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I started marinating some almost-thawed chicken and skirt steak in the refrigerator on Monday. It's Saturday, and I still haven't gotten around to cooking the meat. Is the meat still safe to cook and eat?

I made several different marinades consisting of lime juice, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and pepper. I'm not sure if that makes a difference.

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9 Answers 9

I can't see any reason for the marinating itself to make any difference. If it's safe to leave the (un-marinated) meat in the same conditions for the same length of time, then it's safe to marinate it for that long.

Five days in the refrigerator is definitely stretching it for chicken - usually no more than a few days is recommended, and that's assuming it was fresh when you bought it (not a day before the sell-by date). Even if it's safe, it's not going to be very good. I've accidentally left raw chicken in the refrigerator and forgotten about it before, and it started to smell "off" after about 4 days. I hate to say it, but I wouldn't use it at this point.

As for the steak, you're probably okay, because you only have surface bacteria, but I would cook it well and right away. Again, most cooks I know will recommend no more than a few days in the fridge.


P.S. I've heard people say that weak acids such as lime juice "preserve" the meat, but never from a reliable source; even if it worked, every marinade is different and it would be nearly impossible to predict the exact amount of time it preserves for. You have no idea how much bacteria existed at the outset, and even if the marinade somehow helped to inhibit growth of new bacteria, the "spoiled-ness" of raw meat doesn't come from the bacteria itself but from the toxins they leave behind. It's not a requirement for the bacteria to multiply in order for the food to spoil, if enough existed in the first place.

Unless somebody has it on good authority that marinating makes any significant difference, I refuse to put any stock in that bit of folk wisdom and recommend that others be equally skeptical.

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While health concerns for storing meat are very real, in the scope of this question it's actually not an issue. No amount of time you are going to marinate something that will yield a good result is going to pose a health hazard unless your meat is near expiration to begin with. Consider the following:

  1. For most marinades, you will get very little difference flavor-wise from 20 minutes or several hours. In fact, you will get the most flavor by doing a short marinating right before cooking, then reapplying a coating of the marinade just before the food is done cooking.

  2. For marinades that are meant to soak for more than a few hours, they generally call for about 24 hours. This is not an unsafe length of time. Longer than 24 hours is going to have no positive effects on your food...

  3. UNLESS you happen to be brining the meat. For brining you may be leaving your meat sitting for much longer, but it is in solution specifically designed to preserve the meat and kill bacteria.

So all in all, as long as you follow general health and safety principles with your food, you'll be just fine.

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if you have too much soy sauce then the salt in it will start to preserve the meat, and if you marinate it for too long it will end up like eating peat bog man. I've had this just overnight from a soy and ginger marinade with beef.

In general though I would think that the beef will be ok, but I would be less certain about the chicken. It probably depends on how fresh the meat was in the first place.

Smell it and look at it. If it looks and smells ok, then its probably good. Any doubts and bin it.

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It may depend on the quality of poultry in your area; in my side of the world, industrial poultry meat is riddled with salmonella and lysteria, so keeping raw chicken for more than a day or two is a death wish.

Having said that, in the past I've marinated chicken thighs in a lemon-white wine marinade for almost 36 hours and I'm still alive, so... :)

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You can store marinated poultry in your refrigerator for 2 days. Beef, veal, pork, and lamb roasts, chops, and steaks may be marinated up to 5 days. (From http://www.foodsafety.gov/blog/marinades.html)

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You were keeping your meat cold in a high-salt, high-acid environment, so I wouldn't be too worried about pathogens. This doesn't mean you're absolutely safe -- there are no absolutes in food safety, even with fresh-killed meat. But, given the conditions you described, it should be safe.

However, I cannot imagine that meat would be any good after marinating for 5 whole days. After 24 hours, the marinade will really start to ruin the texture of your meat.

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I've marinated chicken for a week and put it on the grille and it is soooooo good. I agree the smell test is the best thing and I always throw out the marinade.

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If the marinade is an acid base—like lemon/lime for example—after a couple of hours the acid begins to break the protein-bond of the meat, making it tougher as more time passes. In this case, don't marinate the meat for more than 2 hours.

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I just left the butcher shop and he told me that you can marinate beef for 27 days in allegro which I do not belive

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