Dry Aging Beef at Home

Aging Beef from University of Minnesota Extension

Aging Beef from University of Missouri Extension

I guess we've gone a long way from slaughtering the animal and letting it hang in the barn for two weeksuntil you have time to can it ...

Ask The Meatman: Dry aging beef at home

Excellent! I was just having a conversation with a friend over the weekend--after devouring two giant porterhouses from the Madison farmers market, grilled (perfectly, if I do say so myself) medium rare--about aging. The farmer dry aged the meat 12 days, and the friend was wondering if you could dry age beef at home. I assumed it was a flat-out "no", but this guide cleared that up. Thanks!!

Howdy all,

Is anyone here aging thier own beef/stakes? I would love to hear of your experiences and techniques.

Stefan

Hi,

Cook's Illustrated described a method for drying aging beef at home, which I tried once. I never did it again, which may say volumes. I just wasn't convinced it was a better roast for the time spent.

I learned from others here that a refrigerator in a remote location that is opened rarely is a better environment to do this. Using your refrigerator that opens and closes several times a day is substantially poorer environment to do this effort. This probably more than anything else kept me from attempting this again.

Regards,

I swear I saw an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown aged a roast in the fridge with a large tupperware container. It would be worth taking a look at that episode...

Jeffrey Steingarten has a chapter on his experiments with dry-aging beef in his refrigerator in It Must Have Been Something I Ate.

tyrus wrote:I swear I saw an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown aged a roast in the fridge with a large tupperware container. It would be worth taking a look at that episode...

I found this on Food Tv: Dry aged standing rib roast.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:

tyrus wrote:I swear I saw an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown aged a roast in the fridge with a large tupperware container. It would be worth taking a look at that episode...

I found this on Food Tv: Dry aged standing rib roast.

Regards,

To add: http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/GEFP/index.htm

The letters to the editor of Cook's Illustrated asks about dry aging beef at home this month. The answer suggests that the home cook can dry age individual steaks rather than whole strips or ribeyes in a fairly short period of time.

1. Wrap prime beef steaks in cheesecloth.
2. Place them in the back of the refrigerator, high up so that they are in the coldest spot in the fridge.
3. Let them sit for no more than 4 days.

The result, according to the magazine is a good drying of the fat that results in the intense flavors that one should expect for dry aged beef for am much higher price.

I have a couple (one strip, one ribeye) in the fridge now. I should be able to test the method by Tuesday.

I saw this as well, and am looking forward to hearing your results. Sounds great but I'm a bit skeptical. You would get some moisture loss which should help the flavor, but I wonder if it would have time to get more tender. I hope it works great.

Waiting Patiently,

Jeff

I took a couple of photos with my IPhone. They're not of great quality. But, they may give you some idea of the method to my madness.

I should note that I inadvertently referred to my steaks as prime grade. They are choice grade.

The strip is a bit less than half a pound the ribeye is a two-pounder.


The beginning product


Wrapped In Cheese Cloth


In The Fridge For A Week of Vacation With Some Mexican Friends

Hi,

I have been dry aging steaks and primals for years with great success. Individual steaks really benefit from 4 to 7 days of aging. I have also aged standing rib roasts and boneless rib eye roasts for periods ranging from 10 days to 23 days.

After 23 days of aging, a Prime boneless rib eye may be cut into large medallions, like a filet, that are as tender as a filet with wonderful flavor.

Tim

Tim, is there a time frame that you recommend based on weight. I was thinking 4 or 5 days for the half pound steak and up to 10 days for the two pounder.

Any other tips you might have for us.

Am I correct in assuming that you won't need to do any trimming when doing individual steaks, as opposed to when much larger pieces of meat are done, due to the length of the age?

Just a rinse and you should be good to go?

Will,

I would age any steak up to two pounds for 4 to 6 days. Those are pretty thin steaks and you do not want the surface to dry too much; that would require trimming. Trimming is not desireable since you don't want your 2" thick steak to end up 1 1/2" thick.

I would not wash any steak after dry aging. You may scrape the surface like your butcher does just to clean the meat.

The longer aging periods are appropriate for a larger thicker cut with a fat cap. In this case, you may trim off dried out meat and fat.

Tim

Thanks for the advice.

I opened the fridge this morning, now about 1/2 way through the dry aging process for the strip steak to be greeted by that nice mineral-like smell associated with dry aged beef. I'm planning to take the rib steak to a full 7 day age since it is considerably bigger.

I took the steaks out for a change of cheesecloth this morning. The small one is about 24 hours away from sampling. I'm planning to let the large rib steak go until Friday.

This may all be for naught as I had an adjustment to my band this week and my ability to get certain things down is a little problematic right now. Steak is one of them.

Here is the Wednesday morning picture update:

I can't wait to see your results and to read about your impressions on home dry-aging.

I have a 3-4lb CAB ribeye roast dry-aging in my cooler for about 5 weeks now and a drybagged whole choice strip loin that's been in there for about 3 weeks. I'm trying to find a special occasion to try them out.





I just picked up a 14lb USDA Prime ribeye loin from Costco on Tuesday. I'm going to experiment with wet-aging it for a month and then drybag-aging it for a few weeks. Looking forward to some very tender steaks for the Easter holiday...

I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome of the little strip steak. I had been traveling on business today, so the total time in cold storage for this little steak was about 4 1/2 days.

There wasn't a lot of fat on the steak from the beginning. If I do it again, I will choose a steak with a higher exterior fat content. I had to trim away a bit of meat around the edges as it has become too dry to try to cook and eat.



I prefer a cooking method of pan searing on a bed of salt. It adds great flavor, creates a great crusty seal on the exterior of the steak and is pretty much fool proof for me. I didn't consider the effect that the reduced moisture content would have on cooking time, so the end product ended up clearly medium versus my preferred medium rare.



The steak was very juicy and flavorful. It tasted much like a dry aged strip that one would get a a better steak house. The steak flavor was intense and it had a bit of the mineral flavor that longer aged steaks display.



I imagine that this will be the beginning of more and greater experimentation on my part with dry aged beef.

That looks fantastic!

Once you discover how easy it is to dry-age at home, you will never settle for non-aged meat again.

I would be very interested in hearing about your dry bagging method. I'm kind of a neophyte to this whole process.

here's a link to a rather long thread (from the wine and food board I read)
http://dat.erobertparker.com/bboard/showthread.php?t=160097&highlight=dry+aged+steaks+experiment
lots of good info

Thanks for that link. It looks like 28 days is the optimum for a larger cut like the whole ribeyes or strips one can buy at Costco. Cathy's advice of having s special aging fridge (with a humidifier) is probably a good one.

I'm wondering how one of those smaller dorm style fridges would work in this process.

One new concern from the guy in TX who started that thread is that his Costco meat source is now using a tenderizer (needle punch) on the primal cuts so dry aging is
not recommended. This does not seem to be the case for the IL Costcos that I've shop.

I decided to cut a steak from the 5-week dry-aging CAB ribeye that was taking up space in my mini-frig and make it to for dinner on Thursday. This steak from from the loin end of the ribeye. The meat was very tender and the beef flavor was very intense, to the point of being nutty. Anyway, I'll have to trim off a little more next time because part of the edge was certainly dry/chewy/tough when I ate it.

Reverse-searing is my preferred method for cooking a steak. I roast the steak in a 250 degree oven until the internal temperature reaches approximately 90-95 degrees. Then I transfer it to a smoking hot cast-iron skillet. One to two minutes per side. (I did two minutes for this meal) Plate and tent with foil for 10 minutes.

The refrigerator dried aged ribeye was the star of my Super Bowl dinner tonight. This particular steak had much more depth of flavor than the little strip that I cooked earlier in the week did. I served it with roasted green beans and a maytag blue mashed potato.

The steak was big enough that I pan seared it on a bed of salt, then roasted it at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. It camer out a nice rare side of medium rare.

I should note that I took the rib steak out of the cheesecloth at six days and had stored it for the last couple in a zip lock type bag in my fridge.

YourPalWill wrote:
I should note that I took the rib steak out of the cheesecloth at six days and had stored it for the last couple in a zip lock type bag in my fridge.

Glad to hear it worked out for you. Did you store in a zip lock to buy a couple more days before cooking, or for some other reason?

Thanks,

Jeff