How Do I Dry Age Beef at Home

maio 27, 2022 Postar um comentário

Beefiness

Wet-Aging vs. Dry out-Crumbling and How to Dry-Historic period Beef at Domicile

March 15, 2019

If yous've e'er tasted a thick prime number steak dry-anile iv to six weeks (and opposite seared), you lot've come up pretty close to heaven on earth. One of the best dry out-aged beef purveyors we know is Chicago Steak Visitor. We asked Chicago Steak CEO Matt Crowley to share his thoughts on the divergence between dry- and moisture-aged beefiness and how to dry out-age beef at abode.

If you've bought a steak from a grocery store, there'due south a practiced chance y'all've purchased a wet-aged steak. Unlike dry out-aging, which is centuries former, 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 when freezing meat. Though some people prefer wet-anile steaks, most Americans adopt dry-aged beef. Without oxygen, the chemical changes that need to occur for dry-aged taste just aren't possible. While a small-scale amount of enzymatic changes can happen in wet-aged beef, the overall change is minimal. This leaves wet-anile steaks with a more metallic, "bloody" gustation, while dry-aged steaks accept richer, fuller-bodied, and more complex umami flavors.

Wet-aging is pop with many grocery stores considering it is a far less expensive process than dry-aging. While dry-aging typically takes 4-vi 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 production. As a effect, wet-aged beef is easier to find and cheaper to buy.

Misconceptions About Dry Aging

While it'southward possible to dry out-age beefiness at home, it is far more difficult and involved than some guides (including several online) would lead you lot to believe.

One popular misconception is that you lot can dry-age steaks by lining them with cheesecloth or paper towel, and then leaving them in your refrigerator for four to seven days. While this method dehydrates steaks (which can enhance season intensity), it does non properly age them. Beef needs to exist aged for at least 14 days for enzymes to properly tenderize fibers, and needs to be aged for at to the lowest degree 21 days for circuitous flavors to develop. 1 calendar week in a refrigerator—cheesecloth or no cheesecloth—won't brand that happen.

Instead, dry-aging takes dedicated equipment, time, and large, primal cuts.

What You Demand to Dry-Age Beef

If you want to dry-age beefiness at home, you lot'll need to offset out with a large cut of height-course, USDA Prime beef. Dry-aging needs to exist done before a roast is cut into individual steaks, then go with something like a large rib roast, three ribs minimum. Likewise, be sure to buy a cut that still has a thick cap of fat on its outside. This way, that side will only lose fat when you trim the exterior at the end of the aging process.

Yous'll then need the following equipment: a dedicated refrigerator, a minor fan, a tray, and a wire cooking rack.

Annotation: Do not age beef in a fridge with other foods, as your beef will pick up flavors from those foods and vice versa. Dry-aging in a multi-use fridge will as well throw off wet levels. The need for a defended fridge is the biggest challenge and added cost to at-home dry-aging.

How to Dry-Age Beef at Home

First, select your fridge and set upwards a small, electrical fan within to maintain airflow. Next, put a wire rack on top of a tray. The tray is to collect any drippings. Make sure the bottom of the rack is elevated so that airflow is possible on all sides of the beef.
Set your cutting of beef on peak of the wire rack. Then, slide the tray, rack, and beef into the fridge and wait. Await 2-4 weeks if yous're only looking for added tenderness, 4-6 weeks for that famous dry-aged sense of taste, and 6-8 (or more than) weeks if yous're looking to develop some seriously funky aromas and flavors. While it is okay to check on your beef occasionally, remember that every time you open your fridge'southward door you throw off wet levels and invite unwanted odors in.
Later on yous take aged your cutting for your preferred length of time, remove it from the fridge. At this point, the exterior will be dry, deep-carmine or imperial/brown, and may accept developed mold. Trim away any of this meat, equally well as any exterior fat. Finally, cut the beefiness into individual steaks, according to your tastes. Nosotros recommend between 1¼ to 2 inches thickness, though some grillers prefer steaks every bit thick as 3 inches or more.

Remember: when aging at dwelling house, information technology can be hard to adjust and control things like humidity, airflow, and temperature without professional equipment. Because of this, dry-aging at habitation is mostly less precise than professional dry-aging. This means that it can be tough—if non impossible—to replicate the signature taste of a specific eating house or butcher's dry out-aging process.

Learn more than: What Is Dry-Aged Beef?