BIG BIG PROBLEM! PLEASE HELP!

[Papa Rick]

Last night I put 4 Boston Butts on in my #2 at 11 pm cst.  This morning checked them at 7:30 an WOW, worst nightmare there is no power going to my smoker??  Checked the plug in and it had tripped overnight.  My internal probes were all at the 115 to 120 range.  Reset the plug and cranked it up wide open to get the temp back up ASAP!

My question is am I better off throwing them away to be safe, or would they be all right?  Never had this happen before.

 

[Papa Rick]

Better safe than sorry.  I pulled them and neighbor's dogs will eat like a king today.  I was smoking them one and when I told them what happened and I was pulling them, they said their dogs would love to have them if I didn't have plans otherwise for them. 

 

[smokeasaurus]

That sucks but better to live to smoke another day

 

[old sarge]

Now that you solved the food safety problem, have you determined why the circuit tripped?

 

[Papa Rick]

Hey David, have no idea other than it started raining after I went to bed.

When I got up and before I decided not to smoke them, I turned it back on for an hour and no problems.

 

[old sarge]

Rick - It could very well have been the rain.  I smoke under cover but we do get some high winds and hard rain (except this year - bone dry) and never had a breaker trip.  HOWEVER!  We have have the occasional power outage/blip, only lasts a couple of seconds but it is enough to require resetting items with a digital circuit board including my smoker.  Fortunately our outages are early morning/late afternoon.  Never had an outage during a smoke.

 

[Timinator]

I'm kind of late to the party, but no meat is going to go bad in a few hours like that.  People (your grandparents and great grandparents) used to leave food out for a whole day and sometimes over night while families came by to visit and eat.  I've yet to hear of a food poisoning case from smoking and I think just about everybody has come back to a cold smoker at one time or another.  Or you will in the future.