I am usually scrupulous with carcass preparation and handling within the larder. It's quality food and needs to be treated as such. sadly I made several errors, compounding each other that has led me to rejecting a whole carcass.
Nice clean shot on a stag, high lung but a clean gralloch. Long drag over rough ground so in some areas the hair was completely removed.
Got it home OK and aitchbone hung in my chiller. at 65kg it just fiitted.
Checked chiller temperature a couple of days later, running a bit warm so reduced it.
Came to skin on Saturday morning - nearly frozen. Away for weekend, so tweaked temperature.
Skinning tonight, temp at 7, immediately I don't like the feel of the meat probably had ice thawing above it and dripping on, no smell, but just not right.
Skinning - lots of gas bubbles under the skin and those areas of big hairless the skin was very thin and dry. Meat looking pale and frankly not pleasant. So it's off to the zoo with it. I suspect some bacterial contamination has got in through the thin skin.
My mistakes:
1. Not taking the dead sled to reduce the damage of a long drag
2. Not taking it to a dealer as that size is really too big to deal with neatly (but It was shot Sunday, no chance to get it anywhere till Wednesday)
3. Not repeatedly checking the fridge. I had to wedge the door shut as it was so big and didn't want the faff of having to force it closed. I won't be trusting the display temperature on its own in future.
4. Should probably have skinned it Friday night and broken it down Saturday morning (but we were away over the weekend and I was out Friday night too) I could have deal with this on Wednesday as I was off, but I wanted it to hang longer.
In terms of HACCP, lots of things all went wrong leading to rejection. So while the rules for meat hygiene can seem a real pain, especially when you are starting out, they are there for a reason. A bit of thinking about the logistics would have been wise.
Of course the real mistake was shooting the damn thing in the first place.
Nice clean shot on a stag, high lung but a clean gralloch. Long drag over rough ground so in some areas the hair was completely removed.
Got it home OK and aitchbone hung in my chiller. at 65kg it just fiitted.
Checked chiller temperature a couple of days later, running a bit warm so reduced it.
Came to skin on Saturday morning - nearly frozen. Away for weekend, so tweaked temperature.
Skinning tonight, temp at 7, immediately I don't like the feel of the meat probably had ice thawing above it and dripping on, no smell, but just not right.
Skinning - lots of gas bubbles under the skin and those areas of big hairless the skin was very thin and dry. Meat looking pale and frankly not pleasant. So it's off to the zoo with it. I suspect some bacterial contamination has got in through the thin skin.
My mistakes:
1. Not taking the dead sled to reduce the damage of a long drag
2. Not taking it to a dealer as that size is really too big to deal with neatly (but It was shot Sunday, no chance to get it anywhere till Wednesday)
3. Not repeatedly checking the fridge. I had to wedge the door shut as it was so big and didn't want the faff of having to force it closed. I won't be trusting the display temperature on its own in future.
4. Should probably have skinned it Friday night and broken it down Saturday morning (but we were away over the weekend and I was out Friday night too) I could have deal with this on Wednesday as I was off, but I wanted it to hang longer.
In terms of HACCP, lots of things all went wrong leading to rejection. So while the rules for meat hygiene can seem a real pain, especially when you are starting out, they are there for a reason. A bit of thinking about the logistics would have been wise.
Of course the real mistake was shooting the damn thing in the first place.
