Cooking fresh meat (poultry) in hot weather?

triplepurpose

Crowing
14 Years
Oct 13, 2008
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This is something I've often wondered about. Assuming you live in a tropical climate or even just somewhere where it happens to be warm (let's say like 75 to 90 degrees fahrenheit range), and you have no refrigerator, what do you do with meat?

presumably most of it would be slaughtered or hunted fresh on an as-needed basis, although I can see some kinds of drying and pickling being employed for some things among those who really needed to or who had the time and resources.

Most sources will tell you to age freshly killed poultry (and other meat) in a fridge for a couple of days. Or in cold climates people will hang game or whatever in cool weather. Great. I believe I understand the reasoning behind this, enzymes, rigor mortis etc. And Having a refrigerator, I have generally followed this. And when I haven't done this, I've usually noticed that the meat is "stringier", all other things being equal.

But what have people done in warm climates for the last 3 million years, and millions of others still do? Surely people have figured out ways to make food safely and deliciously without meat lockers or resorting to eating "stringy" meat all the time. I would really like to know how. I can't believe that people everywhere were all simply living in deprivation and getting sick constantly until some savior invented refrigerators (that many people still can't afford for that matter, never mind people who live without reliable electricity).

Hope this makes sense...
 
I would imagine most meat was cooked right after slaughter. To my knowledge, if you can process and cook a chicken fast enough, you can beat rigor mortis and it won't be tough. I also would imagine people used cellars, caves, and cool water sources to keep food cool. Also, there are methods of preservation such as curing.

After typing this I did a search and found some articles:
https://www.theknowledgelibrary.in/how-did-people-keep-food-fresh-before-refrigerators/

https://www.livescience.com/ancient-food-storage

Pretty interesting stuff.
 
I'm not an expert on this but I'll toss out a few thoughts.

Salt is a preservative. It was so valuable salt was used as currency in some cultures, Romans for one. The phrase "worth their salt" came from someone who put in an honest days work for their payment in salt. When the US was being settled several towns and cities grew up around salt licks, a place where you could "make" salt, usually boiling the water dry which would leave salt behind. Nashville, Tennessee was one. Sailing ships would serve salt pork to try to preserve the meat. The meat would still go bad eventually but the "Age of Discovery" would not have happened without salt. Not everyone had salt or could afford it if it were available but it was valuable to preserve meat in many different techniques.

There were different techniques to dry meat to preserve it. Some involved salt. Smokehouses were used to cold smoke the meat, a totally different technique to hot smoking meat like we might do if we were throwing a party. You might build a rack to dry the meat and build a fire under it to keep the flies away until it dried. Drying was really common but required some knowledge of the right techniques.

Have you ever heard of pickled herring or pickled pigs feet? Pickling can be used but I don't know of any details.

If you make a big kill, throw a party. Have a feast. Eat as much as you can as fast as you can, especially with the choice cuts. You'd try to preserve as much as you could but sometimes it was feast or famine.

I think some people used this but I haven't read much about it. If I were in this position and had a pot big enough that I could boil water in I'd try making a stew. Keep that pot simmering day and night. Add water as necessary. Yes, it will cook down to a mush. Texture will not be what you want in a gourmet meal. But it could keep you alive.

Some people are just naturally better cooks than others. Some have access to different ingredients. Some of these techniques might produce a decent tasting meal but the main purpose was to preserve the meat and keep people alive. One reason the spice trade was so valuable for thousands of years was to spice up these bland meals. But yes, that was for the rich who could afford it and was not to preserve food.
 
This is something I've often wondered about. Assuming you live in a tropical climate or even just somewhere where it happens to be warm (let's say like 75 to 90 degrees fahrenheit range), and you have no refrigerator, what do you do with meat?
Dry curing chicken............https://youtu.be/2lx4ixMuZ-g
 
This is something I've often wondered about. Assuming you live in a tropical climate or even just somewhere where it happens to be warm (let's say like 75 to 90 degrees fahrenheit range), and you have no refrigerator, what do you do with meat?

HOMEMADE DRY-CURED CHICKEN (basturma recipe). How to make chicken prosciutto, jerk chicken............https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lx4ixMuZ-g​

 
I do like the idea of beating rigor mortis by getting it straight into a pot. This seems like the most elegant solution for small animals at home: slaughtered when needed and cleaned and straight to the kitchen. I've done this before. But I know that meat that has rested is more digestible and has less stringy texture.

But I'm also curious about how long very fresh meat can rest safely at warm ambient temperatures. Most food safety sources aren't useful because they assume meats to be already not so fresh (like, weeks old), and also assume the worst in terms of slaughtering and handling conditions to incorporate a wide margin of safety for people buying meat at a store.

Surely the same enzymes that soften meat are even more active at ambient temperatures than at cold ones. So what about room temperature resting, and things like marinading in vinegar or other sour liquids to facilitate tenderizing while discouraging spoilage? Or I also wonder, just how long can clean meat be left alone sitting in warm weather before it becomes actually likely unsafe?

There must be scientific and practical answers to these questions, even if there are variable risk factors that make people disinclined to publish said answers for fear of being liable for someone's poor judgment...

I'm academically curious but it would also be nice to know these things. People have many times before asked me related questions about slaughtering animals at home and I always feel a little dumb just saying "well, I dunno, you just have to get it into the fridge as quickly as you can..."

Cheers, guys, and thanks for the input.
 

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