a half-sheet pan and let it air out for five minutes...then smell it again.

Sometimes the juices don't smell so good, but the meat will be OK. A butcher taught me this.

With a pull date of only two days ago, I'm betting this piece of meat is just fine to use.

Another sign the meat has gone bad is a tacky feel to the surface of the meat.

Of course, remember the old saying: "When in doubt, throw it out".

I feel sell by dates give you a few days leeway. Use by I adhere to religiously.

Like said above,rinse and let breathe is sometimes useful.

Many of us that age comp packers for several weeks have found this useful.

I don't really like to push pork too much,tho.

If something could hurt you that was only two days past use by date, I would think that was way too damn close. As long as it's been kept cold it's going to be fine. But like the others, I would do the rinse smell hold, smell trick. I bet it will be fine.

Trust your smeller though.

Thanks for all the advice everyone! It had a little smell when I cut open the plastic wrap. I threw out the wrap and washed the meat down. My girl and I both smelled it and we looked at each other and said it smells like meat. We don't think it is bad. I hope we are right because it went on the smoker 1 hour ago.

If we don't hear the results from you, we'll know it was bad.

Enjoy! Your pulled pork sandwiches will be delicious.

@pags that makes me nervous. Can I getvreally sick if the meat is indeed bad?

Yes, you can get really sick if meat is indeed bad. However, I doubt your meat is bad. As long as the meat was kept cold you have little to worry about. If the meat was unsafe to eat, your nose would have definitely told you. It's hard to ignore the nauseating stench of rotten pork and/or poultry. You can smell when pork or chicken turns bad from across the room.

I think pags may have been making a funny here as is indicated by the emoticon

Enjoy the pork and don't be concerned about meat 1 day past sell date that smells fine. Sell deates should give you at least 3 days and usually 5 before you have to worry. Cry-o-vac meat stays fresher longer as it has been sealed from the outside world.

Jeff

You should "smell check" all meat. I have gotten ribs from Costco that are well before the due date that have been bad. (Full refund with just the sticker) Who knows how that meat was handled before you bought it. It could have been in a truck or on a loading dock in the sun before it made it to the display case. I now routinely open the cryovac the day before with enough time to run to the store to buy new meat if needed.
As they say, "The show must go on"!

All good points Joe.

A few weeks ago I received a case of whole chickens which had a processed date and use by date on the packing label. I received them mid way through the cycle...they were slightly tacky with an off odor. Somewhere along the line they were mis-handled. You just never know.

One more tip about cryovacs. The blood should be a dull red brown. When the blood mixes with air it turns bright red (hemoglobin). If you see a cryovac with bright red blood, the seal is bad and air has gotten inside. I see this most often with ribs as the bones puncture the bag. Pick another one!

So...Mavven...how was that pork butt?

quote:

Originally posted by SmokinMAINEiac:
So...Mavven...how was that pork butt?

He's probably still in the ICU.

I hope he had a better outcome than that!