Why is “aged meat” a good thing? I see a 30 day aged meat on a menu, and it’s like HOW!? WHY!? Wouldn’t it be “bad meat” by that point?
EDIT: Holy wow I learned so much about aging meat!! Thank you for all the comments and videos!
In: Biology
There are endless numbers of microorganisms that grow on food which colloquially we refer to as food “going bad.”
But not every microorganism makes food “go bad” in a way that’s actually bad for your health and tastes awful. Some of them change the food into other food that we enjoy eating.
The desired microorganisms and the undesired ones are in competition with each other. Which of them wins is dependent on the factors of their environment. Some prefer it hotter or colder, some prefer it wetter or drier, some prefer more or less salt, some prefer more or less oxygen, etc etc.
With “aging” anything meat or cheese or whatever else you’re controlling all these variables in the environment in a way that makes it hostile to the bad ones and fertile to the good ones.
That allows that good ones to do whatever they happen to do in the type of aging you’re doing whether it’s meat or cheese or soy sauce or whatever other foods rely on microorganisms to assist in a type of transformation of the food.
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