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Slimy sausages


Hest88

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I admit; I'm not good with sausages. I think of them as preserved items so I was under the impression they last a good long time. Anyway, we bought some bockwurst a week ago and have had them in the frig. I just took them out of the butcher wrap and the casings are all slimy now. Does that mean we shouldn't try cooking them?

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I admit; I'm not good with sausages. I think of them as preserved items so I was under the impression they last a good long time. Anyway, we bought some bockwurst a week ago and have had them in the frig. I just took them out of the butcher wrap and the casings are all slimy now. Does that mean we shouldn't try cooking them?

Depends what kind they are?

Bruce Frigard

Quality control Taster, Château D'Eau Winery

"Free time is the engine of ingenuity, creativity and innovation"

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

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Probably just means they yielded some water. I'd throw em on the grill and then slice into one and then taste. If they taste OK, eat em. If they taste rancid....

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

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What do they smell like? You gotta hold your nose really close and inhale hard. If they pass the test before you cook them, smell them again after. Then do the taste test.

FWIW, I've eaten sausages that passed the two smell tests but only after chewing them in the mouth did I begin to notice that not-quite-right "smell", but I didn't get sick from them though.

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Thanks everyone. They smelled fine and I cooked them until they were rubbery. However, my husband didn't like the way the casings had bubbled so he threw them out. Personally I think the bubbling had more to do with the overcooked, burnt casings than any weird gaseous emissions, but oh well. So, no health problems and I have no idea if they were really edible.

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Here's my two cents':

If I question the freshness or edibility of raw meat, I toss it. Yes, it's a heartbreak to waste the money (and sometimes the opportunity for a really unique item), but I find I don't enjoy it one bit if the freshness is in question.

Most recently, I had a cry-o-vac pork butt that had been in the fridge for a week. I took off the wrapper and was amazed at how slimy and gooey it was. Rinsed it off with a lot of water and roasted it. After it was done, I was annoyed to find myself unable to eat it, always looking for something "wrong" with the taste. My gut feeling was, this has been in the fridge for a week, it was real slimy, it's not good.

End of story.

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Here's my two cents':

If I question the freshness or edibility of raw meat, I toss it.  Yes, it's a heartbreak to waste the money (and sometimes the opportunity for a really unique item), but I find I don't enjoy it one bit if the freshness is in question.

Most recently, I had a cry-o-vac pork butt that had been in the fridge for a week.  I took off the wrapper and was amazed at how slimy and gooey it was.  Rinsed it off with a lot of water and roasted it.  After it was done, I was annoyed to find myself unable to eat it, always looking for something "wrong" with the taste.  My gut feeling was, this has been in the fridge for a week, it was real slimy, it's not good.

End of story.

Ya gotta get over that or your not gonna eat. Natural and manmade disaster's will happen and those who know how to keep food the old fashioned ie confit, etc, will eat. You go to the Supermarket every day your hungry. Yeah I'm tryin to change. cry-o-vac is always slimy what do you think a vacuum is? :laugh::laugh::laugh:

Edited by winesonoma (log)

Bruce Frigard

Quality control Taster, Château D'Eau Winery

"Free time is the engine of ingenuity, creativity and innovation"

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

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  • 4 weeks later...

I used to be in the go-ahead-and-risk-it school, until I ate some slimy sausages and had a full blown allergic reaction--real allergy here, like the way some people are to bee stings, where it can close your airway and kill you if you don't have an epinephrine pen to jam into your thigh right nearby.

Trust me this is a pain in the ass, because it can be very difficult to find out what you are actually allergic to, and very difficult to completely avoid it, even if you know what it is. Every time you eat out, you are counting on some underpaid server to be accurate about whether your allergen food is in the stuff you're ordering.

A lot of allergy specialists in the US are more interested in billing for bee-sting allergy shots (very profitable repeat business) than in playing allergen detective for your problem (customer stops coming once allergen is found).

If food prep is your career or your treasured hobby, food allergies can bring all that to a screaming halt. One of the members of this site is a chef who developed an allergy to mushrooms---which made him unemployable!

For people who love food enough to contribute to this site, the watchword has to be

WHEN IN DOUBT, THROW IT OUT!

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My understanding is that bacteria in large numbers will feel slimy and is the reason that an older raw chicken will feel that way. Cooking the sausage hot enough and long enough should be ok but I'm paranoid and would likely toss them.

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