The Great Canned Chicken Leg Experiment

“Introduction:

This is an experiment that I've been meaning to try for several months, since I first got my foodsaver vacuum sealer. The idea is to see if it is possible to "can" food in a vacuum bag, so that it does not need refrigeration. I've checked a few sources on canning, and I can't see any reason why this wouldn't work, so I figured we'd give it the scientific method once-over.

Subject:

A chicken leg - smoked in the testor's grill-smoker, finished in the oven at 400 degrees, and coated in a lemon-ginger glaze.

Control:

An identical leg, vacuum-packed and frozen in the testor's freezer.

Method:

The subject leg, after being smoked, glazed and baked was allowed to cool next to the control leg while the testor and his wife ate the non-experiment legs with a side of garlic-paprika mashed potatoes and a green salad. Next, the legs were both identically vacuum sealed in foodsaver bags. The control leg was placed in the freezer, and the subject leg was treated as follows:

The ends of the subject leg's bag were sealed again, to better ensure a complete, bacteria-proof seal.
Water was heated to a fast rolling boil.
The subject leg and bag were placed in the boiling water for 15 minutes. It is not certain that the water was at canning temperatures, since the testor only had a meat thermometer that reads up to 200 degrees. The thermometer was, however, well past it's hottest reading. For the purposes of this experiment, it should be noted that the testor wanted to see if this was possible at home without special equipment, so he used an ordinary gas stove and a stainless steel pot to achieve the hottest possible temperature.
The subject was then removed from boiling water and allowed to cool.

Anticipated results:

If the water reached temperatures high enough to destroy any remaining bacteria in the bag and leg, the food will remain unchanged for two weeks inside the bag, at which time the testor will open it and smell it. If The smell from inside the bag induces no vomiting, nausea, or other negative reactions from the testor, the outcome will be deemed a marginal success based on further testing.

If the water was not sufficient to destroy all bacteria in the bag, the leg may or may not show obvious signs of spoilage through the clear plastic. Should there be obvious signs of spoilage, the testor will hide it from his wife, and throw the bag away, unopened. The experiment will be treated as a failure.

The testor has yet to determine how he will judge the final outcome of the experiment. If the leg is apparently unspoiled, the testor's neighbor's barking dog may be a good subject to allow a taste test, after which one could observe him for signs of food poisoning, but the legal and moral implications of this have the testor concerned. Further thought should be given to the final test of effectiveness. Any input would be appreciated.”

“I can't wait for the results!!”

“Observations:

1. The neighbor's dog is barking especially loudly and consistently today.
2. The chicken leg appears unchanged by sight.
3. Poking the bag produces no observable sign of spoilage.
4. the bag's seals seem to be in good shape, and there is no air inside the bag.

Note:
Due to some discoloration caused by the smoking procedure, the subject may, actually be harder to judge for spoilage by sight than previously thought.”

“My advice: if it smells good, eat it!
Seriously though, my wife and I do a lot of canning. Boiling water is sufficient. I would have to seriously question whether the inside of the bag was properly sterilized.
Sounds like an interesting experiment. Keep us posted.”

“You allowed the test leg to cool? I think the point of canning is you have to put the stuff in the jars while its hot, and it cools inside the jars, and sealing itself. Hmmm, I wonder if this method will work. You really only need a day for chicken to really stink up the place, two weeks might actually kill you. :)”

“If the chicken smells like rotting fish when you pull it out of the bag, feed it to the neighbor's dog!”

“Well, if you really wanted to safely test for bacteria both bags should be opened at the same time and the contents of both seperately and sanitarily swabbed and the swabs cultured. Basically, plate it out and see what grows. If the growth from both is not significantly different then you really could be on to something here.

I don't think I would ever can meat without a pressure cooker but that's just MHO.”

“If it makes you violently ill after you eat it, be sure to take pictures.”

“Yeah, smiley, that's how you produce a vacuum in a jar: by letting a hot liquid cool. This bag was already vacuum packed.

FG, the heat from the boiling water should have killed anything iside the bag as well as inside the chicken...”

“Good point about the pressure cooker for meat, Skully.”

“Skully, if this fails, that will be the next experiment.”

“Just make sure that you open it outside!”

“Botulism can occur in canned meats, and may not be visible or smellable. Some botulism/canning resources”

“Ahh... if botulism were such a threat, there’d be like almost no Amish left.








Hey, wait a minute.”

“Be very, very afraid!”

“You need a test case. I'd give the chicken leg to the neighbor's barking dog. If he lives you're on to something. If he dies you don't have to listen to it's constant barking.”

“Just make sure the dog signs the waiver before it croaks!”

“Holy $hit, a croaking dog!”

“Ummm...product of a genetics experiment?”

“Next experiment . . . pressure sealing the dog.”

“Dogs can eat things that make people sick - they're scavengers.

Take the chicken leg to work and get the office food scrounger to try it - unless thats you, or you like the guy/girl.”

“the amish must use good technique. In Alaska, a couple of people die every year from canned meat.”

“Very cool experiment, Phaedrus! Might I recommend writing a letter to President Bush? Perhaps he'll allow you to test the chicken leg on some Al Qaeda prisoners (they eat meat, right)?”

“Heat won't destroy those prions, though, will they Skully?

(Mad Chicken Disease?)”

“Prions skeer me! (whimper)”

“This is very interesting. I feel like we are watching the first shuttle launch. I pray it works. It is great to see science succeed!”

“There have been cases of transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease where the transmission vector was autoclave-sterilized surgical instruments. They were used during the brain surgery of a CJD patient, then autoclaved and used again on another brain surgery. It's now standard practice to discard surgical instruments used in brain surgery.

Prions are scary.”

“Once again I am amazed and impressed - not by just the amount of information - but its quality as well. Personally, I have had poor results with large chunks of vegetables bottled in a boiling water bath. I'd be even more nervous about large chunks of meat.

Like Skully, I'd definitely go with a pressure canner - but this might be too hot for the bags (dunno). I do know some people here that can meat (mostly game) with boiling water, but they boil it for one hellishly long time and the texture and taste leave a lot to be desired.

BTW, I use the oven for bottling tomatoes - no need for the big cauldron - equal time at 250°F (I even use only low-acid plum tomatoes and have never had a problem).”

“Yes, CJD is an interesting acronym. How about PERV?

(Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus)”

“Endogenous (a.) a.
1. Increasing by internal growth and elongation at the summit, instead of externally, and having no distinction of pith, wood, and bark, as the rattan, the palm, the cornstalk.
2. Originating from within; increasing by internal growth.



Pith?

Call Marvin!”

“I've canned spaghetti sauce by putting the jar and lid in boiling water to sterilize them, then putting the sauce in the jar fresh from being cooked. It's kept for at least two weeks, probably up to a month. People have told me it's not a good idea, so I stopped doing it and freeze the stuff now. But I never had a reaction I knew about. There is always the possibility it fried my brain and I've hallucinated everything that's happened since then. That might explain a lot.”

“Everything's better...
With Bubonic on it”

“Observations:

1. The testor's wife woke him last night because she wanted him to go to the neighbor's house and ask him to shut up his dog. It is possible that the dog is having a fit about the other neighbor's cat, who was found sitting on the fence in my backyard. When the cat was shooed and the dog told to shut up, the testor was able to sleep through the night without further interruption.
2.Noticed a very small bubble of air in the bag on very close inspection this morning. It is possible that this bubble was missed on previous inspection. Close observation of this bubble will be conducted from this point.
3. Subject appears otherwise unchanged.
4. Bag seals seem to be in good order.”

“Perhaps the cat should be enlisted as a test subject as well as the dog...”

“Bubble=bad news. Best to open experiment outside, with wind blowing away from testor.”

“Could the bubble be a collection of gasses eminating from any growing bacteria??”

“Either that, or it wasn't expunged during the vacuum process. Either way, it's bad cess, Lassie!”

“Actually, if it's just air that was trapped and not pulled when vacuuming, that's okay. The other is the worry at this point. Also, if any one of the seals is allowing in air, it would also allow in bacteria.

If this bubble grows, there's trouble in chickentown.”

“this should be the next reality series! "Growing in the fridge" We place our cameras in the refrigerators in workplaces across America and through timelapse photography we see the kind of science experiments that make your work fridge smell like a morgue at low tide”

“Oh man, this could be like that website where the guy filmed a decomposing steak in time lapse.”

“Great idea! You know the scary part is when you know there was something growing in the back of the fridge yesterday, and when you open it today, the container next to the growing one is gone!”

“I have a candidate in my company fridge right now. It's been there for, oh, about two months now. It's pretty fuzzy. I opened it to make sure it wasn't mine.

That was two weeks ago.”

“How about the fungus that grows in coffee pots left over vacation? yuck.”

“mmmmmmmmmmm! YUMMY!

Because I'm trying to get kinda buff I bring food to work, it makes me sick when I open the fridge.... it's May and I wouldn't be surprised to see a carton of egg nog in there....”

“If you left air in there it would be bad news for anaerobic botulism bugs, right?”

“It it doesn't work try foil pouches (boiled first) next time!”

“"If you left air in there it would be bad news for anaerobic botulism bugs, right?"
Violin
12:22:26 PM
05/23/02


Only until aerobic bacteria consumed the oxygen, then the botulism could take off. The spores aren't killed by air, only the bacteria.”

“Just eat it and get it over with!”

“Observations:

1. No barking from the dog next door.
2. The subject looks the same as ever - no color changes.
3. Poking the bag and shifting its contents where possible, reveals that some of the small amount of liquid inside the bag has congealed slightly. This could be due to the cool temperature in the kitchen where the testor made his observations this morning.
4. The bag's seals seem unchanged.
5. The air bubble previously reported does not appear to have expanded at all.”

“truly fascinating study.... I must be bored at work again”