Fermenting Animals

[minoanmiss]

My coworker asked an interesting question -- why do we ferment sea animals but not land animals?

Will answer/diuscuss when I get home.

Comments

[gloss]

Wikipedia (lol) says many many types of sausage involve fermentation.

[ororo]

today I learned.....

[gloss]

I knew chorizo did, but then I doubted myself, looked it up, and learned lots of others also do!

[minoanmiss]

Don't doubt yourself, you are proven to be knowledgeable.

[acelightning73]

Salami, prosciutto, pepperoni, luganiga, boudin, and many East Asian styles (Korean, Chinese, and Southeast Asian styles. People have been trying to make their meat last longer without refrigeration for millennia.

[minoanmiss]

That makes total sense with my hypothesis and thank you for reminding me!

[claudia603]

I don't even understand the conversation, which shows you what I don't know about food stuff! :D Which sea animals are fermented? (When I think of fermentation, I think of kim chi or sauerkraut?)

[minoanmiss]

Kimchi often involves oysters or clams, and fish sauce is fermented out of anchovies, for two examples.

[claudia603]

True! I had forgotten that Kimchi often has fish in it! And fish sauce! Yes! Thai food. :)

[lilysea]

The ancient Romans were ****VERY**** into fermented fish source - it was a major industry/major economic thingy.

Archaeologists of shipwrecks, Pompeii etc find lots of ceramic containers full of traces of fermented fish sauce.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum

[claudia603]

oh wow! I had forgotten about fish sauce! Although I associate it more with Southeast Asian cooking!

[minoanmiss]

IIRC it was independently invented in both Greece and Southeast Asia or it traveled from Greece to Rome to China to Southeast Asia. I'm not sure which. More research!

[acelightning73]

It was so popular in ancient Rome that "garum" or "liquamen" (fermented fish sauce) was a costlier liquid than the rarest perfumes. It also led to the development of Worcestershire sauce (which contains anchovies) And nam pla and nuoc mam are basic to Southeast Asian cooking (I can't use them because I inherited my father's allergy to fish and shellfish and all their derivatives. I just add more soy sauce)

[jtthomas]

I mean, beef is aged before being sold in grocery stores. Wagyu beef is just fancy fermented beef, effectively.

[minoanmiss]

I think ageing is related to but not quite the same as fermentation. In fermentation the goal is to have microbial action be the main driver in changing the food. In ageing the food is given time for its proteins and fats to break down and reform, with microbial action as an enhancer at most. Then there's cheese, which is kind of in between with aspects of both.

I can babble about this all day! *laughs at myself*

[lemonsharks]

Science!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/fermented-meat

[minoanmiss]

SCIENCe!

[minoanmiss]

I know I am biased -- peer review is important -- but I think my hypothesis fits with this. I forgot to mention last night, being exhausted, that the other reason we ferment sea animals is that their musculature is generally less complex than land animals' due to less connective tissue and less detail in structure. By grinding land animal meat that complexity of structure is eliminated, enabling it to be fermented evenly.

So it's not so much "sea animals only" but "animals with less complexly structured flesh whether inherently or due to pre-processing." And also the lower water content of land animals results in a solid rather than liquid end result.

Yay food!

my thoughts

[minoanmiss]

1) fish and shellfish often have simpler muscular structures than land animals (something negated by grinding meat as in fermented sausage)

2) water bacteria work at a different temperature scale than land bacteria and so are less dangerous to land vertebrates lik us.

Re: my thoughts

[lb_lee]

Hmmm. I wonder if insects and anthropods have that simpler muscular structure, allowing THEM to be fermented? Is it a mass/weight thing, or a land gravity thing?

--Sneak

Re: my thoughts

[minoanmiss]

Oh they probably could be considering that their close relatives shrimp are sometimes semi-fermented. I think it's a water buoyancy vs land gravity thing.

Re: my thoughts

[squirrelitude]

In particular it's really interesting that fermenting fish often just involves... whole fish. No removal of the digestive tract. I don't think you see anything like that with land animals!

Re: my thoughts

[minoanmiss]

It's the different bacterial populations, yeah. I was given Balut as a counterexample but balut is embryonic -- the digestive tract has nothing in it yet.

[raine]

One of the delicacies in Filipino cuisine is fermented duck eggs.

[minoanmiss]

Unfertilized or fertilized? (I ask because I'm thinking of the biochem in a loose way). Also, do the eggs become more liquidy or more solid?

[raine]

Fertilized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(food)
My mom never let me eat one, called it "drunk food", and told me I was better than that, ha.