Explain how “high meat” works

[Colibri]

@Mangetout

Probably the most familiar fermented animal product is going to be Thai fish sauce - fish are salted and pressed in wooden barrels - the salt doesn’t exactly preserve them - it just limits the range of microorganisms that are involved in the process (I think it’s mostly enzymatic fermentation anyway, but not sure).

I mention this because this ingredient is so commonplace. Controlled fermentation or aging of other kinds of meat isn’t that weird an idea.

Even more familiar is Worcestershire sauce, which contains fermented anchovies.

[Darren_Garrison]

Speaking of rotten fish juice, the Classical world revolved around it.

[Saint_Cad]

@md2000

During the tunagate scandal decades ago in Canada (Dept of Fisheries overruling health inspectors who had failed tuna for processing using the “nose test”) it was pointed out by one of the expert commentators that if properly cooked to kill bacteria, even fecal matter would be perfectly safe to eat (although unappetizing in the extreme). Apparently that’s what the tuna tasted like…

Except that does’t account for the enterotoxin the bacteria leaves behind like botulism.

[swampspruce]

Hákarl, A Poem by Norman Gibson*…

Stinky predator,
Hanging for weeks in a shed.
I’ll have the salad.

*Not really, but I hear it in his voice; such are my muses.

[Colophon]

@DavidwithanR

… which is poisonous if you don’t do the fermentation. The Greenland shark’s meat contains some kind of dangerous compound - I forget what, but it’s due to a biological oddity and not pollution or something - and completing the fermentation stage makes it safe to eat.

I’d love to now how they discovered this.

“Hey, Snorri. You know that shark meat? The stuff that makes you really sick if you eat it?”

“Yeah?”

“Well there’s a whole load of it here that’s been lying around rotting for a few months. Smells kinda like drain cleaner. Want to try a bit?”