Dry Aged Meat... Who Here Does It?? (Official Dry Age Conversation Thread)

[Jer]

Curious who has their favorite method or tips they care to share.

I just picked up a 15lb prime rib roast that I plan to dry age starting next week. I took advantage of the sale King Soopers does this time of year and paid $4.77/lb which is a killer deal for any steak cut, let alone prime rib I'm targeting 30-35 days as it seems that appears to be the sweet spot for best results. Much shorter and you don't get the full benefit and much longer your benefits fade and you can start to get negative aspects that result in the meat getting a bit too much "funk" to the flavor.

There's a couple of methods and one of which is to simply take a bit cooking sheet/pan and fill the bottom pretty full with pink coarse sea salt and then place a small rack in it (coated in rubber is ideal to avoid issues) to drop your meat on. Then you find a spot in your fridge (set to 36deg +/- 1deg ideally) and place it in there being careful to avoid all bacteria by wearing gloves and making sure your fridge stays germ-free (and the door closed as much as possible) for the duration. A separate fridge would be ideal but do NOT use a small dorm fridge, an old out-dated fridge or similar. The problem with those is they don't circulate the air will and you will probably end up with mold/bacteria growth. Other than that, pretty straight forward. Tried and true plus inexpensive with a pound or two of sea-salt being your only investment.

This time I plan to use special bags made for dry aging from UMAi. They're not cheap but they simplify the process in many ways. You place the meat inside, vacuum seal and the material sort of bonds with the surface of the meat. It then allows moisture to vent while keeping all bacteria and contaminants out. Best of both worlds. This comes at a price (of course) though and you're looking at about $10 per bag or so in packs of three. Not cheap but you can effectively take a choice grade meat and turn it into a prime grade so if you compare better graded meat by the pound you find that one of these bags divided by the total weight added to your per-pound-cost isn't all that bad. Once you seal it up you throw it in the back of your fridge with the same temperature parameters and that's that. Not much else you need to worry about and if you handled it properly transferring it to the bag you won't have any issues at all. It's much less susceptible to any bacteria or junk you may have in your fridge as the previous method I described above. For the added safety and convenience is worth the price tag. In the end I'm only adding about $0.50/lb to the meat cost so it's not that big of a deal at all. Still less than when King Soopers does sales on Ribeye in the family packs.

I'll update with pictures and progress here and there but I'm curious if anyone else does this. I've heard of some wet-aging too but I don't have much (read: any) experience in this as I've always dry aged beef. We can make this the general meat aging thread just be specific as to which type you're talking about in your posts to avoid confusion.

So, who's into this crap?

[20X11]

I always wet age my beef. Buy it in the cryovac packaging from Costco, Sam's , etc. Don't have to worry about contamination as long as the bag stays un-punctured. 24- 32 days later, tender goodness comes out of the spare/beer fridge. Time to cut steaks when the blood in the package turns the color of a dark red wine. Granted, not the flavor profile of dry aging, but tender and delicious none the less.

[Mercula]

Pics. We need pics.

[Great-Kazoo]

Jer, I'm all in using the UMAI method. Unfortunately with no room to start up the meat processing area while all the out buildings in use. Till the shop gets built, i'm on hold.
There's a few FB pages where members have been doing the umai dry aging process. Here's a link to one of the pages you' and others will find helpful. Once you join up, type UMAI in the search bar, you'll see a few discussions going on.

www.facebook.com/groups/703798273021798/





While there's different methods, as mentioned. For the $$ the UMAI process looks like the way to go. Like a pellet smoker it's almost a set it and forget it deal. I'm interested mainly for doing cured smoked sausages and other similar meats.

We also grabbed a few packers from safeway and the Krogers out here. You can't beat under $5 prime rib. I have them do 2-3 rib roast, steaks off the bone cut 1-1.5" thick and set the ribs off to the side. You have at least a 1 -2 month head start so i'll be following this thread. .

[JohnnyEgo]

I may have to give UMAI a try. I usually just hit it with a crap ton of Kosher salt and put it in the back of the fridge until my wife can't abide by it's presence anymore, which is usually in the 7-14 day range. The bags might let me get away with aging a little longer.

[Jer]

Jer, I'm all in using the UMAI method. Unfortunately with no room to start up the meat processing area while all the out buildings in use. Till the shop gets built, i'm on hold.
There's a few FB pages where members have been doing the umai dry aging process. Here's a link to one of the pages you' and others will find helpful. Once you join up, type UMAI in the search bar, you'll see a few discussions going on.

www.facebook.com/groups/703798273021798/





While there's different methods, as mentioned. For the $$ the UMAI process looks like the way to go. Like a pellet smoker it's almost a set it and forget it deal. I'm interested mainly for doing cured smoked sausages and other similar meats.

We also grabbed a few packers from safeway and the Krogers out here. You can't beat under $5 prime rib. I have them do 2-3 rib roast, steaks off the bone cut 1-1.5" thick and set the ribs off to the side. You have at least a 1 -2 month head start so i'll be following this thread. .

Yeah, plenty of time. I didn't have them cut down since I'm dry aging since there will be less waste that way. Only two ends to cut off for waste instead of 6 or so. Once done aging I plan to trim the rind off the entire thing, french the bones and then slice into cowboy cuts of around 2" that I will then individually vacuum seal and date for future cooks. One of those will be more then enough for the wife and I. I plan to try a few reverse sear methods to include smoking then grill finishing as well as sous vide with either torch/searzall or cast iron pan finishing. It will be interesting to see which method this meat will prefer but I have a feeling that will all turn out epic.

[OtterbatHellcat]

so i'll be following this thread. .


Yep.

[JohnnyEgo]

If you want to try Sous Vide on the cheap, you can fill a cooler full of hot water at about 155? and let the meat sit in it for a couple hours. The cooler only drops a few degrees per hour, so your steak and the water will reach about the desired temperature at the desired time. Learned it from my 'Food Lab' cookbook by J Kenji Lopez Alt. Worked well enough for me to realize I was ambivalent about sous vide.

I haven't done the reverse sear yet, but it is something I intend to try tomorrow. Going to make a pepper-crusted tri-tip. Will let it sit for a few hours in the oven at low, and then hit it on a CI pan heated as hot as my electric burners will take it.

Edit: Damned board code keeps converting my alt-code degree symbol to a question mark.

[Great-Kazoo]

If you want to try Sous Vide on the cheap, you can fill a cooler full of hot water at about 155? and let the meat sit in it for a couple hours. The cooler only drops a few degrees per hour, so your steak and the water will reach about the desired temperature at the desired time. Learned it from my 'Food Lab' cookbook by J Kenji Lopez Alt. Worked well enough for me to realize I was ambivalent about sous vide.

I haven't done the reverse sear yet, but it is something I intend to try tomorrow. Going to make a pepper-crusted tri-tip. Will let it sit for a few hours in the oven at low, and then hit it on a CI pan heated as hot as my electric burners will take it.

Edit: Damned board code keeps converting my alt-code degree symbol to a question mark.

Chili chocolate chip cookies for a snack ?

[def90]

There was an article on Steve Rinellas website meater.com about aging wild game. You can achieve a similar result via wet aging as well. Basically vacume seal a cut of meat and let it sit in yorur refridgerator for anywhere from 3-4 weeks. With wet aging you don’t lose the rind or crust of meat that you do with dry aging.

[Great-Kazoo]

There was an article on Steve Rinellas website meater.com about aging wild game. You can achieve a similar result via wet aging as well. Basically vacume seal a cut of meat and let it sit in yorur refridgerator for anywhere from 3-4 weeks. With wet aging you don’t lose the rind or crust of meat that you do with dry aging.

I've done that with a few steaks , results were good. One of the goals in the new place was to set up a dry aging / curing room. With these bags i can do away with some of the other items once needed to do so.

[Jer]

If you want to try Sous Vide on the cheap, you can fill a cooler full of hot water at about 155? and let the meat sit in it for a couple hours. The cooler only drops a few degrees per hour, so your steak and the water will reach about the desired temperature at the desired time. Learned it from my 'Food Lab' cookbook by J Kenji Lopez Alt. Worked well enough for me to realize I was ambivalent about sous vide.

I haven't done the reverse sear yet, but it is something I intend to try tomorrow. Going to make a pepper-crusted tri-tip. Will let it sit for a few hours in the oven at low, and then hit it on a CI pan heated as hot as my electric burners will take it.

Edit: Damned board code keeps converting my alt-code degree symbol to a question mark.

That can work but it's not ideal. The volume and density of the meat you use can affect that and it's tricky to get it perfect w/o lots of practice which is akin to grilling since it takes trial and error and even then you'll have random cooks go bad. Just like anything there's degrees of "working" and you have more variables with that method. For well under $100 you can get a device that keeps the temp exactly where you set it and circulates the water for proven and consistent cooks exactly how you want them every time. That's kind of the point of the Sous Vide method so a device to make it perfect the first time and every time is what makes it shine. Add something like WiFi to enable remote delayed cooks and you open a whole new world of possibility.

There's a sous vide thread though so this is a great conversation to happen there so we don't end up with fractured topics scattered across four different threads. Let's try to keep this one on the topic of meat aging and we can discuss the next step (smoking, sous vide, etc.) in one of the other threads.

[Jer]

There was an article on Steve Rinellas website meater.com about aging wild game. You can achieve a similar result via wet aging as well. Basically vacume seal a cut of meat and let it sit in yorur refridgerator for anywhere from 3-4 weeks. With wet aging you don’t lose the rind or crust of meat that you do with dry aging.

I've read similar but the majority of the stuff I've seen says that dry aging is superior and imparts more of a beefy flavor and the and result is also more tender due to more enzymes and such. I think I also saw that it's also more likely that you end up with bad bacterial growth (mold, etc.) with the wet aging method. Maybe if you're doing individual steaks where loss is more noticeable that's a preferred method but with massive hunks like this prime rib roast a little loss isn't as noticeable? Personally, if I eat a whole prime rib steak I'm miserable for hours afterwards. If I get the option to choose for less food but it tastes even better that's a fair trade for me. I dunno but if these bags work the way they claim it will be so simple that it will be my preferred method moving forward for simple ease of use.

[jslo]

Read some articles for 3 day dry aging, using a brushed on coating of fish sauce, with supposidly pretty decent results. Haven't tried yet but probably will one day.

[DFBrews]

I have a dedicated fridge with a temp controller for dry aging with 3 2x12x12 salt blocks in it to buffer humidity and temp. The 4.77 a lb rib roast at Kings is very wet the first couple days to a week play hell with keeping humidity where it needs to be

[drew890]

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4834/46451831771_88b5eb9326_k.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2dLMMee)B09EC757-F0AA-4386-9456-0BB662AB588E (https://flic.kr/p/2dLMMee) by Drew White (https://www.flickr.com/photos/157367850@N05/), on Flickr
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7850/44634879200_c75be70069_k.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2b1eqwL)4DC331D8-B8B6-4816-83A1-73A3EA21ABA6 (https://flic.kr/p/2b1eqwL) by Drew White (https://www.flickr.com/photos/157367850@N05/), on Flickr
40 days dry aged and then trimmed up. Nothing but nicely aged meat beneath the dried outside.
Forgot to measure and weigh before hand, but in the end trimmed 3 bone roast came out to 5.5 pounds.
It is on the smoker now.

[Jamnanc]

I’ve done the fridge with a towel and rotate every few days. It was excellent, but my preference is to buy a side of beef and have the locker hang it.