It’s been a meaty spring for my dry-aging fridge. I’ve turned out chunk after chunk of marvelously dry-aged beef every few weeks. This post is finally to show that dry-aged beef isn’t a rocket science and can be easily done at home.
History of my dry-aged beef trials
I’ve now done close to ten pieces of ribeye. The first was a low fat highland beef, that turned out ok, but was damn expensive and not worth the money. For the second batch, I found a Simmental provider but the cut was not that good. The third batch was perfect both quality and cut wise and I had high hopes for it. And now the fourth installation is continuing to deliver high quality meat.
The aging in pictures
In my previous posts about the aging process, I had to manually oversee the aging parameters, namely temperature and humidity. I had some issues with the meat freezing at some point and not drying enough at some other. Now with my current aging setup, this is a true fire and forget apparatus, that allows me to put in freshly cut meat and take it out months later with no worries of the previous mishaps.
So instead of detailing the parameters (3C and 78 %-rh), I’ll just show you few pictures.
Cutting the meat for cooking
The dry aged chunks are relatively tough to cut. Using s sharp knife, it’s just a bit time consuming but not at all difficult. I’ve used few other tools as well along the line and depending a bit on the cut I have, I’ve now chosen my two most common approaches:
Approach 1:
I use this approach to release the meat from the sub-primal, when the chunk is relatively close to the end of the rib section. The ribs are much more parallel to each other and the first cut is easy to make.
However, if I’ve received a cut closer to the chuck, the ribs begin to curve quite heavily and the first cut is really difficult to make without cutting into the meat itself. so I’ve developed another approach.
Approach 2:
I saw the ribs using a saw and then do the “second and third” cuts described in the first approach. This leaves me with these tomahawk-kind of steaks that can be grilled with bone (see the header image of this post) or removed easily before grilling.
Verdict
The fridge setup works like a charm! The meat quality has been more than ok but I could still do with a more marbled breed. The end results have been delicious!
My wine pairings so far have been a Tignanello 2014 (the original super tuscan!), Matsu El Viejo 2015 (Spanish Toro) and I definitely recommend the Tig! It’s a fantastic wine that goes really well with the meaty and distinct dry-aged flavour!
So eat well! Let’s see what new meaty escaped I can come up with. Perhaps I’ll build the grill…