Having proven that Dry-aging is a viable method to increase the quality of your steak, I continued to source a fattier chunk to get more taste from the meat. This time the breed I was able to get my hands on was Simmental from Lahisten kartano.
As I mentioned last time, the description of the cut of meat has proven to be difficult here in Finland. Few phone calls in and even emails of links of the meat in question I still ended up with the wrong cut. However, when I’m picking up the meat, the price was so outrageously cheap, that I’m more than happy. So I received two 13kg pieces of almost whole chuck. My small fridge seemed pathetic so I had to attack the meat with some tools to make it fit in.
Eventually, the process started and I was happy to wait this time for two variations, a 45 day aged and a 65 day aged.
Sometime during the waiting, I found out a shop that sells reasonably priced himalyan salt bricks/slabs. I decided to upgrade my aging setup from loose, coarse salt to these bricks. The added benefit is that the condensed water slowly falls off the blocks keeping a dry face constantly available for the rotating air. Where as the bowls of coarse, loose salt gather quite a bit of moisture and I had to change the salt once a week, especially in the beginning.
The end product was taste-vise much better than last time. However, as the chuck is a bit more sinewy piece, I couldn’t get as attractive looking steaks from the cut. So stay tuned, more is coming.
