Pork Roast Stinks Like Ammonia

[BarneyDorfman]

I try to spend as little as possible on meat/protein, and I'm a big fat of "picnic pork shoulder roasts" (whatever the correct word is) that sell for @ 1.50/lb.  Bought one two days ago at the local grocery.  It was about 11 lbs. for about $18.00 and came packaged in a vaccum-sealed plastic bag, and had the name-brand "Tyson" on it.

 

Left it sit on the kitchen counter overnight on accident, and put it in the oven the next morning.  Figured that since it started out refrigerated it was still good the next morning.  Didn't smell when I took it out of the bag, no air bubbles in the plastic that might have indicated decomposition.  Placed it in a kitchen roasting pan with a lid and about 2" of water to keep it from scorching, and since it's going to be shredded down for pulled-pork sandwiches (salt, pepper, BBQ sauce, etc...) didn't bother to season it at all.  Pork roast, water and roasting pan.  In the oven at 350 deg. for 4 hours. and it smelled good when I pulled it out but when I cut into it and started removing the heavy layer of fat & skin from one side, the unmistakable and heavy odor of ammonia, mixed with the steamy hot pork odors.  Truly disgusting.

 

I figured, correctly, that if I let it rest for a few hours it would "air out" and taste fine, and so I did and it does.  But today I'm wondering what the stink was all about, if it was normal, and whether or not it was safe.  The fact that the per-pound price is so low ($1.50) makes me wonder if I have some kind of geriatric pig meat (one of my theories on why chicken breasts are so cheap is that they are egg-layers that are too old to lay eggs, so I wonder if cheap pork isn't cheap for the same reason).  Or what.

 

Smelling ammonia on a freshly-baked pork roast isn't normal, is it?

[gfweb]

Nope. Doubtless the product of bacteria that grew. Fortunately, whatever it was was killed by the roast and didn't produce heat-stable toxins.

[kayb]

Arkansan though I am, I don't trust anything that says Tyson on it. Factory farming at its worst.

[chileheadmike]

I've smelled off odors immediately after removing meat from cry-o-vac, but never after cooking. 

I'd 86 it.

 

And I agree with kayb, no Tyson in Chez CHM. 

[Captain]

Probably a Male pig.  I have found this a couple of times and confirmed it with the butcher.  That I will never go back to.

Only eat the females.

[btbyrd]

I couldn't imagine ever cooking raw meat that set out overnight, let alone consuming it after noticing that it reeked of ammonia . You dodged a bullet, my friend.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

What @btbyrdsaid.

 

I mostly worry about how meat has been handled before I got it. If I ever screwed up and left it out at room temp overnight, I wouldn't even try to cook it, or even open the package. I have to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo screams most of the time, but your scenario's just not safe, so I would resign myself to the loss while mentally beating myself up for such waste. But that is me, and I'm very glad that @BarneyDorfmanwas able to successfully serve this abused meat without health consequences.

 

Our ancestors managed to survive without refrigeration for millennium. They hunted and butchered large animals for their meat and feasted after the hunt. Then they would dry and/or smoke the meat, maybe preserving it with salt if they had any. They also died a lot earlier than most of us do now. No one knows how many of those prehistoric deaths can be attributed to food poisoning. My life is worth more than $18.00.

 

Also there are fates worse than death. E-coli, for instance, can leave a person alive, but perhaps wishing they weren't. Read up on this, and I'm pretty sure you'll not be cavalier about food pathogens again. With the mass slaughterhouses we have now, and one knows all the cheap meat comes through just those horrible places, it's no time to take chances on food safety.

[paul o' vendange]

Have hated it whenever I've done it, hate throwing the flesh from a once living thing out as so much garbage due to carelessness on my part, but absolutely hold to the creed "when in doubt, throw it out." 

 

I'm already very tetchy about using anything from the industrial - sorry, what Joel Salatin aptly if uncomfortingly refers to as "fecal soup" of factory hell zones - and this has only increased over the last several years, esp. since farming locally, drinking raw milk, making aged abondance-style cheeses and so forth.  Add to it the idea of leaving factory meat out overnight, no - in the bin it would go, if it were me.

 

I find ammonia a different indicator than muskiness, which is what I get in male pigs and goats (esp. the latter), anyway.  Ammonia, to me, always indicates breakdown, spoilage.  And it's dangerous.  You were very lucky.

[paulraphael]

If you're smelling ammonia, that's from spoilage bacteria. Which (probably) won't hurt you. But the conditions that allowed the stinky organisms to grow also allow the infectious and toxic organisms to grow, and these are not polite enough to warn you with smells and flavors. So yeah, you dodged a bullet.

 

I too question the idea of spending as little as possible on your protein. Stop and consider for a minute how it's possible to raise a mature pig for $1.63 a pound. Most farms can't grow lettuce for that little. Is this something you want to support? To eat?

 

I'd rather see all of us eating better-raised animals, and doing it less often.