Brisket danger?

Smoker-RCO said:

 
I'm not going to chance it.  Lesson learned!!!!  Sad day.

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Bearcarver said:

 
Like Foamy said, Nobody can tell you what to do.

However you were actually 2 hours too long in the Danger zone after probing it in the beginning.

I'm not sure about what Demo said about cutting out the area where the probe was, but I would think if that would take care of it I would have seen that mentioned in the last 4 1/2 years.

I hate to see anybody lose 7 pounds of any kind of meat, but I also hate to see somebody get seriously sick.

I would also recommend until you get used to your smoker & therm, don't inject it or probe it for the first 3 hours. Then you don't have to worry about the "Intact muscle rule". That's what I do all the time, because I like to play with temps often.

Bear

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Demosthenes9 said:

 
Bear, let me start out by saying that I could be completely wrong about this.    That said, here's my thought process.

The reason the "safety zone" doesn't apply to intact meats is that the organisms (or their pollutants) don't travel through the meat fibers.  IF they did, then intact meats would have to follow the same rules as ground beef.

The only point of penetration in that brisket was where the probe went in.  IF contamination is a concern, then carving out a chunk of meat surrounding the hole made by the probe would remove any offending organism in my opinion.

If you will, say you have a brisket that is 14 inches long and the probe was stuck straight down within 1 inch of the end of the brisket.  How could that possibly contaminate the entire cut ?   Cut off 2 inches of the brisket where the probe was, and you are left with an intact piece of meat that has not been penetrated.   (Again, in my opinion).

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Bearcarver said:

 
I understand your thought process, and it makes common sense, but things like this defy common sense. You admit you could be wrong, and I am not enough of a scientific authority to say you are wrong or right, so that means between the two of us, we aren't sure, so to stay safe I would say the meat may not be safe.

This (below) is from a trusted authority (BBally):

Unpunctured, intact muscle need only have the outside 0.5 inch pass through 140 degrees within 4 hours. Something easily done at temps of 200 F or more.

Now if you inject it, you have changed the "intact nature" of the meat and should treat it as ground meat or forced meat. This means the inside temp of the meat must pass through 140 within four hours. 
Going under 200 F without intact muscle generally requires that another method of cooking have been used.... Nitrate or Nitrite curing being most common. But lemon and lime juice under a method called ceviche also will do the job, though generally limited to fish.

Most common error that results in hospitalization of people consuming improperly handled intact muscle?

"inserting a temp probe into the intact muscle prior to the outside being above 140F or the probe not being wiped with sterilizer prior to insertion."

Bear

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Most do not know that you can cooked a poultry product to less that 165 F using a method called pastuerization. .That is holding the product at a certain temp for a specific length of time
Temps can be used two ways to make food safe. Temp reached as in the 165 F you see listed often for chicken. Or holding at a lessor temp for a longer period of time.

For instance we can make safe pork roasts by holding at 140 F for 12 minutes.

Same way if you want to have an injected beef roast that can no longer use the intact muscle rule, one can hold the beef muscle for 3 minutes at 145F and be legal to skip the 165F ground meat rule. 

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Demosthenes9 said:

 
Thanks Bear,

With that said, I'm kind of confused though as Bbally also said this:

I need to point out that this statement was in response to a question, but, for whatever reason, the questions no longer show up in the thread.

I'll also add the disclaimer again that I'm not a safety expert or anything close to it.  Just a backyard and in the kitchen cook.

I guess I'm kind of confused as to why ground meat only has to go to 165 for a short time to be perfectly safe, but a brisket that has been punctured in 1 place has to be thrown away if not @ 140 degrees in 4 hours, even though  it will be cooked for more than 3 hours at temps well in excess of 165.

I must be missing something because that just doesn't make any sense to me.

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