I have a problem which is driving me nuts. I frequently encounter meat, especially in restaurants, which to everyone else tastes fine, but which smells and tastes horrible to me. One time I was out with a whole group of people at one of those Japanese steakhouse restaurants where they chop and cook your communal meal at the table on a grill, and the chicken was so bad, it tainted everything else on my plate and I couldn’t eat it. No one else in a group of about eight people had the same complaint and they all thought I was crazy.
I can’t describe the bad taste/smell, but it is gag-inducing to various degrees. It leaves an awful aftertaste. Cooking the meat doesn’t change this quality. If I continue to try to eat the food, I cannot ignore this taste and it ruins the whole meal for me. Sometimes the flavor is only slight, and to my relief only on part of the meat, like the most outside, driest part, and doesn’t affect the rest of the food, but often, all of the food the meat has touched is similarly tainted. I really really want to be able to enjoy my food, why is this happening?
I’ve noticed only a few patterns: I detect this taste the most with stir fried chicken, but that’s because I eat a lot of stir fry. Sometimes it happens with hamburger meat. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted this with steak and never with meat my mother has cooked. (my mom has the same sensitivity) I don’t cook much myself. Ground and chopped meat seems to be the most susceptible, although I’ve had some chicken breast afflicted with this problem.
Someone once suggested that it might be freezer burn. I have a feeling it is fat in the meat that is going rancid, but I have no way of testing this theory. Why am I the only one tasting this bad awful horrible taste? What is the chemical which is making me gag?
Does anyone else have the same experience or know what I’m talking about?
Wow. That is odd. Neat, but odd. It must really put a damper on your enjoying certain types of food, but then again it may work to your advantage that you are able to avoid food that may make unsuspecting individuals sick.
A theory: It could be a sensitivity to spoilage. Then again, it could also be a sensitivity to seasoning in the meats, or possibly additives like MSG. Maybe expreiment - go out and get some plain old ground beef, chicken, etc, and also some of the same which is slightly seasoned, and see if there is anything which sets off any alarm bells.
Is it possible that it isn’t the meat itself, but something to do with a certain kind of oil used for cooking the meat? Does it ever happen, for instance, with stir-fried vegetables?
I do think some people are more sensitive to spoiled meat than others. I would say about 50% of the time I eat deli turkey at Subway or similar sandwich chain places, the meat tastes spoiled to me. Many times I’m unable to finish it. But most people seem to be perfectly fine with the taste.
I’m sure you’ve already eliminated this, but I’ll ask anyway: Are you 100% positive you aren’t experiencing a sensitivity to a certain herb, spice, or other ingredient? I like to experiment on myself, so were I in your position I would probably try different combinations of ingredients, different meat qualities, etc., to make sure that it’s actually the meat that is the problem. I’m not saying you should do that, mind you, it’s just what I would do.
I’m not sure why you think it’s that the meat is rancid; have you (and the others eating with you) gotten sick after eating meat that tastes this way? If you’re tasting it this frequently, it strikes me odd that such a high proportion of the meat you’re eating is going over.
Have you tried eating very fresh meat (i.e, fresh from the butchers/never frozen), and figured out whether the taste still exists then? If not, or if yes but the taste still exists, I’m thinking that perhaps you just don’t like the taste of meat in general - an unwitting vegetarian maybe.
I would say you have vegetarian tendencies. Really.
My experiment suggestion would be to go to a reputable butcher and get some very fresh meat. Meat that you smell before you buy it and agree is fresh. Then put it in your fridge and smell it two or three times a day. See when it starts to smelling like those other meats do to you.
I would say you are oversensitive to spoiling meat. Meat spoils from the day the animal is slaughtered (you know this, sorry). It’s just a question of when the spoilage is high enough to be dangerous to humans. Most restaurants do not buy quality meat, sorry to say. And meat from places like Walmart is about as far away from fresh as you can get. And restaurants buy meat from these places. No kidding - one time I was picking up take out from “Outback Steakhouse” and in comes an employee with some meats they picked up from Meijers. They said they hads unexpectedly run out and needed more, but it still opened my eyes to how much quality restaurants serve.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Be picky about your meat! If it tastes bad - don’t eat it! You have a gourmet tongue!
I’m 100% sure it’s not the seasoning. I’ve tasted it on plain hamburgers. I love all kinds of food, spices, etc. There are a very few spices I don’t love, like “cloves” but I can still eat something with cloves and and not be repelled by the overall experience. It’s an altogether different experience with this sharp flavor in the meat. It’s an instinctual repulsion that I’m feeling, more than just a “I don’t like this flavor” feeling. You can acquire tastes for any flavor and I have never been able to get used to the taste I’m talking about. I do like meat. I even like goat and lamb, and those have very strong flavors. I am NOT a fussy eater.
Like Blowero said, it happens frequently with deli meats and bacon too.
I’ve had “crazy noodles” in a Thai restaurant where this has happened, and the next time I order the noodles with tofu, and they are fine. The same restaurant might have chicken satay, and that’s usually o.k. too. Also, I usually don’t have the bad experience with a top notch restaurant.
The more I think about it, the more I believe the smell is a “spoiled” musty smell, kind of like a dead animal that’s sitting in the sun. I haven’t been able to identify the flavor more precisely because I don’t come into contact with a lot of dead things and it’s difficult to remember. It is a sharp, maybe slightly metallic odor, but that doesn’t even begin to describe all of it. The flavor transfers to other foods like vegetables that are cooked with the meat, so it’s definitely some chemical.
Nevertheless I have a hard time accepting the spoiled taste idea, because everyone else seems to think their food is o.k. and I feel foolish telling them I can’t even stomache mine. It is a very inconsistent thing, it’s not like every time I eat a certain dish, I taste this awful flavor.
Just today my boyfriend and I ate the same thing (made with ground turkey meat) and he seemed to think it tasted fine, and I could barely touch mine. That’s what prompted this post.
I don’t have a site. It’s experience. I live in Walmart land. The meat sucks. It tastes bad (or rather tasteless) and it spoils faster than meats I get from a decent butcher or even the local grocery store.
I am sorry I didn’t do any scientific experiments and report my findings in a reputable journal. But microbiology is not my bag.
I didn’t mean to be a prick. It’s just that, well, that’s a mighty hefty charge to level against a business. The fact is, you’re in GQ and you laid down a pretty big IMHO. Folks like to bag on Wal-Mart for undeserved reasons, which I think is unfair. There are so many perfectly legitimate reasons to pick on Wal-Mart, after all.
That being said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you did have a cite justifying what you said. Which is actually one of the reasons I challenged you. I was in the mood for some nice “they sell WHAT to their customers?!” reading. I’m sure somebody out there will come along with some nice reading for us.
For the record I’ve only eaten meat from Wal-Mart once, and it was just fine.
Rusalka have you eaten an aged new york steak? And did it have the ‘wrong’ taste you are sometimes experiencing. If you are indeed sensative to the early stages of meat going off, then an aged steak should seem awful to you. The aging of steak (and game birds) actually causes some early going off of the meat, this makes the meat tastier and sometimes more tender. Most steak eaters will prefer the taste of an aged steak to a unaged steak. If a good aged steak tastes good to you, then it isn’t a sensitivity to meat going off that you have, but perhapse to some preservative, or flavour enhancer or some such that you have.
Re: aged steak, I’ve had steak at one of those pricey steak houses, and nothing seemed wrong.
But, is all “spoilage” the same? Aren’t there all sorts of bacteria that cause spoilage? Maybe the “aging” thing with steaks is the same as when you choose certain conditions to grow cheese. I don’t have a problem with certain kinds of spoiled milk a.k.a. cheese. But, if milk is too old in my refrigerator, that’s nasty.
The spoiled taste/smell in meat I’m talking about is like the smell of that slime that is left over on a cutting board after you’ve cut chicken and you’ve left the cutting board sit out too long before washing.
True, but if it were only the dangerous sort of spoiling (which is obviously avoided in aged steak) you were tasting then the food would be making your friends sick. Do you ever get the bad taste from well cooked burgers? (Not that I advocate the cooking of well cooked burgers for anything other than health reasons)
Maybe I’m just a doubting Thomas, but it would seem to me that the first hurdle here would be proving that you’re sensitive to anything at all. I’m neurotic, so I don’t fault anyone for being just a little bit crazy.
I’ve had a parallel experience all my life, except with milk, not meat. The main common milk-spoilage bacterium releases a smell as it does its dirty work that I’m exquisitely sensitive to; as a kid I could sniff some milk and my stomach would roll in disgust and I’d say “this is spoiled” and my parents would sniff it and taste it and say “it’s all in your head, nothing wrong with this milk”. I’d say “fine, I’m not hungry” and not eat it. Two or three days later, my Mom would find that the milk had spoiled.
It got to the point they’d ask me to smell-test the milk for them before using it to cook with, or to put in coffee (my Dad ruined many a cup of coffee by pouring in evaporated milk and having it curdle because it was going bad — of course I’d consider it ruined as a consequence of having milk of any sort added to it anyhow but that’s not particularly relevant here).
By the time I was 10 I’d pretty much stopped drinking milk. Just too many awful experiences and associations. (I still do ice cream though, and I love cheese, buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, and other deliberately fermented milk-based products)
