Aged Beef

[Loyal]

If you've bit the bullet and bought a $100 rib eye at a fancy steak house to go with your Busch Light, or maybe ordered a package of steaks from Omaha Steaks, you know how how tender and flavorful dry aged beef is. My wife is a farmers daughter in Kansas and she just blinked at me when I mentioned a dry aged steak, not knowing what the heck I was talking about, and she grew up with a half a butchered beef in her deep freezer all of her life on the farm.
I told her the price above and she couldn't get over it. Maybe Stu can weigh in here about the dry aging process and why it takes steak to another level, even though I gotta smack away his hand from the Heinz-57 steak sauce, occasionally. @RamFan503 . Have you all had this type of experience? I know you fancy Bud Light drinkers had to have gulped down one of these beauties!

Do any of you have a dry aging refrigeration rig in which to do the process?

 

[Angry Ram]

 

[JustMe]

Does eating leftover steak that got left on the counter overnight count?

 

[RamFan503]

We used to do a dry aged baseball cut top sirloin at the restaurant. You don't need any real special equipment. A sheet pan and a drying rack. And room in your fridge.

 

[RamFan503]

Lean cuts work best. I don't thing I'd try it on a ribeye without the right equipment. But all you need to do is put the steak on a rack in the fridge, and flip it over every day until aged. We did ours for 21-25 days. You will lose a fair amount of weight as it loses water and after trimming a bit before cooking.

 

[RamFan503]

Some say aging for less than 20 days won't do it. I don't agree. You will notice a difference in less than a week.

Just keep in mind that dry is the key. You can't wrap it with anything but maybe cheese cloth. I don't wrap at all

 

[Loyal]

Some say aging for less than 20 days won't do it. I don't agree. You will notice a difference in less than a week.

Just keep in mind that dry is the key. You can't wrap it with anything but maybe cheese cloth. I don't wrap at all

Thanks for the info...so A-1 or Heinz-57?

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

An old butcher told me that when they killed the cow they hung it and allowed mold to grow on it. The mold broke down the fibers in the meat. He said that if they didn’t do that it was so tough that it couldn’t be chewed.

 

[RamFan503]

An old butcher told me that when they killed the cow they hung it and allowed mold to grow on it. The mold broke down the fibers in the meat. He said that if they didn’t do that it was so tough that it couldn’t be chewed.

Tough cow.

You always hang beef after butchering. Not sure about the mold but...

We also always hang our deer and elk as long as weather permits.

 

[RamFan503]

Thanks for the info...so A-1 or Heinz-57?

Stay the FUCK away from my steaks with that shit!

We didn't have steak sauce available in our restaurant. We also wouldn't serve steaks done beyond medium. Pissed a few people off but I really didn't care. I wasn't going to destroy a cut I was very proud of because someone had no taste.

 

[Loyal]

Some say aging for less than 20 days won't do it. I don't agree. You will notice a difference in less than a week.

Just keep in mind that dry is the key. You can't wrap it with anything but maybe cheese cloth. I don't wrap at all

In studying commercial grade dedicated meat dry aging refrigerator,, they say that meat should be separate from other foods because they will absorb other flavors? Not true?
We currently rent out pasture to a relative who raises 20 head of cattle and we always offers us the option to buy a 1/4 or /2 a beef every year, but we have been doing steaks all wrong. I always just thought I didn't know how to season the meat like high dollar restaurants and that's why they tasted so good because they knew how to prepare them. I was partially right, but also many of them have aged rib eyes, NY strips, t-bones, etc... They cheated!
I wonder if there is a market to sell 40 day aged steaks/beef to surrounding restaurants? There is a machine from Bavaria, Germany that handles 300 lbs of beef aging at once. It even has a clear window so you don't have to open it up while aging, but you can see how the process is going. With this machine, it says that you only lose 8% weight after the aging process, before cutting away some of the fat. We have a meat locker that butchers local cows and wild game, that could cut it any way we wanted and they could leave it in big sections to hang inside the machine to age, and then slice them with bone in (2 inch steaks), shrink wrap them and flash freeze them for shipping in dry ice. The business side is just a what if, but I was shocked that in cow country Kansas, my wife had never heard of aged beef, and I bet she's not the only Kansan that way..... In the end, I am doing it for me because I love the taste of an excellent steak, even without Heinz-57!

 

[thirteen28]

If you've bit the bullet and bought a $100 rib eye at a fancy steak house to go with your Busch Light

Replace "Heineken" with "Busch Light":


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snhiofL2Rh4

Does eating leftover steak that got left on the counter overnight count?

What is leftover steak??? I've never heard of such a thing. Definitely not in my house, anyway ...

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

Tough cow.

You always hang beef after butchering. Not sure about the mold but...

We also always hang our deer and elk as long as weather permits.

I have a refrigerator in the garage. I quarter the deer and put it in there for a week at 38 degrees. I lay it on towels and switch them out until they stay dry.

I may build a cooler so I can hang them instead. There is a way to trick an A/C unit to stay on. You build the cooler with foam board.

First I need to make space in my garage.

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

Tough cow.

You always hang beef after butchering. Not sure about the mold but...

We also always hang our deer and elk as long as weather permits.

This Is What You Need to Know About Dry-Aged Beef

It's not exactly cheap! Here's what makes a dry-aged steak so special.

www.tasteofhome.com

This mentions the mold

 

[RamFan503]

I may build a cooler so I can hang them instead. There is a way to trick an A/C unit to stay on. You build the cooler with foam board.

The unit I've used is called a CoolBot. It overrides the thermostat in a standard window style AC unit so that it goes down to refrigerator temperatures. The health department had a difficult time with how to deal with them but the temps were right. They told us we could store sealed containers like kegs, bottles, and cans in the "walk-in" but not food products.

Bottom line though is that they work really well in a very well insulated room and you can store any refrigerated products in them if you're not doing it for commercial use. Other states might allow them. Oregon didn't but couldn't really explain why.

 

[RamFan503]

I have a refrigerator in the garage. I quarter the deer and put it in there for a week at 38 degrees. I lay it on towels and switch them out until they stay dry.

We generally just quartered, deer bagged, and hung them when it was cool. If it was too warm, we could only hang them a couple days and then process them. Occasionally we'd take them to a butcher and have him hang them for a few weeks. I still always processed my own so the cuts would be right and I'd get more meat out of my critters. I would have hung them in my CoolBot room but the health dept would definitely throw a fit over that.

 

[OregonRamsFan]

My family had a walk in refrigerator that was huge. We would hang our grass fed Elk for 2 to 3 weeks at 43 degrees before wrapping. It was always excellent.

 

[RamFan503]

they say that meat should be separate from other foods because they will absorb other flavors? Not true

I suppose it depends on what you have in your fridge. The fridge we used was a big 3 door commercial and we mostly only had meats in that unit. I would also dry brine my pork bellies in that fridge. I never noticed other flavors being picked up but then again, if it grabbed a tiny bit of brown sugar and spice aroma, no biggie.

The problem with doing it at home is that unless you have a lot of space in your fridge, the air flow probably won't be adequate. I've done it at home but rarely have the space in there.

 

[RamFan503]

My family had a walk in refrigerator that was huge. We would hang our grass fed Elk for 2 to 3 weeks at 43 degrees before wrapping. It was always excellent.

So did you raise elk? There was a small farm up there that raised a few elk but I don't know if it was just personal or if they sold the meat. If I recall, it was near either Canby or Molalla.

Otherwise, all my elk have been organic, grass fed. Well... Grass and leaves I suppose.

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

We generally just quartered, deer bagged, and hung them when it was cool. If it was too warm, we could only hang them a couple days and then process them. Occasionally we'd take them to a butcher and have him hang them for a few weeks. I still always processed my own so the cuts would be right and I'd get more meat out of my critters. I would have hung them in my CoolBot room but the health dept would definitely throw a fit over that.

Yes the Coolbot is what I was referring to. Lots of hunters use them. I wouldn’t want to run one year round though. I imagine they are not energy efficient.