Cook\'s Illustrated on aging beef at home

4 days doesn't change any game, man. hahahaha
sure, you get a little bump in a few days, but the payoff is after a couple weeks.

there's absolutely no planning involved. this grew out of storage. the longer it was stored hanging, the more it aged. same today. put it in your fridge and eat it when you want. you don't need to plan for two weeks. just let it go.

you don't plan when to use that fourth stick of butter do you? no. when you want it, take it out.

well, that just means after 28 days, the meat tastes like it costs FOURTEEN times as much, right? hahaha

the funny thing is, if anything is going to go wrong in two weeks or three weeks (bacterially), it'll go bad in four days, too.

I completely agree about the bacteria. As I understand it two things are going on.

1) drying which will be exponentially decreasing in nature as the thicker the dry layer gets the more it protects the inside.

2) enzyme action which also will be exponentially decreasing as the enzymes and consumables get used up.

depending on the steepness of those curves you would get a half of the change in much less than half of the time. And the fact that the two processes change at different speeds, means that some fairly specific length of time/temperature will be optimal to your persoanl taste.

Tricky to know without a ton of experimentation.

Doug

there are so many variables... i'll leave it to the scientists to crunch the numbers

in my fridge, empirical evidence trumps all the cogitatin' an' ruminatin'

Did they really say "frig"? :woohoo:

I find this confusing. Certainly, the writers of CI know at least enough about the restaurant industry and meat aging to know that steakhouses age their beef for much longer than 4 days. I guess it's the motive here that confuses me. I'm sure they felt they couldn't write an article telling their readers to leave their meat in the fridge for a month. So why write it at all?

I did a little research and at least one dictionary says it also means "fridge". I wonder how many people see "frig" and hear "fridge" in their head. :-)

Two comments about your post:

1. You have just noticed this phenomenon lately? Seems to me like reporting has been going down hill for quite a while now.

2. I don't think you have to be a local to write a good story about a very local tradition, event, or place. What you do have to do is research and interview locals who know what they are talking about. I have to deal with reporters occasionally and I find that none of the ones I deal with have done any research on the topic. Worse yet, they are not willing to do any research before they write some piece of !@#* that has the sole purpose of getting their wacked out readers in a tizzy.

Do I sound bitter about this? Seeing you name in print in an obvious hack job kind of has that effect.

In fact, the other day I got a call at work from the paper asking me to subscribe. I laughed and told the guy that there is no way I will ever subscribe to that paper. He asked why, and I told him that I thought the reporting was horrible and irresponsible.

Sorry for the rant. Guess I will stop now.

Trouser trout. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

I once saw a story on weightlifting before it was as popular as it is now. The weightlifters said one of their favorite workouts was schlong dipping. That got printed. This was in the early 80's, so the problem with bad or no editing has been around for a while.

The stuff I get quoted on is technical. The reporters don't want to see any side of the story except the one that fits their own bias or the clear bias of their readership. Unfortunately, we do not have the same distribution channels to get out our side of the story. Oh well, I guess we manage somehow.