Another meat safety question. Elk not recovered for 24 hours.

[Pucky Freak]

Last week I thawed out my last deer by putting the whole frozen quarters in a cooler. Unfortunately, I forgot about it and when I opened the lid it was about 1 day too late. The inside of the muscle groups where still cool, but blood had pooled in the bottom and had begun to sour.

Determined not to let all the meat go to waste, I hosed down and scrubbed the quarters, then trimmed off 1/4” from every surface to reach the pink healthy tissue below. Next I cut up into 1x1x6 chunks and soaked overnight in a slurry of ice, vinegar, lemon juice, and salt.

Next day l wrapped each individual chunk in shop towels and squeezed the moisture out, then unwrapped and ground the meat into burger.

For each step the sour smell progressively improved. The odor was detectible if I put the bowl about a foot from my nose.


I thoroughly pan-fried 1/2 lb for a taste test. Again the odor was detectible, but it did not fill up the kitchen. It was noticeable if I directly inhaled the steam from the pan.

Lastly, added taco seasoning to mask any off-flavor and tried it out, a little piece at a time. No off taste whatsoever. I ate it all and now six hours later no intestinal upset. I’ll post back if anything changes


35 lbs taco meat. I lost about 10–12 lbs from what I trimmed and discarded.

 

[npaden]

We are still eating on my son's elk.

The stuff that was the most iffy got a "XXX" added to the label on the freezer bag. Probably about 45 or 50 pounds worth. We did have a roast that somehow must have been extra tainted because when we cooked it in the sous vide the bag inflated and started to float and pushed the top off the sous vide container. I poked a hole in the bag to get the air out and let it go back down in the sous vide container and it was horrible smelling. Stunk up the entire kitchen! We threw that one out.

Just ate some this weekend though, and we've eaten some that did have XXX on it that turned out fine once cooked, not sure what the deal was on the one that inflated.

It isn't the best tasting or most tender elk I've eaten though. Normally we sous vide steaks for 6 hours or so and we've taken to cooking these for 24+ hours. Roasts that we normally cook for 24-36 hours are now going for 48+ on this one. I think part of that is that he was old and tough, part is probably something to do with us taking so long to recover him.

 

[plentycoupe]

I would process all of it and mark up the packages you thing may have a bad smell to them. You will know when you thaw and cook if it isn't right.

Others may know on here as I don't, but lets say a steak had started to sour and you cooked and ate it. What could happen? Maybe a google search on that.

 

[The Hedgehog]

Just gonna throw this out there ..

 

[ismith]

Just gonna throw this out there ..
View attachment 342592

To be fair though, isn't that guy used to funny smelling meat?

 

[The Hedgehog]

We sat there for the most part in silence for over an hour just looking at him. Every once in a while someone would walk up to him and run their hand over one of his long tines and comment or snap a pic from a different angle with their phones but mostly we just sat there looking at him.

Thousands of atta-boys, little hearts and blue thumbs but no questions on the 400lbs of obviously soured meat?

 

[TheTone]

If you’re already waited over 15 hrs to recover a bull that went less than 200 yards what’s another couple hours just sitting around taking pictures and b roll. I’m sure it all went to the closest food bank anyways

 

[npaden]

Yes, my reaction to finding my son's elk was take a few quick pictures and then getting the knife out and starting to cut. And that was in below freezing temperatures. I just checked the time stamp on the pictures and the very first picture of the elk once we found it was at 4:20 then it looks like we took pictures until 4:26 and the next picture is of him packing the first quarter out at 5:05.

 

[npaden]

I just went back and re-read this entire thread. I think there is some beneficial advice in here. Thanks again to everyone that responded as I was trying to decide what to do on this.

We are about done eating the elk and out of the 140lbs or so that I kept we only had that one roast that ended up bad. Not sure what was up with it, but there was no way we were going to eat it the way it smelled.

The rest has been okay. Not the best but I for sure have eaten worse. The burger has all been perfectly fine even the batch that had a slight smell that we marked with the XX on the bags. When I first cut into the hide and air came out because he was bloated up a little I didn't think any of the meat was going to be good. The stubborn person in me still quartered it up and salvaged every bit of it just like if we had found him right away though.

I did bone the hind quarters out on the spot as I knew they would be the most susceptible to bone rot. Even doing that we ended up throwing one complete hind quarter away once we got it back to the house. It sounds too simple, but the smell test is really what we used to determine what was good and what was not. The really bad stuff really did stink, there was no doubt about it and you weren't going to even think about sniffing it again. The stuff we saved that we ground and marked XX was stuff that you had to sniff a few times and you still weren't sure. It had a slight odor but nothing like the truly bad stuff.

Hopefully I don't ever have to worry about that again.