Help: Evaporated Water Issue

So first time using Anova I am doing a 24 hour short rib at 180 degrees. Started at 6pm yesterday and it went throughout the night and was going when I left at 8am today. Like an idiot I didnt check the water level before I left (lessoned learned) and when i got home the Anova had shut off and the water was mostly evaportated and the Anova was beeping and had shut off.

Two questions:

  1. Is there anyway to see when the Anova shut off
  2. If the meat had cooked for atleast 14 hours but was then exposed out of the water for some unknown amount of time, would it still be safe to eat if I heat for another 2-3 hours?
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Yikes! So sorry to hear this happened to you!

Regarding how to tell when it shut off… I do most cooks in a Colman 24 can cooler, with a cover of reflectix “bubble insulator” material. When the Anova is shut off the temperature of the water drops by about 3.5 degrees each hour. If you know the rate your water cools in your container you could just check the current temp and work it out based on how much it has cooled since your starting temp.

Actually, if the remaining water was still 130 degrees F or warmer when you got home - and your food was still covered - it should most certainly still be safe to eat!

Best of luck!

If vacuum sealed, my guess is that it would be OK. It would have been completely sterilised before the machine turned itself off.

Yep, for longer cooks you really want a covered vessel to minimize evaporation.

The rule of thumb is two hours in the danger zone. If you think it could have exceeded that, you really need to throw it out. (danger zone is 40F-130F).

Yeah, they really do need to have the APC notify when it stops the cook.

@AlyssaWOAH - want to add to the wish list? :slight_smile: At least that way, you’d know when the cool down started.

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I hate to be a stickler…and I agree that there’s almost certainly no significant safety issue here…but pasteurization is not even remotely the same as sterilization.

Yes, I’ll add that to the list (I actually do have a list lol). Thanks.

True, I was careless when I wrote this. The food probably won’t be completely sterile. Still, there won’t be much left that’s alive in the bag after 14 hours at 180 ºF. (Some fungi might survive this?)

And botulinum spores (among other things).