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Slow Cooker Safety
Peccavi
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The weather has cooled down, and I've currently got a stew going while I'm at work. In the past I've always used plenty of liquid and ended up with a soupy meal. This time I've only used 1 small can of broth, because my understanding is that basically all the ingredients (beef, potatoes, onions, celery) are going to add their own liquid to the dish while cooking.
My safety concern is that the broth wasn't enough to cover the ingredients, and that the slow cooking method uses that liquid to quickly transfer heat, limiting the amount of time bacteria can breed. My question is even if some of the food stays in the USDA danger zone of ~140° for an extended period, spending the next 8+ hours at 165°+ should still kill off the bacteria and make it safe, right? Not a microbiologist so there may plenty of bad info here.
My safety concern is that the broth wasn't enough to cover the ingredients, and that the slow cooking method uses that liquid to quickly transfer heat, limiting the amount of time bacteria can breed. My question is even if some of the food stays in the USDA danger zone of ~140° for an extended period, spending the next 8+ hours at 165°+ should still kill off the bacteria and make it safe, right? Not a microbiologist so there may plenty of bad info here.
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I've been using a slow cooker for years, and I don't think I've ever added enough liquid to submerge the ingredients.
No microbiologist either, but I'm pretty sure spending 8+ hours at 165+ should be sufficient to kill off any bacteria and with modern food safety standards you shouldn't have anything to worry about unless you left your meat on the counter overnight (thus allowing/encouraging microbes to breed and their excretions to build up, since that's not going to be taken care of by heat).
Toxins from the microbes tend to be more dangerous than the microbes themselves. The liquid also doesn't need cover the food, the whole chamber heats up to the temperature fairly quickly because it's a small confined space. And whatever liquid you do have in there will quickly transfer the heat from the cooking elements.
I'm obviously no food scientist or anything, but it's extremely unlikely you'll get sick from that.
If the long time makes you uncomfortable, an instant pot does what a slow cooker does but in about 1/10 the time.
Now Bowen is totally right that the issue isn't really the microbes still being around but what they might have left behind. If a lot of time passes where they're in a good temperature to grow they may leave behind a significant quantity of waste products that are not good for people. Rice is supposedly a big culprit of this when reheated.
As for the unsubmerged bits that feels real easy to test if you've got a thermometer around but I'd be real surprised if they were that different in a sealed crock pot.
Went home for lunch and my kitchen smells amazing, so I'm really looking forward to tonight!
This is the best part about slow cookers.
Coming home after a long day to a house that smells amazing and a meal that's 90% done.