5094
2017-12-12 22:52:33
2
It's called “blue” because it has a blueish color. Beef meat has a blueish (or purplish, depending on your color perception) color, changing to red with exposure to air as oxygenated myoglobin becomes the dominant factor in the color and to brown with heat. The initial “blue” isn't a very strong blue, it's more blue as in not the bright red that the meat becomes when it starts cooking. White meat has less myoglobin and more albumin.
Mere exposure to air without any heating is enough to oxygenate myoglobin well before the meat spoils, so “blue” isn't really applicable to a cut of meat by the time you buy it from a butcher's.