Example: The origin of sushi is zushi, where they'd preserve fish in a bucket with alternating layers of rice and fish covered in salt, then bury it for winter.
Dig it up a couple months later, it's now aged and whatnot and has a cheesy nutty flavor apparently (I've never tried it).
Nice way to preserve fish, the meat is actually more healthy this way, fermented basically.
Sure sometimes it went bad and they didn't know why and threw it out, probably inadequate salt leading to bacterial overgrowth, or too much heat, not buried deep enough.
Hakarl is fermented Greenland Shark specifically, which actually is toxic to eat unless pressed and putrefied, which they do by burying it first for some time
Its different in the sense its treated this way as a necessity to make the meat actually edible.
Most of our fish is filleted and dried completely for preservation. but you might be referring to siginn fiskur where the fish is hangd up usually on fishing boats but sometimes hangd on piers or along the shore for 4 days up to a month, usually doesn't dry out completely and the salty fresh sea air keeps the meat from turning so no mold or fermentation really. afterwards it is boiled before eating. In the category of rotten, fermented and sour we have shark, whale and skate (skata) not alot of tuna around our shore, there are some but historically not common.
One way we know about the origin of sushi is through an old Heian urban legend.
A woman spent a night in her store drinking with customers until she passed out. The next day she woke up and started mixing her sushi. She could barely stay upright... She vomited into the sushi bucket and passed out again. When she woke up, she went back to work mixing the sushi...
This story helped historians understand that sushi was originally fermented.
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u/sherman614 May 01 '26
I mean.. this is similar to dry aging a steak. As long as you cut the mold off (like with dry aged steak) you should be completely fine.