Sous vide cooking and foodborne illness
 

Have any of you experienced with sous vide cooking ever experienced and food poisoning? I'm coming an elk roast sous vide as wet speak but gotta say, seems like a great way to developing good poisoning. I like my Elk medium rare or less cooked so the temperatures required and the time required appear to be slightly unsafe. What do you guys think?

My Elk is in at 135 ° F for 24 hours.

Been cooking sous vide since the fall. Results are great, best gamr steaks I've ever had.
Theres lots of good sources of info on the safety aspect, but basically pasteurization happens at around 126 degrees - it just takes a bit of time. With sous vide, since you're holding the meat at that temp for longer, unlike grilling where you remove the heat as soon as that temp is reached, its actually safer using sous vide.

That said, for a good chunk of elk at med rare, 24 hours is excessive. Unless I'm doing something like shank,that benefits from low and slow, I normally do med rare elk for under 2 hours. Might increase that to 4 if it was a really thick piece, but med rare cuts can get mushy if cooked to long. I normally do steaks or roasts at 128, then finish in a pan for a good crust.

Unless it is a mammoth sized roast you will be fine but it will likely be a bit mushy due to cooking so long. For a large roast 5-8 hours is usually about right. I think I used to have a chart for venison cook times to reach full pasteurization but I can't find it at the moment.

If you follow this link it has a ton of great info regarding times/temps/thickness of other meats though. douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html

Table 5.1 shows the time for beef which would probably be closest.

Thanks.

I'll see how it is tonight. Hopefully not too mushy. Reason being for the long time is because it's a tough Elk and I was hoping it would help.