Hope this works. Got about an 1800g ribe eye, aged on a rack in the fridge for two weeks and cut into 6, 300g steaks.
I sliced off the ends as the texture felt pretty tough and leathery, not sure if this was needed. I had salted the meat before aging, but didn’t resalt before freezing (again not sure what to do here). I also added garlic and butter as that seems to be common on here.
Will report back once I cook, but in the meantime and tips would be appreciated 🙏🤟
by CovfefeFan
7 Comments
that is going to be some taaaasty butter
Two weeks is not really long enough time to develop the signature dry-aged flavor, although you may well start to see benefits in terms of tenderness. For flavor you’ll typically want to go out to 4 weeks, if not longer depending on your preferred level of funk. If you’re going that long, you’ll want to make sure you have a dedicated dry-aging fridge, as otherwise your meat may pick up “fridge” flavor instead.
As for the leathery outer bits – yes, you’ll always want to trim these before cooking. The ~1 cm band that circles your steaks will also typically be trimmed off as it will be dry and moldy (perfectly normal). Because these outer surfaces get trimmed off, it’s thus usually better to age bone-in cuts with the fat caps still attached, as the bones and cap protect more of the good stuff and reduce loss.
Lastly, garlic in the bag is fine, but butter usually has the opposite effect of what you want. Rather than butter-flavored beef, you end up with beef-flavored butter.
Buttteeerrrrrrrr
Take the butter out of the bag
You generally want to cut off the darker bits before sealing and cooking. But I’m sure this is a test run. In the future, I’d suggest buying something that has a fat cap on top and the rib bones on the bottom so you can leave as much meat on as possible.
That being said, 2 weeks is generally enough time to start to taste the effects of dry aging. Those brown parts will likely have some stronger flavor on them so that may impact your experience with dry aging. If you cut them off it’ll be more like a normal steak with some deeper flavors and likely more tended due to the breakdown of muscle fibers that have started to take place. All of that is up to you to test and see how you like it and whether the rind is taken off or not.
I’ve dry aged beef anywhere from 2 weeks to 68 days and I can tell you that the sweet spot is generally in that 21-40 day range for me. Granted, I don’t have a set up that is as precise as some commercial or rich hobbyist carnivores have, and every cut of beef (and animal for that matter) is different.
In any case, enjoy it! It’s a learning experience for sure!
Trim off the hard outer layer… season with salt and pepper…. NO butter
Let the salt do its job for a couple of days vacuumed sealed… then freeze them