Chicken smells bad soon after cooking
Sorry for all of the detail below, but this is unusual so I want to provide a thorough description. Any idea what could be happening?
Yesterday afternoon I baked a big batch of balsamic mustard chicken. A couple of hours after it went in the fridge, I saw the baking trays on the stove, full of the sauce/juice, and realized I should pour that in with the chicken. I took out the snapwares, opened them, and out came a sulphuric odor. If raw chicken smelled like this I would throw it out. It dissipated after a minute, however, and when I smelled the chicken up close, it smelled fine.
I've been making this every week for years, this has never happened before. The chicken came from AmazonFresh and went straight in the fridge on arrival. Our fridge is very cold. It's not a new brand of chicken. The only difference this time is that I asked our nanny to make the marinade (this is her third time making it). She tends to take the chicken out of the fridge about 10 min earlier than I would, but that's it. She also hasn't nailed the immersion blender yet, so the olive oil separates from the rest of the marinade. but I can't imagine that making a difference.
I checked the snapwares again today, and one of them was free of smells, but the other released the same sulphuric smell upon opening. Both smelled fine after a minute and when smelling the chicken up close.
Thanks for reading this far and thanks for any ideas!
3 Comments
That said, the strong odors of onions and garlic and the strong taste of mustards are caused by thiols, a sulfur containing molecular group that also makes skunks stinky. It may be less to do with the chicken and more to do with the things that were added to it, especially if the preparation method was different from what was used in the past. However if you had stuck to a typical preparation method and this was not an oniony-garlicky-mustardy-cabbagey smell and more directly a smell of decomposition, it sounds like the meat may have been improperly handled at some point and would be best not consumed.