I mean, really, "bad smell", and you want to try to "save" it?
No, just no.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
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I don’t have bacteria phobia, but any sound science on food poisoning risks would be useful.
I just found this article which lists Clostridium perfringens as producing a harmful exotoxin. From there, it would be interesting to know if Clostridium perfringens likes cooked turkey (as opposed to just raw). But without a solid answer on that, I guess I will toss the turkey.
If you're able to smell the products of the bacteria, it's not safe to consume.
The smell test is step 1 in determining whether food is safe to eat, and your turkey failed this step. There's no way to know what bacteria colonized it outside of growing cultures.
You can't un-rot food.
You know what sounds like fun? Food poisoning.
- OP, probably.
What consensus? Properly cooked meat stored properly in the refrigerator should be fine for at least a week.
Of course, the true test is the sniff test, and if it smells off, that's because it's no longer safe to eat. Unless you are completely without other options, throw it out.
This should be used as an opportunity to look into why it went bad so quickly. Was it undercooked? Not sealed in an airtight container? Left out at a warm temperature all day before going in the fridge? Stuck in the fridge as a giant, hot mass, raising the temperature of the entire unit?
In a web search on how long cooked turkey lasts, the results were 3—4 days in the fridge in the first ~20 or so hits. Exceptionally, one deviant article said 5—7 days but I lost track of it.
I regret not vacuum sealing the meat, each piece individually. All was in a big zip lock. On day 1 and day 2 I opened it to pull out a piece, which was more opportunities for contamination. Some sites say there is only a 2 hour window of time to get it into the fridge after the initial cooking. In my case that was probably more like ~6 hours. So I guess I made plenty of mistakes.
And I'm assuming you opened and closed and opened and closed the fridge for other items, as well as not having perfect seals.
7 days would 100% be for very ideal if not perfect conditions.
Throw it out. Even if you killed off the bacteria, the endotoxins would remain and make you very ill.
Turkey soup!
I see this as your only option. Cook long slow and add enough spice to cover up the fridge flavor
I’d be quite happy to make soup with it. After re-roasting and boiling it, the foul odor is gone. I’m sure it would taste fine.
But some people seem convinced it cannot be salvaged by any process. If it has clostridium perfringens, even if I kill the bacteria in the recook, it would have an exotoxin that would survive any amount of cooking.
I really wish I could have easily tested or know from the odor whether clostridium perfringens was present. The odor could have come from a less dangerous bacteria but I guess it’d be a risky gamble.
Assume it will kill you.