Aging Beef

JC in GA · November 2007

Can any of my fellow eggers tell me the best way to age beef. I've got a boneless rib roast I was to slice thick for rib eye steaks to Trex.
TIA

Fidel · November 2007

JC in GA,[p]I would say look for stike. He is the man when it comes to aging.[p]

Unknown · November 2007

JC in GA,[p]Stike is da mon!, but in the mean time[p]Beef, Aging Beef - Dry Aging/Wet Aging

The nearly lost art of the great steakOnce upon a time you could go to your corner butcher and buy an aged USDA prime cut of beef. If you have had a good, aged steak, you know it is more tender and flavorful than what you typically buy in the store. The reason for this is that aging allows natural enzymes to breakdown the hard connective tissue in meats and for water to evaporate away concentrating the flavor.

Dry Aging
1 The old method of aging meat in known as dry aging. Dry aging is done by hanging meat in a controlled, closely watched, refrigerated environment. The temperature needs to stay between 36 degrees F and freezing. Too warm and the meat will spoil, too cold and it will freeze, stopping the aging process. You also need a humidity of about 85 to reduce water loss.
2 To control bacteria and you need a constant flow of air all around the meat, which means it need to be hanging in a well ventilated space. The last and most important ingredient in this process is an experienced butcher to keep a close eye on the aging meat.
3 There are many reasons that butchers don't typically age meat these days. First of all the cost of aged beef can be very high. Because of the weight loss of aged beef, the price per pound can be pretty outrageous. If you add in the time, storage space, refrigeration, labor that price just keeps moving up. For aging to properly improve the quality of a cut of meat, it should contain substantial marbling. This means that there is fat evenly distributed throughout the meat. Only the highest grades have this kind of marbling and make aging worthwhile.
4 Because of the high price and the space necessary to age meat, dry aging has become very rare. Actually only a few of the finest restaurants buy aged beef. Many in fact, have taken to aging their own beef. This can be a risky job if you don't know what you are doing and I strongly suggest a good sense of smell to anyone who tries it. If your ages meat doesn't smell right, throw it out.
5 Aging takes about 11 days before you see much improvement in the flavor of the meat. After that the flavor continues to intensify, but so does the loss of weight and the risk of spoilage. Eventually the meat will be worthless so many fine restaurants who do their own aging will limit it to 20 to 30 days.
Wet Aging
1 The less expensive alternative to dry aging is called wet aging. Meat is shipped from packing plants to butchers in vacuum packaging. Butchers can set this packed meat aside in their refrigerators and allow them to age. Since the meat is packed in it’s own juices the enzymes will breakdown the connective tissues and make it more tender. However, because there will be no fluid loss the concentration of flavor that you get from dry aging won’t happen.
2 So why not save yourself some money, and age your own beef? Take that vacuum packed primal cut (from which market cuts are taken) from the butcher and put it in the refrigerator for 2 weeks and you’ll have a really tender piece of meat, right? No. Aging needs to be done and precise temperatures under controlled circumstances.
3 The average family refrigerator just doesn’t have what it takes to properly age beef. It is very easy to get a good colony of bacteria going in that meat during the couple of weeks it takes to age a piece of beef.
4 Worse still is this recipe for a trip to the hospital that’s been floating around the Internet. Take your prime or choice steaks, unwrap them, rinse with cold water, wrap in a clean kitchen towel and place on the coldest shelf of your refrigerator. Every day for 2 weeks take the steaks out and change the towel. At this point you are promised a fantastic steak, provided you live though the digestive process after eating it. What you need is the experience and knowledge to know when spoilage first starts. There is a definite change in small and color of the meat so very close inspection is required during the aging process to insure that it doesn't go bad.
5 The biggest risks to any piece of meat that you buy from the store and attempt to age are all the things that happened to that meat before you picked it up. Any exposure to bacteria during butchering, packing or shipping can make that meat unsafe to age.
6 It is popular with many of the competition barbecue cooks to age their briskets. This is done for a short period of time and with sealed meats. The cryovac briskets can be held in your refrigerator for a week or two safely. It is debatable how much improvement you get out of this limited process.

Recipe Type
Help

Recipe Source
Author: Derrick Riches,Your Guide to Barbecues & Grilling.[p]Source: Internet, 06/06/07

[p]

JC in GA · November 2007

Richard Fl,
Thanks. That is quite interesting.
Thanks to you and Stike.

Michael B · November 2007

JC in GA,
You really need a refrigerator dedicated to just this process. The temp most remain between 34 and 37 degrees for the duration of the aging, and your kitchen refrigerator will *not* do it. For proof, stick a remote thermometer in it and watch the temps through the day. You'll be surprised how much time the temps are above 40 or even 45 degrees. If your refrigerator isn't freezing your lettuce, it probably isn't spending much time at all below 40 degrees.
You also need some absolutely clean linen cloths, which you wrap the meat in. These must be changed every day.
Of course, the hardest part is keeping the wife from throwing out "that rotting meat!"
I find it much easier to drive 4 miles up the road to pick up some 45 day dry aged beef at the meat market.[p]http://www.grillmeats.com/dry_aged_beef.htm

stike · November 2007

Michael B,
it's safer to avoid the linen shrouds... their purpose was originally for protecting the surface of the meat from mold after weeks of aging. it has since become part of an 'internet procedure' that the linens are meant to wick away moisture. the problem with that is that it makes for a messy process, and you run the (small) risk of encouraging bacterial growth by allowing wet towels to stay clapped to the meat surface.[p]commercially, meat is aged in the same temps you mention, but the humidity level is higher than what we have in or fridges at home. that means you will get accelerated drying anyway. and less potential for mold (since you won't go three or four weeks in a humid environment). you can ditch the shrouds (the linen).[p]

stike · November 2007

Fidel,
no expert! more alike a fellow wanderer interested in figuring it out too! hahaha

BBQbutcher · November 2007

JC in GA, other than the great tips you have already, follow the link for a few more.[p]Enjoy your roast....[p]

[ul][li]Aging Beef[/ul]

stike · November 2007

JC in GA,
i'm hesitant... couple folks referred to me, and i have some thoughts, but generally i think you should take it slow.[p]below is a post i made many moons ago when the question came up. essentially, step one in learning to dry age steak is to crack your wallet, and go buy a dry-aged prime rib eye, unless you have had enough dry-aged stuff to be familiar with it. why?
well...
grab a cuppa coffee and keep reading![p]if you have any questions, i'll try to answer them, but realize, i'm not a butcher. i'm just a dude sitting in his bathrobe at the computer typing. assume i'm an idiot.[p][p]cobbled together from a couple posts i made last year:[p]no expert here, but i have been chasing this stuff down long enough that i think i finally have it sorted out. i have done it myself, and i have also thrown out meat after trying it. my fridge was off-temp.[p]first, when you are 'done' aging it should not look or smell 'rotten'. and SO then this is my BIGGEST chunk of advice. don't bother dry aging until you have had commercial dry aged steaks done properly.
for one thing, you may not notice a difference, frankly. when i got the egg i was so gung-ho i was cooking anything i could find and soon was getting nutty, which became "must-find-dry-aged-steak". i bought one from julia child's butcher (still making payments on it). at the time we said "so-so. not worth the money". part of that was because the steaks we'd been having from the egg were so much better than off the gasser, the difference was lost on us. we were still in the egg honeymoon phase. a regular select/choice steak on the egg tasted as good as dry-aged prime then (to us), because we were so used to steaks off the gasser.[p]now, maybe 4 years later eating BGE steaks, and finally being able to tell the diff between cuts and grades, and we DO appreciate a difference.
so, here we go. a dedicated fridge (a spare fridge in the basement, etc.) is ideal, but not absolutely necessary. some good points in posts below explaining why. off-odors from other foods in the fridge can impart undesirable flavors, plus temp swings from open/closing can mess with the voodoo. if you have a beer fridge, it's ideal. [p]you cannot at ALL trust the thermo setting on the fridge. don't play around here. bacteria wants badly to grow, and it'll find a way. it MUST be kept between 34-38 degrees (gives you 2 degrees safe room from freezing and 2 degrees on the other end below the safety zone of 40 degrees). get a fridge thermo and let it go a few days as you check/adjust the fridge before aging. remember, aging starts to pay off on day 14 or so. some shops go as long as 45 days. all you need is 4 hours of above-40 temps, and you risk squatting on the toilet and counting floor tiles for a day or so.
you do need to do the whole primal (or roast). you should cut all your steaks at once AFTER aging if you can. that's so before slicing them, you can more easily trim off any moldy parts (if any), and anything overly dry and leathery. you don't have to trim all over to reveal 'new' flesh underneath. just remove anything that feels freezer burnt or is off color. ...that'll be a dicey call if you are unfamiliar with how it should look.
if you age it correctly, you will enjoy a certain 'funk' to the meat. for lack of a better description (and i don't ever count this word as a negative) it is 'gamey'. the smell is predominantly from the natural enzymes (not living things) which break down the tissue and produce great little ester by-product luvin which give it depth. you should be able to take a deep close sniff and think only, "that's different" rather than retch and hurl in the sink.
it should NOT get slimy AT ALL. the outside should be cold and clammy/waxy feeling, with no slime. slime is bacterial and it WILL make you throw up upon smelling. slimey? toss it. this is another reason to not use towels. towels may wick away moisture in the first early part of the process, but after a while, they'll just hold wetness next to the meat. not good.[p]this is why you should pay for a real dry-aged steak first, so you can taste it and SMELL it and see it. you don't want to put a hundred dollar chunk of meat in your fridge and after 21 days, when your wife whiffs it, have to shrug when she asks if it's ok to eat. look at the above pic. that was last night's steak. would you eat that if it came out of YOUR fridge? that was from a butcher, prime, and aged 45 days. if the answer is 'no', well, then you may want to skip this experiment![p]alton brown's method is spot on, though on the show he does NOT use towels if i remember correctly though i think his posted recipe does. you don't need them if you are going for true dry-aging. in fact, they may wick water away from the meat, but they then hold it close to the meat. they can also be a breeding ground for bacteria (though if temps are ok, you would be ok). you want as much free air around it as possible. ideally, a small good dorm fridge (which holds correct temp) would be perfect. the bottom (coldest) portion of a lesser-used fridge, with the meat in that tupperware coffin (holes drilled all over for air-circ) which alton usues, is great. i have done them up on a wire rack in a roasting pan and uncovered (in my beer fridge).
good luck, but seriously, do not even bother if you haven't had a dry-aged steak to begin with.
if i may go all out on the know-it-all branch here, if you do go get a commercially dry-aged steak, try the rib eye first. a strip steak (un aged) for me is my go-to steak, but dry-aged, nuthin beats the rib eye. it has the most fat of all the cuts traditionally aged, and the fat gets literally hard, and condenses so much it is damn near butter (which is beef fat, essentially). tenderloin is already tender, and may get more so from aging, but it will gain flavor from the enzymatic action. i think a good old regular un-aged strip is so good, i don't bother with the aged ones any more.
oh, and use prime if you can. half of what you are doing is condensing the fat, and if there's not a good amount of marbling, you'll miss out. you also want a good fat layer on the exterior, as insurance against microbial ne'er-do-wells.
sorry for blathering, but this is something i am pretty passionate about and love to do/have.[p]

Michael B · November 2007

stike,
Thank you for the clarification.
I assume then that you use a wire drying rack?

stike · November 2007

Michael B,
i used two tinfoil roasting pans. i put a vee-rack in one, and the roast on that.[p]then i invert the other on top, after piercing it with a bunch of holes.

Aging Beef

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