Bad Gumbo

[traveylin]

Last night we made about 10 gallons of gumbo for a feed at noon today and placed it in the refrigerator for safekeeping overnight. This morning at 700 am the pot was taken out of refrigeration to transport to the feed site and was noticed that the contents had not gotten cold and was bubbling up. In 50 years of cooking I have never had a toxic dish, but was quick to declare this a disaster before serving. My studied evaluation leads me to believe that we did not get the pot up to boiling prior to storing in the refrigerator. The overnight storage allowed fermentation to occur. Refrigerator was operating properly, but the very large pot size did not allow for cooling in the center.
With lots of Clorox clean up, a new batch was generated that meets quality criteria.

Very very unusual to have a bad batch,,, and then to diagnose and dump prior to serving. Any body else had experience with declaring prepared food unsafe to eat??

I spent 20 years in developing countries and was on the lookout for fermented stuff and am sensitive to the issue...

pops

[Spleenstomper]

My mother had the same thing happen once to her gumbo. We never figured out what happened.

[mockturtle]

Were there any canned ingredients in it?

[DutchmenSport]

Oh wow! Why not just let it continue to ferment and then you'd have gumbo moonshine!

[Javi1]

I'm thinking you got something else going on there, I've eaten gumbo that sat out on the back of the stove for a week just re-heating it for a meal and putting the lid back on it then shove it to the back of the stove. Never got sick that I noticed... We done the same with red beans and fatback and even beef stew.

[mdamerell]

It was unrealistic to expect a 10 gal pot of gumbo to properly cool overnight in the fridge. Too much mass. The outside cooled and insulated the inner core. Here are some links to help you.


NY State Health Dept.

Food Preparation Safety

Hope this helps.