How to Age Beef 21 Days
Beefiness
Wet-Aging vs. Dry-Crumbling and How to Dry-Age Beef at Habitation
If yous've ever tasted a thick prime steak dry out-aged 4 to vi weeks (and reverse seared), you've come up pretty close to heaven on earth. One of the best dry-aged beef purveyors we know is Chicago Steak Company. We asked Chicago Steak CEO Matt Crowley to share his thoughts on the departure between dry- and wet-aged beef and how to dry-age beefiness at abode.
If you've bought a steak from a grocery store, at that place's a good chance you've purchased a wet-aged steak. Unlike dry-crumbling, which is centuries sometime, wet-aging is a relatively new technique, invented in the 1950s.
Wet-aging involves vacuum sealing steaks—the same method used to prevent freezer burn down when freezing meat. Though some people prefer moisture-aged steaks, most Americans adopt dry-aged beefiness. Without oxygen, the chemical changes that need to occur for dry-aged gustation just aren't possible. While a modest corporeality of enzymatic changes can happen in wet-anile beef, the overall modify is minimal. This leaves wet-aged steaks with a more metallic, "bloody" taste, while dry out-aged steaks have richer, fuller-bodied, and more circuitous umami flavors.
Moisture-aging is popular with many grocery stores because it is a far less expensive process than dry-aging. While dry-aging typically takes 4-half-dozen weeks, requires specialized aging lockers, and causes product loss due to trimming and evaporation, wet-aging takes less time, less equipment, and causes no loss of product. Every bit a result, wet-aged beef is easier to find and cheaper to buy.
Misconceptions About Dry out Aging
While it's possible to dry-historic period beef at home, information technology is far more hard and involved than some guides (including several online) would lead you to believe.
One pop misconception is that you tin dry-age steaks by lining them with cheesecloth or paper towel, then leaving them in your fridge for iv to seven days. While this method dehydrates steaks (which tin heighten season intensity), it does not properly age them. Beef needs to be anile for at least fourteen days for enzymes to properly tenderize fibers, and needs to exist aged for at least 21 days for complex flavors to develop. Ane week in a fridge—cheesecloth or no cheesecloth—won't make that happen.
Instead, dry-aging takes dedicated equipment, time, and large, primal cuts.
What You Need to Dry-Age Beef
If yous want to dry-age beef at home, y'all'll need to start out with a large cut of top-grade, USDA Prime number beefiness. Dry out-aging needs to be washed before a roast is cut into private steaks, so go with something like a large rib roast, three ribs minimum. Also, exist certain to buy a cutting that still has a thick cap of fat on its exterior. This fashion, that side will simply lose fat when y'all trim the exterior at the end of the aging procedure.
Y'all'll so need the post-obit equipment: a dedicated fridge, a small fan, a tray, and a wire cooking rack.
Notation: Do not age beef in a refrigerator with other foods, as your beef will choice up flavors from those foods and vice versa. Dry-crumbling in a multi-use fridge will also throw off wet levels. The need for a dedicated fridge is the biggest challenge and added price to at-domicile dry-aging.
How to Dry out-Age Beefiness at Home
- Outset, select your fridge and set up a minor, electric fan inside to maintain airflow. Next, put a wire rack on top of a tray. The tray is to collect whatsoever drippings. Make sure the bottom of the rack is elevated and so that airflow is possible on all sides of the beefiness.
- Ready your cut of beef on acme of the wire rack. So, slide the tray, rack, and beefiness into the refrigerator and wait. Wait ii-iv weeks if yous're only looking for added tenderness, four-half-dozen weeks for that famous dry-aged taste, and 6-8 (or more) weeks if you're looking to develop some seriously funky aromas and flavors. While it is okay to check on your beef occasionally, remember that every fourth dimension you open your fridge's door y'all throw off moisture levels and invite unwanted odors in.
- After you have aged your cut for your preferred length of time, remove it from the fridge. At this bespeak, the exterior will be dry out, deep-ruddy or imperial/brown, and may have developed mold. Trim away any of this meat, also as whatever exterior fat. Finally, cut the beef into individual steaks, according to your tastes. Nosotros recommend between one¼ to two inches thickness, though some grillers prefer steaks as thick equally 3 inches or more.
Remember: when aging at habitation, information technology can be hard to adapt and command things like humidity, airflow, and temperature without professional equipment. Because of this, dry-crumbling at home is more often than not less precise than professional dry-crumbling. This means that it tin be tough—if non impossible—to replicate the signature gustatory modality of a specific restaurant or butcher'south dry-aging process.
Learn more: What Is Dry-Anile Beef?
Try these fabled steak recipes on our site:
- Cherry-Smoked Strip Steak with Cut Board Sauce
- Caveman Tri-Tip with Ember Salsa
- Spruce-Smoked Steaks
- Florentine-Style Steak (Bistecca alla Fiorentina)
- Cowboy Rib Eye a la Plancha with Crispy Brioche Salad and Grilled Dates
Source: https://barbecuebible.com/2019/03/15/how-to-dry-age-beef-at-home/
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