Is safe to eat jerky with white mold?
I recently ate a jerky with white mold on it (see below), I donot know if I should be okay with that? The mold grew on jerky because I placed it in a moist environment days before.
Best Answer
There are some kinds of mold which are safe to consume (blue cheese is a common example) but in general they are not. While you might often be fine eating a bit, there's no guarantee, so to be safe you should throw out moldy food like your jerky.
See the FDA's advice, for example.
Note that mold is okay on some kinds of cured meats:
Hard salami and dry-cured country hams: Use. Scrub mold off surface. It is normal for these shelf-stable products to have surface mold.
But I'm not sure it's normal for jerky. For those examples it's normal and even common to have mold, but for jerky it's not common, so I wouldn't be confident it's normal. (Indeed, it grew there when you left it somewhere moist, so it's not part of the normal production and storage of jerky.) Additionally, jerky is generally more fibrous and less solid than those things, so there's more potential for mold to grow inside it, where you wouldn't be able to scrub it off.
Your example does look like it's mostly on the surface though, so if you want to take a small chance, you could see if you can really scrub it all off.
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Quick Answer about "Is safe to eat jerky with white mold?"
Is it safe to eat jerky with white mold? The short answer is no. There is a wide diversity of mold types. While some types of mold are safe to eat and even beneficial to a product (think blue-veined cheese, brie, and salami), others can cause adverse health problems.Is white stuff on jerky mold?
Possible causes of white film on beef jerky include: Mold \u2014 The white film could be mold on the surface if the product is packaged where oxygen can get to the surface (i.e., packaged in a jar, or non-vacuumed bulk pack), not vacuum packaged, nor backflushed with nitrogen.Why is there white stuff on my beef jerky?
Meat has mineral salts in it, which are soluble in the oils/juices of the meat. As jerky dries, moisture in the meat evaporates into the air, and the salts can no longer stay dissolved. Instead, they get left behind and may form a visible deposit on the surface of the jerky. The deposit feels like a fine white powder.Can you eat meat with white mold?
In summary, white mold on prosciutto is not known to be toxic. If anything, it helps keep other dangerous fungi away from your meat. However, ingesting it isn't recommended. The good thing is that white mold washes off quickly and can be sliced off using a sharp knife.Can beef jerky have mold?
Jerky will mold if not enough moisture has been removed from the meat during the drying process; therefore, it should have around 90% to 95% of the moisture in the meat removed during drying. If it doesn't, the moisture still in the meat will cause mold spores to grow.Meat Fact Friday: White Crystals on Jerky
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Answer 2
It is OK to remove the outside moulin from Jerky (Biltong, as it is called in South Africa). I have been eating it for 60 years.
However if it smells real bad (as in a cheese), throw it away.
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