Low & Slow: Is too low dangerous?

I'm doing some ribs using the Cook's finish-in-the-oven method, and my plan is to cook them for c. 4 hours at 250°F, to a final internal of 205°F. One of my hosts worries that this might be dangerous, microbe-wise. Any thoughts?

Geo

I don't follow. What does he/she think could be dangerous?

My understanding is that the FDA "food safety danger zone" is 40-140 degrees. Food stored in this temperature zone for more than four hours should be discarded.

My experience is that the ribs will get to 140deg in less than 2 hours in a 250deg oven or smoker. Once it gets to 140, you are past the point where you have to worry.

eatchicago wrote:My understanding is that the FDA "food safety danger zone" is 40-140 degrees. Food stored in this temperature zone for more than four hours should be discarded.

This may be obvious, but just in case... that "danger zone" is about the temperature of the food, not the temperature of the oven. a 145 degree oven, for example, or even a 185 degree oven, is way too low to cook a chicken because the chicken itself will be in the 41-140 range for far too long.

Kennyz wrote:

eatchicago wrote:My understanding is that the FDA "food safety danger zone" is 40-140 degrees. Food stored in this temperature zone for more than four hours should be discarded.

This may be obvious, but just in case... that "danger zone" is about the temperature of the food, not the temperature of the oven. a 145 degree oven, for example, or even a 185 degree oven, is way too low to cook a chicken because the chicken itself will be in the 41-140 range for far too long.

Yes, you are correct. Please change: "food stored in" to "food kept at" in my previous post. Food should not spent more than four hours AT temperatures in the danger zone.

dukesdad wrote:My experience is that the ribs will get to 140deg in less than 2 hours in a 250deg oven or smoker. Once it gets to 140, you are past the point where you have to worry.

This is the bottom line here. Geo, at 250 deg. your food will be safely out of the danger zone well before 4 hours.

But please don't sue me if you get sick.

i would guess 205 would kill just about anything.

Tnx folks! I knew I could depend on yinz for a quick and thoughtful answer.

We're at 1:15 elapsed time and the temp is already 130°F.

Geo

USDA is of course extremely conservative with its figures, but keep in mind that meat is more likely to be contaminated on exposed surfaces than its interior and your heat will reach those areas first. This would not be the case with, say, hamburger or sausages which have more surface area that have been exposed.

Mhays wrote:USDA is of course extremely conservative with its figures, but keep in mind that meat is more likely to be contaminated on exposed surfaces than its interior and your heat will reach those areas first. This would not be the case with, say, hamburger or sausages which have more surface area that have been exposed.

I know that's true for e coli, which is the main concern with beef, but is that also the case for campylobacter/salmonella/trichinella?

Not for trichinella, which lives in the meat (but is pretty rare) which affects the surfaces. Cysticercosis is also rare in the US, it's one of those things you can get from drinking contaminated water or eating fresh vegetables as well as through pork. I believe most of the other infections involving pork are spread through cross-contamination (salmonella being one) of the surfaces of the meat. Of course, I'm not a doctor, to each his own - but I'm not concerned about low and slow cooking of pork or pork that's on the rare side.

At first I thought you meant Low & Slow

No Gary, there's only one *authentic* Low & Slow, and that's you & yours! But I did have a low and slow problem of my own, which the LTHers solved nicely. [I should mention that the ribs in question got 5 hours of mesquite in a beat-up old quasi-Weber the day before I finished them off in the oven, after a 20-hour rest in the fridge. And they'd had 48 hours of resting, rubbed, in the fridge prior to that. It's a bastard method, but it does have its merits, one of which is that it's totally portable to friends' places where no proper bbq device is available.]

Geo