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?