Rotten beef from major supermarket

kutsu119

A couple of thoughts.

1) Meat that has been vac-packed, when exposed to air, will have a much strong "off" smell, than fresh or open to air meat. This is due to two things, in general: wet-aging, and anaerobic environment. Essentially, meat that is kept in areas without oxygen and that are damp (not with blood, incidentally, as is commonly thought) will begin to have a smell when opened to the air, which will dissipate within about an hour. The reason meat is wet-aged is to aid tenderness without the associated weight loss. "Dry aged" meat is better, but because the meat loses weight, means the yield is less.

In short: open the meat, remove all packaging and then give it an hour - if it still smells, it may be off. Don't just take a whiff - lots of meat may smell if that was the test.

2) The inside of a whole cut of meat will generally be sterile; only the introduction of contaminants via cutting, mincing, piercing (for brine injected meat) would lead to the inside of meat being non-sterile. Therefore, I would take an educated guess that it is impossible for the inside of meat to be rotten, but the outside of the joint to be acceptable to the point where it isn't even noticeable. In fact, significant purification to the outside of meat could occur, but the inside is still visually acceptable to eat - the principles of ageing work on this basis.

In short - your meat ain't rotten in the middle - if it was, you would have noticed the fact it would be oozing puss on the outside first!!

paddedjohn

alwaysonthego wrote: »

moving threads for better responses


hi, martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: i’ve asked board guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [email="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/email].

a better response???? There are already 30 odd replies!

I_know_my_ABC_and_my_CMYK

dnsg wrote: »

I've returned it once -- it's happened about four times, as I did quit buying it a long time ago (and then stopped shopping there when we moved towns). I complained only once because I was inevitably cooking it on a Sunday afternoon and had to cut out the 'good' sections to make my meals... I couldn't return the offcuts.

I have recently started shopping at a different branch of the same store and just plain forgot about my problems with their meat.

I just wondered if anyone else had the same problem because I can't believe I'm the only one who's noticed this.

It's true I don't know that's it's rotten for sure, but the smell is pretty strong... and, when I look at the meat that's in the 'clearance section', it looks like that -- brown and skanky, not something you'd want to feed to your children!

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Morglin

I always take meat out from the packaging and freeze in a bag - more to save freezer space than anything, but a butcher friend did also say it shouldn't be frozen in it's original packaging, if it's one of those tray things.

But, beef can sometimes look a bit 'brown' after thawing, and it's fine, it doesn't mean it's off.

Lin