I keep seeing the word “earthy” tossed around as a descriptor in food discussions. A thread on this board about roobiroos tea (sorry, I still can’t spell it but I have a firm policy never to look anything up!) uses the term, and in my car today I heard someone on NPR talk about how fresh ground black pepper gives your dish an earthy quality. But what are we talking about? Does “earthy” mean “tastes like dirt”? That’s kind of how it seems to me.
If so, it’s a bit vague. Are we talking red Georgia clay, which might actually be a positive thing, or mud from my boots after stomping around my neighbor’s compost pile. There would seem to be a lot of leeway here.
How are we supposed to read this? Maybe earthy flavors are like Sophie Tucker jokes, suggestive of earthly pleasures in a sly way without being flat-out obvious. What’s your take?
Yeah, I think truffle is the archetypal earthy taste.
I think it means that something tastes like we imagine dark moist fertile dirt would taste based on the smell, rather than it being how any kind of dirt actually tastes.
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I would suggest to improve the earthness and subtlety of that dish by adding a very thinly sliced raw mushroom between the arugula and the dressed beets, either the easy to find portobello or, if you get those where you live, a Boletus edulis, which is much better.
Whisky and cigars can have an earthy taste too, and in both cases it is appreciated. Whisky connoiseurs sometimes say peaty instead of earthy. I would describe the taste I mean as rich and deep, if that is any help.
I don’t know whether you have a problem with the fox tapeworm in your area, it can be a problem around here. Please make sure you avoid those!
A few thousand! Now you got me jealous!
We don’t have, though I specifically checked! Sounds like it’s an issue in eastern Montana to central Ohio and in Alaska and Canada. Thanks for the heads-up – it’s always the stuff you don’t know about that can get you, isn’t it?
Indeed! But the tapeworm is not the kind of worm you see, like the ones that chew they way through the flesh of the mushrooms, boring “tunnels”. Actually, those worms that infest mushrooms are only larvae, and usually harmless. Disgusting, perhaps, but not dangerous. We call the tapeworms worms, but a tapeworm is not really that, think perhaps of nematodes (which they aren’t either, but you get the microscopic element). They land on the mushrooms via the urine of canids (foxes here, probably coyotes in the USA too) and stay on the outside. They are microscopic at this stage of their live/host cycle. To get rid of them you can simply plunge the mushrooms in boiling water for ten seconds, that does not change the flavour much, but sterilizes the surface. That should be enough to get rid of them.
Berries that grow on the ground have the same problem, as they are mostly eaten raw, while the ones that grow further up, like raspberries, are safe, as foxes do not pee upwards. Not that I know of, anyway.
ETA: edited five times, mostly because of typos. I should concentrate more!
Well, given that a lot of things that aren’t related seem have an “earthy” taste to resident posters (truffles? bell peppers? tilapia - that’s a fish, right? Umm, cigars? We’re casting a pretty wide net here) I’m afraid I’m more confused than ever.
Possibility 1: it’s something that’s hard to pin down but “you know it when you taste it”, one of those things that serious foodies insist is real but if you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about food you might be excused if you shrug it off as hopelessly imprecise (Tastes like potting soil smells, whatever dude).
Possibility 2: it’s just a nice way of saying tastes like dirt, and I do agree some things, especially certain mushrooms, have a “did you rinse that?” tang to them which is not necessarily bad but nobody wants to admit they like eating dirty food.
If you want to take a more analytical approach, geosmin is the petrichor smell, and responsible for the earthy taste in at least some of the foods mentioned.
Checking some of the foods, it’s present in
beetroot
fish
mushrooms
spinach
lettuce
So chemically this may be a common core component. It’s produced by Streptomyces bacteria in soil.
