Can meat be safety cooked in a low temperature oven?
Jane Jensen (Sheboygan County) asked about a recipe for “Stay in Bed Stew” for the local HCE cookbook. The recipe calls for stew meat and a variety of vegetables with tapioca for thickening. The ingredients are put in a casserole, covered tightly and baked at 250°F for 5 hours. Is this safe? Jane correctly noted that the USDA minimum for cooking turkey or roast is an oven set at 325°F. While we normally indicate 325°F as a minimum oven temperature, recent research leads me to say that I think that the stew recipe is safe (it’s using an oven sort of like a crock pot). Here’s why: In a covered casserole such as this, the dish is being cooked in a moist heat environment; whereas, when a roast or turkey is cooked in an oven, the environment is much drier. Moist heat is more lethal to microbes than dry heat because moist air carries heat more effectively than dry air. Think of when you hold your hand over a boiling kettle, it’s impossible to hold it there for long without really burning you
