I sous vide a lot and am familiar with the relationships between food safety, internal temperature, and time. I'll eat chicken breast cooked at a long time at 138F just to make a point.
Some large cuts of meat take a long time to cook sous vide. Imagine a prime rib for example or a whole chicken or turkey. These foods are typically stored just below the refrigeration safety zone (lets say 37F), but once they start to cook in the water bath, the temperature of the meat quickly passes 41F (entering danger zone).
In a huge cut of meat it would presumably take several hours for the center of the meat to go from 41F to 130F+. This is partly a physics question since I don't know how long it would truly take for the centre to go above 130F, but it certainly is a long while in a 140F bath.
Is it sometimes unsafe to cook large cuts of meat using sous vide techniques due to the time it would take for the meat to reach safe temperature levels?
