Smelly Boston Butts

Same thing happened to me with a pack of spares I bought. Got them from a locally owned grocery store and when I got them home and opened up to rub em down, the rack smelt of rotten eggs. Needless to say, I was weary about cooking em up. I called the store and talked with the head butcher and he had me bring back the rack so he could give it an official inspection. He took one wiff and said, "Nope! Don't eat those!" and handed me 3 fresh cut racks free of charge plus his personal business card. Told me that next time I needed an order of meat, just head to the butcher counter instead of the freezer, show them his card, and they would cut it fresh for me right then and there with an added 10% off!! I've been getting my meat from there ever since, minus the 10% off.

Just goes to show you that with good, friendly, customer service you can keep a customer even after they have a bad experience with a product. For those also in St. Louie who might be curious, the store I'm talking about is a Dierbergh's Market. :grin:

I got a rotten pork loin from Sam's once. It looked fine, I stored it properly and the cryovac was still intact. The smell almost knocked me over when I opened it.

Same problem with one of the three packages of spares last weekend. All came from same store, same sell by date, etc., but one stunk terrible. Saved the tag and store refunded price. Not hard to tell if pork is bad. Any funky smell and I don't use it, not worth the risk.

I'm going to be the dummy to ask here but how should pork smell right out of cryovac? Any smell at all? I did a butt afew weeks back and it had a slight odor. After washing I could smell it just a tad. Not an offputting smell or anything like that.

It smoked up well. I tried it out on the wife with no ill effects so I chowed down.

ps: just kidding about the wife part ;D

It did turn out good.

Agree with all the good info you have already received. If it smells bad after a few minutes out of the cryo it's time to throw.
Had some spares in the fridge for 4-5 days, not past date, but they smelled bad! Really was looking forward to the ribs and I had the uds gettin hot, so I ran to kroger to pick up some ribs. Smoked the bad ones on the lower rack while the new ones where on the top rack. My dog ate well for a few days!!!
He seemed to really like Q. Smart dog!

Toast, often pork that comes out of plastic has a funk to it, it can linger a bit, but, should dissapate after a few to several minutes. I always wash all of the meat I buy, and I now give it a quick scrape as well. If the smell persists after washing and scraping, I return it.

At RD, the stores use the Julian Calender for dating their meats. Today is day 342. If you still have the label, you can compare that number with today's and see if the date was past due. Also, those numbers on the packages reflect when the meats get weighed and put on the shelf. The cases still have the kill dates on them. It is possible for the case to sit a while unsold and then the meats put on the shelf with a current date. Going 5 days out from the date on the meat may be risky. I usually buy my butts for competitons from RD on Wednesdays before the comp.

It is great that they took care of you, no questions asked. I have had great experiences at RD.

Benny