As a control, I also included a freshly-bought, previously unfrozen steak in my lineup on tasting day. It wouldn't be from the same steer, but it would at least give me a point of reference.
When you're lucky enough to have a job you love doing, the only real difference between messing around in the kitchen and doing real work is in the measuring, so I pulled out my scale, weighing every steak before I began the aging process. A dry aging room for ants? Indeed, over the several few weeks, a collection of steaks at various stages of aging began to populate my fridge in waves.
I spent my days thinking of ways I could slip the line, "You should check out the science experiment I found in my fridge the other day," into conversation. On the 9th day of each round of testing, I removed the steaks from the fridge, carefully unwrapped them, and weighed them again in order to ascertain degree of moisture loss. The oldest steaks clocked in at around 7 percent weight loss, while the day old steaks barely broke 3 percent.
Far more noticeable was appearance. While the freshest steaks had creamy white fat and a bright, wet-looking wetness on their cut surfaces, the older the steaks got, the darker their color and the tighter their appearance became, an indication that indeed, water was leaving them, concentrating their flesh.
Now, I'm not the kind of guy to accidentally overcook a steak. And I say this with no hint of arrogance or smugness there are plenty of other things I am smug about, like my video game skills , but merely as someone who stopped overcooking their steaks way back when he bought his first Thermapen thermometer. Still, I'm not one to gamble on a couple weeks' worth of work lightly, so I decided to split all of my steaks in half before cooking, just in case.
This ended up revealing a very fascinating cross-section:. The photo above is the cross section of a fresh, unaged piece of beef. If you look very closely, you'll see that the very center has a distinct purplish cast to it. This has to do with oxygen penetration and the conversion of myoglobin to its various forms. In its native state, myoglobin forms a compound called deoxymyoglobin. This is the purplish color of freshly cut meat, before it's been exposed to any of our atmosphere.
Let this purplish, cut surface sit in the presence of oxygen for long enough, and it'll turn into oxymyoglobin , that familiar red color we look for in fresh meat. Now take a look at the cross-section of the aged steak:. You'll notice immediately that the purple core is significantly smaller, and it's soon followed by a brownish layer, and finally a dark, cherry-red layer on the exterior. What's going on here?
It's a matter of timing. The brown color is the color of metmyoglobin , the form that oxymyoglobin converts to after prolonged exposure to oxygen.
In the case of this steak, oxidation has penetrated deep enough and far enough into the steak as to create a significant ring of deoxymyoglobin. Meanwhile, the very outer layers of the steak have taken on a deep, dark red color, an indication that moisture loss has led to an increase in density around the edges of the steak, and therefore an intensification in color.
What this also tells us is that in the timeframe we're talking—up to a week or more—small molecules do indeed penetrate deep into a steak. Is it possible that some of those molecules might be affecting flavor? And what about that dried out edge? How would that affect texture and flavor? A quick gag-inducing sniff test proved the worst in the case of the nine-day aged steaks: They were all rotten. Even cutting into them revealed a core of edible meat only a few eighths of an inch thick.
I threw them out, rather than risk the health of my tasters. I cooked the remaining steaks in a large cast iron pan, using an infrared thermometer to ensure that the surface temperature of the pan was identical before placing the meat inside it.
Normally, I'd cook my steaks by flipping them frequently in order to promote faster, more even cooking throughout the meat. In this case, however, I stuck to a single flip in the middle for the sake of easy repetition and accuracy.
Take a look at the steak on the right versus the one on the left below. This happens for two reasons. First, more moisture can cause it to buckle and bend when that moisture suddenly starts to leave thanks to the heat of the pan , causing certain areas of the steak to shrink faster than others. Small perturbations in the surface of the meat are amplified. Second, because those browning reactions collectively known as the Maillard reaction take place when proteins and sugars are heated to high temperatures—generally in excess of degrees or so.
Meat contains a lot of water, which acts as a built-in temperature regulator, preventing the meat from getting too hot until it mostly evaporates. So for completely fresh meat to brown properly, this surface moisture must first be driven off.
Meat that has spent time in the refrigerator, however, already has a dry surface, allowing it to brown more efficiently. Slow browning is not the end of the world—just by letting the steak sit a few seconds longer on each side, I easily compensated for the discrepancies.
Even more interestingly, the biggest difference in browning was between the non-aged steak and the one-day aged steak. After that, there wasn't much difference, no matter how long the steak was aged.
Indeed, subsequent testing showed that even an overnight 8- to hour rest on a rack in the fridge is sufficient to create a dry enough surface on the meat for optimized browning. Certainly much better browning. The tender issue is debatable. The drier exterior seemed to make the interior feel moister and more tender.
But we did not taste blind in this case. Other than browning, I noticed no major differences in the way the steaks cooked. The real surprise came after I weighed all of the steaks post-cooking to see how much moisture they lost from their original state. Well, would you look at that? What this means is that whatever moisture loss occurs in the very outer layers of the steak due to dehydration during aging would have been lost anyway during cooking.
It also indicates—even before tasting—that any arguments that rely on the concentration of meat flavors due to moisture loss are most likely bogus, since the final moisture loss is identical in all the steaks across the board. How would they stack up in actual blind tastings?
I performed two separate taste tests, using two separate groups of tasters to gather my results. The first taste test was a simple blind side-by-side ranking, in which I asked tasters to taste all the meat, give me notes on relative tenderness and flavor, and rank them in order of preference.
Between the steaks aged for zero, one, two, and five days, there was no discernible pattern to their preferences.
The good news is, ensuring you have adequate circulation is easy, and cheap. Just add a standalone fan. I chose this one — it was cheap, the perfect size for my fridge and offers swivel of the fan head. I actually placed my fan on a sheet pan to catch any meat drips for easy cleaning , and angled the fan to face straight up towards the shelves.
Too much humidity can lead to spoilage, with bacteria growth producing nasty odors and also spoiled flavor. If humidity is too low, excess product shrinkage will occur, and drying too quickly can compromise the integrity of the muscle structure, creating gaps and air pockets. For example, in the winter, you would simply ensure that your fridge is stocked to capacity, so the water within the fresh also called green product would contribute to humidity. If you do live in an area where you will be dealing with extremely dry or moist air, you will need a humidity control on your fridge.
Although not cheap, the simplest solution is to look for a wine fridge that has this feature. I have mine set to 37f, just to account for any potential inaccuracies in the built in thermostat. The sweet spot is f. Anything above 40f will lead to faster spoilage and oxidization… aka rancidity. When I discovered the concept of dry age fridge inoculation, it kind of blew my mind.
I had never considered it before, yet it was so obvious! Much like a sourdough needs a starter, or salami requires introduced mold cultures, your dry aging fridge will benefit from being inoculated by an already dried piece of meat.
And my fridge was started off by a 70 day old strip shell from the CAB facility, with DeBragga provenance.
This may require you to trace down some online options or try to negotiate with your local dry age purveyor. Well, nothing bad. You can still start your own fridge off, but the microclimate will just take far longer to develop. So, your meat will be tender and slightly more intensified, but will lack the funkiness of a mature dry aging facility.
Mold in dry aging is like terroir. In winemaking, terroir refers to the hyperlocal environmental conditions that form the unique flavor and aroma profiles in the wines. So each region, sometimes down to the different vineyard plots, has its own unique terroir.
The mold in your fridge will be influenced by what is locally present in the atmosphere where you live. For example — even though CAB in Ohio got their starter meat from New Jersey, it will have evolved over time to account for the local bacteria that can be found there. Not to mention the bacteria on the various humans handling the meat and opening the door. My fridge will be another evolution of that mold again, with a Texas twist being added into the Ohio hybrid.
This is also the reason you want to make sure not to put any additional items in your dry aging fridge, and to keep the door closed as much as possible. Black mold is bad, folks. Thus suggesting, whether to mold or not mold is up to personal preference. I like getting funky. There are important two factors you need to consider when approaching the preparation and cooking stage: palatibility and food safety.
The rind does not soften during the cooking process and so needs to be removed. When trimming back your rind, you may notice that there are parts of the muscle itself that have turned a brown shade.
In most cases, this is nothing but oxidization of the myoglobin, a harmless color change. One popular misconception is that you can dry-age steaks by lining them with cheesecloth or paper towel, then leaving them in your fridge for four to seven days. While this method dehydrates steaks which can heighten flavor intensity , it does not properly age them. Beef needs to be aged for at least 14 days for enzymes to properly tenderize fibers, and needs to be aged for at least 21 days for complex flavors to develop.
Dry-aging needs to be done before a roast is cut into individual steaks, so go with something like a large rib roast, three ribs minimum. Also, be sure to buy a cut that still has a thick cap of fat on its exterior. This way, that side will only lose fat when you trim the exterior at the end of the aging process. Note: Do not age beef in a fridge with other foods, as your beef will pick up flavors from those foods and vice versa.
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