Aging, or conditioning, of beef is an entirely natural process that adds the meat and tenderness and flavour. The natural enzymes in it will break down the tougher components of the meat fibres if steak is allowed to age. The longer it’s aged, the more soft the steak becomes.
How do you discover Dry Aged Ribeye? It is served in restaurants and some upscale hotels, and you may be able so you can cook your own to find a local producer. Check your local farm listings for naturally-raised beef, or do a web search for “dry aged steak” in your area. You might be able to purchase some from the farm, at a price that is not much more than you’d pay at retail.
And you will be discovering a new world of steak flavour – like our grandparents.
There are two methods used to age steak: dry- aging and wet -aging:
DRY AGING
This is the best, time tested and old-fashioned method.
While dry aging, the steak is shielded by its outer layer of fat and bones.
WET AGING
Their beef, who normally furnish supermarkets, don’t age at all. Use a process called wet aging. Wet aging seals person cuts in vacuum-packed bags so they can be shipped without spending time on aging the meat. The notion is to use vacuum sealing to give exactly the same sort of protection as the fat in the dry-aging process for hung sides of beef.
Wet-aging has the disadvantages that the meat can not breathe, and that it stays at a high moisture content during aging. It does become more soft, but it will take on a metallic and slightly sour taste that comes nowhere close to the rich, full, aromatic flavour of dry-aged beef.
DRY-AGING GIVES THE GREATEST FLAVOUR…
If you see beef in vacuum bags, it has been wet -aged. Either way, you are missing out on a completely new degree of flavour.
Most beef in shops today isn’t aged at all – the packaging factories take in whole animals on one end, and spit packed beef at the other out. So you may never have had the opportunity to attempt the gourmet flavour of naturally aged steak.
Do yourself a flavour, and do a hunt for dry-aged steak locally. Your family and guests will be blown away!