I don't know if you have heard the saying "rotten fish can be eaten, but rotten meat can't be eaten". In our food culture in China, there are indeed many special foods, that is, making good fish stink and eating it. The traditional meaning is "Huizhou stinky fish". As the oldest contestant in Shandong cuisine, the smell of stinky fish is not like that of fried stinky tofu and stinky shepherd's purse, which makes people take two steps back. On the contrary, the smell is just right, and the meaning is not yet completed.

Why do good fish need to stink? Moreover, this kind of fish has a long history and smells so bad that people come here to taste the peculiar smell. In fact, it is fresh for Huizhou people to eat bream, but when a businessman was transporting bream, the bream unexpectedly gave off a bad smell, so the businessman asked his wife to pickle the fish, but unexpectedly, the fish was incredibly beautiful. After that, Huizhou people had the custom of "fish doesn't stink and don't eat".

Why is it that stinky fish is obviously a food that has deteriorated for a long time, and everyone is willing to eat it, so it is not easy to be harmful to the body? In fact, fish stink, which is more likely to be nitrogen dioxide produced by protein hydrolysis. Nitrogen dioxide smells terrible. But smelly fish will have different tastes, and fish tastes more delicious, so it can be eaten. Up to now, stinky fish has not been eaten after the fish has undergone qualitative change, but has evolved into a special pickling method, so people have retained the good habit of eating stinky fish.

On the other hand, bad meat means that the meat has gone bad and released an odor. Meat stinks and harmful substances in meat grow. People are prone to diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, nausea and other discomfort. The bad meat here is completely different from the smelly fish. This is not the smell caused by alcohol, but the meat has become unfit to eat. You must avoid eating this kind of meat.

In fact, if you really want to analyze it carefully, you will find that bad meat is edible, but bad meat here refers to preserved pork controlled by human factors, such as Jinhua ham, Cantonese sausage and Sichuan bacon, which can all be regarded as bad meat. Pickled meat dishes taste more and more distinctive and fragrant, which is similar to the smelly fish mentioned above.

In fact, in China, besides rotten fish and bad meat, there are several ingredients such as rotten egg smell and bad raw eggs. It is also the whole process of taking raw eggs until they smell bad. The whole process of making rotten eggs and bad eggs is waiting for raw eggs to be alcoholized, and the unique flavor of fermentation is different. Some smell bad, others smell good, which actually varies from person to person.

But now we understand that "rotten fish can be eaten, but bad meat can't be eaten". It turns out that they are all ingredients with qualitative change and odor. The reason why people in China classify them differently is to remind future generations that meat food is absolutely inedible if it changes qualitatively, and eating fish with peculiar smell is less harmful to the body. However, if fish and meat taste bad due to unreasonable storage, it is still recommended that you do not take them.