[ricardobeat]

I’m curious, there is no right time for safe consumption with sous vide, if the temperature is high enough (>53C), just avoid turning it off with the food still inside. If the temperature is kept constant, remove immediately at any point for serving, or into an ice bath. 72h or even 96h cooks are very common.

At 16C you’re definitely breeding a nasty bacterial soup, it’s probably just having a slow start due to being sterilized initially. The plastic is also slightly porous and stuff will start leaking in & out until the water is dirty.

The Sous Vide Everything channel on YouTube has an experiment cooking a brisket for a month. It works, but you end up with terrible tasting mush.

[ipspam]

My apologies, I was referring to immediately putting sous vide items in a 50+% ice bath. I had turned off the Sous Vide and forgot about it. When I came back, the 10 gallon bucket was close to room temperature 24 hours later.

Upon further reading, it appears I could have served it immediately. Maybe. But the warm pasturization won't kill certain bacteria which can then proliferate. Which is why transiting the danger zone of 140f down to 40f very fast is necessary.

"Moreover, while keeping the food sealed in plastic pouches prevents recontamination after cooking, spores of Clostridium botulinum, C. perfringens and B. cereus can all survive the mild heat treatment of pasteurization. Therefore, after rapid chilling, the food must either be frozen or held at

    below 36.5°F (2.5°C) for up to 90 days,
    below 38°F (3.3°C) for less than 31 days,
    below 41°F (5°C) for less than 10 days, or
    below 44.5°F (7°C) for less than 5 days

to prevent spores of non-proteolytic C. botulinum from outgrowing and producing deadly neurotoxin (Gould, 1999; Peck, 1997)." [1]

[1] https://www.cheftalk.com/threads/sous-vide-botulism.63351/