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Dry Aging A Bone in Ribeye! pic heavy

Hoss's BBQ
Hoss's BBQ Posts: 435
edited November -1 in EggHead Forum
Well I have been doing research on dry aging for the past two months. I looked in to the bags yet decided to go the old fashioned way. After some advice from some chefs I know who dry age in their restaurants I went ahead and purchased a whole bonein Ribeye while it was on sale at Publix for $5.99 lb. I have a brand new maytag refrigerator that has digital controls for temperature and has a humidity control. I have been keeping the frdge at 35*f with a humidity level of 80%. I am on day 6 right now and think I will go to 21 days maybe 28. Here are some pics of the project so far.Hoss
BoneinRibeye005.jpg
BoneinRibeye007.jpg
day 1
BoneinRibeye012.jpg
day6
BoneinRibeye015.jpg

Comments

  • drbbq
    drbbq Posts: 1,152
    What day are we eating it?
    Ray Lampe Dr. BBQ
  • man after my own heart.

    how are you keeping the fridge at 80% humidity?
    if you can maintain the higher humidity, you can age a good bit longer than those like me who are stuck with a fairly dry fridge.

    my fridge has drawers with different humidity settings, but too small to age a chunk like that. so i go commando in the downstairs spare fridge.

    but being dry, i top out at about 28 days

    if i had higher humidity, maybe as much as 7 weeks
  • Squeeze
    Squeeze Posts: 717
    Hey Ken....

    Let me know when I need to head to Decatur for Dinner...I will bring some beer! Hope all is well with you!

    -Kevin
    Kevin Jacques
    The University of Que L.L.C. ®
    Killen, AL
    www.uofque.com

    Take Your Taste Buds to School!
  • NoVA Bill
    NoVA Bill Posts: 3,005
    good luck. Lookin' fwd to final pics.
  • RRP
    RRP Posts: 25,880
    80% humidity??? I'm no fortune teller but I see mold in your life on other things you might have in that refrig.
    Re-gasketing America one yard at a time.
  • mold is ok. green, not white anyway.

    when i bought from the place in boston, the butcher was kind enough to scrape the mold off for me.hahaha
  • FlaPoolman
    FlaPoolman Posts: 11,676
    Dang Ken, thats gonna be one nice chunk of beef. Is that a new home fridge or at the restaurant?
  • Great experiment...

    Will you cook that as a Roast or cut it into steaks?

    I always cook a nice rib roast on Christmas Eve and trying to decide whether it is worth going the aging route.
  • Thanks Stike

    I have one going just like that one on your advice for Christmas and my fridge (and climate) is as dry as a bone. I'm planning on going 21 days, so this post was just what I needed to see.

    Doug
  • i can tell you that it's worth it when i have to pay 20 bucks a pound, so doing it for free is certainly worth it
  • Christmas will be 28 days. I am sure that I will cut most of this into steaks. I may do a small roast. The fridge has been holding at 80% with out me using the humidity control on the fridge. when it is on it stays dryer. The fridge is in my house not the restaurant. No mold yet. I have been checking it about once a day. I am also single so my fridge is not opened very often sometimes not at all in a given day. I will post again on day 14 or so. Hoss
    Ray I will save you and Sandi a Steak for when you come to stay next time. The bed is made. Squeeze I will send you an email!!
  • RRP
    RRP Posts: 25,880
    I hear you, Jeff, but assuming he is using his new refrigerator to store other foods/produce/dairy/whatever besides that piece of meat I'm betting he will be finding 80% humidity will take its toll on the other contents! For sake of others reading this thread I doubt any decent frost-free refrigerator maintains moisture at these levels.
    Re-gasketing America one yard at a time.
  • ah. yep. me? i was just thinkin about the meat!


    my meat fridge has beer and aging beef. i forgot the dude was living off the rest of the food too.
  • I'll be happy to be a taster
  • I bet they well be fantastic

    Ross
  • I really do not have anything that is not canned or in a jar in the fridge. I am single and work in a restaurant I have beer, and soda in my fridge. Hoss
  • FrankC
    FrankC Posts: 416
    I've also been inspired to try dry aging. I started this NY Strip last Friday. I checked it this morning, seem to be doing well. I'll post a full pictorial once it's dried, steaked, and have some plated pics.

    Nov27Day1.jpg
  • BobS
    BobS Posts: 2,485
    Nice. I think you should being a couple of those to Waldorf next year! I have a 10X15 canopy now and I will be happy to share space! :woohoo: :whistle:
  • At least you have enough kimchi in there to get you through to the end! Looking forward to watching the process.

    BD
  • RRP
    RRP Posts: 25,880
    glad to hear 'cauz otherwise 80% humidity in a typically stocked kitchen refrigerator would surely reek havoc with food stored there. You know I have to wonder though in dry aging the purpose is to draw out the moisture so keeping it in an 80% wet environment might be slowing the process down. I'm not an engineer but I have to wonder how a frost free refrig can work in a system being maintained at 80% humidity! It kinda defies logic!
    Re-gasketing America one yard at a time.
  • ohmygo you goober. how many times have i said in our offline emails that the positive aspect of those bags is to slow down the drying? hahaha

    people have often mentioned that professional dry aging places "control the humidity". they very rarely say WHY, and allude to it having to do with food safety. humidity has less to do (if anything) with safety than it does QUALITY.

    basically, the longer a piece of beef ages (forget about drying, i'm talking enymes only), the better it is. wet age, dry aged, doesn't matter. the enzymes are doing the work of adding flavor (new flavors) AND literally tenderizing the meat. in a word, the meat is rotting, frankly. decomposing (that will scare away a few folks).

    so why DRY age instead of just wet? well drying the beef also condenses it, and that condenses flavor. downside to dry aging is that it can be too dry. sooooo.

    the dry-aging bags also serve to SLOW the drying. my 28-day aged beef (no bag) will weigh less than your 28-day beef (in-bag), but they will theoretically have the same ENZYME flavor.

    BUT...

    you can probably take your beef to 45 days (or so). i can't. mine will be too dry, because my fridge is not humid (most aren't). since your bags slow the drying, you can keep going, and the enzymes will add more flavor and more tenderizing occurs before your meat loses the same weight mine has. see?

    so, a more humid fridge allows someone to age WITHOUT a bag, just like the pros do. they will often run at 75-80% relative humidity. yes mold can be a concern, but it isn't a PROBLEM.. it's actually EXPECTED, and is trimmed off or scraped off if needed. green mold is ok. white mold can tunnel under the surface, and can be toxic. some places i believe wipe the meat occasionally with a salty brine, to prevent that sorta thing.

    the very best thing you can do if aging traditionally is to NOT use towels, because the best microbial defense is temperature, followed by a hostile (i.e. dry) surface

    i can't believe you made me type all that again. i'm guessing no one ever reads this far.
    hahahaha

    scroom, i say. if people don't want to understand the WHY, they'll never remember the HOW.

    it's a very very very simple thing, but it has its complications.

    i wonder why the food police never weigh in here? they can't wrap their brain around it maybe. but it is a time-proven, not-very-dangerous, and simple exerecise. a person just needs to understand what they are doing, but it ain't hard
  • RRP
    RRP Posts: 25,880
    OK, boss...

    speaking of the food police I can remember about 8 years ago that I followed one egger's advice and oiled up a couple NY strips with EVOO and let them sit in my refrig for 6 days in a plastic bag. When I posted the results at least 2 eggers said I was nuts and risked our health "with such a foolish move". One guy claimed his wife was a some kinda of bacteria scientist yadda yadda and I shouldn't be spreading such dangerous tales!
    Re-gasketing America one yard at a time.
  • hahaha

    RRP's steak-of-death

    you and i will have a nice weekly lunch together after we drop dead, in hell possibly, where we will be served moldy fetid bacterially slimey food.

    and we will enjoy every bite of it. ok, maybe not.

    food police will ALWAYS say "if you don't know...". well, i agree. if you don't know, throw it out. but you shouldn't be handling food (other than straight from a can) if you don't understand the paradoxes.

    most food police can't explain why it's utterly safe to take a fresh uncured ham, give it a thin layer of salt, and hang it from the rafter of an outhouse for a year or so. yet they run out and pay 20 bucks a pound for prosciutto, which (aside from the outhouse) has had nothing more done to it.

    they will yell at you for your unsafe steak, and then pay dearly for aged beef, never accepting or understanding the logic behind it.

    i don't know everything about food safety, but i really know the two or three things i DO know.

    i taught a class the other night (no, not about food safety, relax people!) and i said "i see a lot of you taking notes. stop taking notes. you will be trying desperately to write down the specifics, without hearing the actual story. if you listen to the story, and understand the logic, you can always chase down the specifics later."

    but you can not (ever) understand something simply when given a list of rules to follow. rules are great in general, and will keep you safe, but they don't answer every condition, and they certainly don't address the paradoxes and contradictions.

    gramma used to leave her unpasteurized cream on the table for the whole day. why was that ok? anyone?

    it's not that i'm trying to be combative, it's that i enjoy knuckling down and figuring out WHY. because that opens up whole new areas. and it is interesting, frankly.

    it is perfectly safe to hang fresh salt-cured duck breasts from a joist in your unrefrigerated basement. damn good, too.

    but i'd say if a person can't explain WHY it's safe, they shouldn't do it, as simple as it is.

    damn. now i'm hungry
  • Rib Fan
    Rib Fan Posts: 305
    funny story with aging meat. My uncle used to always have the best venison of the gang. Everyone could not understand how he got the meat so tender and flavourful. My dad set out to find out how it was done. Brought my uncle over a good bottle of single malt scotch to lubricate the truth. Anyhow..it was around Christmas time. My uncle took my dad out to his shed in the back. Hanging there was a skinned deer harvested from deer season (Mid Nov).....deer had a nice green sheen to it. Uncle said this one is about done...LOL True story.

    Cheers

    Wayne
  • even supermarket beef is supposed to be hung for six days or so. i think they maybe go three, but i am not sure.

    "aging" is literally nothing more than allowing ther meat time to begin decomposing. and with fresh killed stuff, it really should be hung for at LEAST a day or so to allow it to go thru rigor mortis.

    that's beef, anyway. might not be true for pork.

    i remember as a kid my dad's deer hanging in the back yard for a couple days. had to have been in the 50's (temp wise) at least.

    speeds aging.

    i don't care what anyone says, there is no bacteria IN meat. only on it. unless you screw up butchering, and slice it into the meat. and yes, the bacteria ON it can be dangerous.

    i love your story.

    is anyone still alive to corroborate it, or did they die from food poisoning?
    hahaha
  • Rib Fan
    Rib Fan Posts: 305
    Everyone is still alive and he rots his meat the same way and every year invites people over for a big feast. No one else is brave enough...nor do they want to look at the product once the process is in the midst of the rot (oops aging).
    You are correct on the aging thing. Meat starts to decompose (rot) not long after slaughter. The decomposition makes it more tender and flavourful. I think from now on I am not going to refer to it as "aging" I am going to rot some meat for the holidays. :)
    I also personally believe people r too paranoid of food born illnesses. Not to encourage anything but we NEVER put left over chicken in the fridge till later the next day etc. Just use common sense on raw birds etc.
    The only food poisoning I ever got was from a large chain pizza slice I consumed just after purchase and some granola bought in one of those bargain bins.
    My rant.....sorry.

    Wayne
  • My Chef who is from Ireland, and a Certified ACF Master Chef. that I trained under used to get freshly killed Pheasants that he would make us hang ungutted by its tail feathers. We would check them and always ask him when they would be done. Finally one day the pheasant had fallen from their tails feathers due to the decaying process. Then we were allowed to pluck the feathers and complete the butchering and cook the birds. I know there are risks in not using the bag etc. Yet meat was aged this way for decades before cryovacing became the norm for meat packing industry. I went with the temp and humidity levels that I chose because of advice from other chefs who do this for their restarants. I went with their advice based on their experinces. I do not know why my fridge is holding the humidity level it is. I thought I would have to add a bowl of water etc to raise the humidity level yet I really had to do nothing to change the atmosphere. One thing I tuely love about this forum is that there are many different paths and roads to get to the same end result; which is great food!! Hoss
  • there aren't necessarily any fewer risks because of the bags. meat arrives with the bacteria already on it. one goes into a bag, and the other doesn't. they still can grow if the temps are wrong. there are aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, and those that act both ways. so if your temps are 45 degrees, you still will have bacteria multiplying whther they are in the bags or not.

    the bags don't protect the meat from bacteria that is already there due to handling, just new bacteria that might somehow infect it later. but you'd have to cross contaminate the beef (bagged or otherwise) to introduce new bacteria.

    my initial resistance to the bags was entirely due to the fact that it seemed many folks thought the bags were a magical force field of food safety.

    bacteria can't pass thru the bags (according to their lit. which was sent too rrp), but any bacteria already there can still grow.

    temps temps temps. that's what keep you safe.

    in fact, the very reason it used to be done in the open air was because it is hostile to bacteria.