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Why is it dangerous to eat meat which has been left out and then cooked?
How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer?

I bought meat, family pack size of chuck or top sirloin at 5pm yesterday and forgot it in the car until 12 noon today. It was a sunny evening yesterday but cold night and morning. Is it safe to still cook and eat? It was cold when my husband found it, still pretty pink and didn't smell.

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@Mary- welcome to the site! We get a lot of questions along this vein. The short answer is that leaving ground beef above 40F for a couple hours is very dangerous. See the answers to the questions above for details. – Sobachatina Mar 22 '12 at 21:47
Also, though the general rule is 2 hours, that's at room temperature. At 90°F, as it likely was during the sunny afternoon in your car, its one hour. See also cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/12992/… – derobert Mar 22 '12 at 21:54
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This is thoroughly explained in the food-safety tag wiki. – Aaronut♦ Mar 22 '12 at 23:01

marked as duplicate by Mien, Sobachatina, derobert, Aaronut♦ Mar 22 '12 at 23:00

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