So, just got an alert that my power has been out at my home for an hour, and I won’t be home for another 7 hours. Do I just resume where it left off, or will the meat be bad?
Medium rare chuck roast, was around 16 hours into the cook of 29 total hours.
What temperature did it achieve before the power went out, and what temperature was it when you got home?
I haven’t been home to check. It’s currently in the water at my house at room temp (75~). Will have been in it for 7-8 hours.
The only way it may have been ok would have been if you had an insulated vessel…maybe.
I found this out the hard way the first time I had a power outage during a cook - lost 3 racks of ribs.
The rule most people follow for meat (uncured) - is, after 2 hours in the danger zone - don’t serve it to anyone with compromised immune systems, after 4 hours - toss it out.
It doesn’t matter how expensive a cut of meat it is - after 4 hours at room temperature it’s really not worth the gamble.
Do you have the Wifi APC? If you have it connected to your network and you can connect to it remotely, as soon as the power is restored (provided your home network comes up ok), you should be able to connect to it and see what the temperature is.
If you live in an area that you’re prone to a lot of power outages, you should get yourself a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) - for the APC, you should get a 1500VA unit. If you do, make sure you connect to it with a laptop and use the software to change the default settings (they normally turn off after 20 minutes) - you want it to keep running until it runs out of battery.