How To Tell If Steak Is Bad Or Spoiled?
Freshness of the steaks is the most important thing while we are going to grill or cook some steaks. Using rotten steaks for grilling is a total waste of food and also unworthy of consumption. So it is important to check before cooking if the steak is bad or not. You can keep your steaks in the refrigerator for a few days to slow down the spoiling process, but you can’t keep your meat fresh in this way forever.
The 6 Signs your steak is spoiled
Steaks show some signs through which you can tell if the steak is good or bad. Fresh meat exhibits some good signs, as well as rotten meat shows some spoilage signs. You can use your sense of sight, touch, and smell to detect the freshness of your steaks. If you notice these spoilage signs, just throw them into the trash can.
1. Expiration Date
The first thing you should notice while purchasing meat is its sell-by-date and use-by-date. The sell-by-date indicates the date when the meat should be sold, and the use-by-date indicate the date when the meat should be used or consumed. You can use the meat if the sell-by-date has passed by a couple of days, but the meat would go off if the use-by-date has passed. So you have to grill the steak before the use-by-day has passed. But this use-by-date is only applicable when the meat is not stored in the freezer. Your meat might remain usable for few more days if you stored them in the freezer one or two days before its use-by-date.
2. Slimy and Slippery Appearance
Slime on steak is a bad sign for your steak which means that your steak is full of harmful bacteria, and the steak is not safe to eat. Slimy appearance is a sure sign of steaks spoilage. When the steak is bad, it will feel slippery while touching on it as a thin streak has grown on its top. These signs mean your steak is already breeding bacteria and harmful to health. So just throw them away.
3. Change of Color
The color of the steak is another noticeable sign which can indicate if your steak has gone bad. Fresh raw meat is purplish-red in color after slicing the steak. Then it transformed into a cherry red hue after about 30 minutes of air exposure. After two or three days of freezing, the steak may become brown because of the absence of oxygen, but this doesn’t mean your steak is rotten. But if the color of the steak is more brown, yellow, or gray and several color patches are formed on the surface of the steak, then it is a clear indication of spoiled steak.
4. Cheesy Like Smell
You can distinguish whether it is a fresh steak or a rotten steak from its smell. Fresh meat has a bloody odor, but aged steaks that are not rotten at all may have a pungent smell, but their smell is not as strong as spoiled steaks and not so unpleasant. The smell that emerged from fresh steaks is not overpowering, and you have to smell the odor from very close to the steaks. But rotten steaks have an overpowering sour and cheesy odor which you can sense from afar. Ammonia-clad aroma emerged from bad steaks is different from usual fresh raw meat.
5. Juice-Less and Dry
If you keep your steaks in the refrigerator for too long, there is a possibility that your steaks may lose their dryness. Juice-less and dry steaks are neither harmful for health nor spoiled. It just causes a negative impact on the texture and flavor of steaks. You can prevent the moisture of steaks by packing them in a vacuum-sealed bag or in a sealed container.
6. Freezing For Too Long
You can reduce the rotten speed of your steaks by keeping them in the refrigerator. But you cannot keep them in the fridge for a long time as it increases the possibility of spoiling our steaks. If you can use the steaks within the use-by-date, then it would be best. But if you cannot remember how long you keep your steaks in the refrigerator, then throwing them away is the best solution as they are not safe to consume.
What Will Happen if You Cook Spoiled Steak?
Spoiled meat is the breeding ground for some kind of bacteria such as Salmonella, Bacillus, Escherichia coli, Clostridium, etc. Heat over 150° can kill some species of bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli, but others species of bacteria will remain unharmed in the meat, which makes the steaks unsafe to consume. So, if you can learn from the signs that your steaks are spoiled and bad, you would better throw them away without thinking twice.
Final Verdict
As you know the signs of bad steaks, now we hope you can distinguish fresh steaks from spoiled steaks. So try to store your steaks correctly if you do not intend to use them right away, and always use fresh and good steaks for grilling or any other purposes. If you can notice any of the spoilage signs, do not dare to use them.
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