Big A$$ Pieces of Meat... my first dry aging experiment

YetiDave said:

At this stage salt probably won't do much. If I were you the only thing I might do is what the Italians do when removing unwanted mould from cured meat - give it a good rub down with a cloth soaked in red wine

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I meant that I thought about sprinkling it with salt right at the beginning.

Thanks for the wine tip!

Well, yesterday was day 21- time to cut some steaks!



Here's the "crust". it was pretty tough to cut through even with my 12" Victrinox slicer. It was only about 1/4" at it's thickest.



I trimmed the pieces pretty mercilessly to avoid the nasties. Alas, as suggested earlier, these turned out not to be ribeyes . They should turn out good anyway tho.



I was kind of surprised at the texture and consistency of the meat- there was absolutely no fight left in these steaks at all. The surface was dry and the cuts were very limp. They almost reminded me of wet tissue paper- like if you held them up in the air they would fall apart under their own weight.









Each slab yielded 11 steaks and 2 mini-steaks from the ends. I'm not sure how much was lost to the trim because I don't have a scale, but it was alot less than I thought it would be. The steaks are all between 3/4" and 1" thick. I vac-packed them all and threw in the freezer except for 1 which I will test cook as soon as I swap out my propane tank. I'll report back on that.

Thanks for looking!

I finally got a chance to throw a couple of steaks on the gasser.

A liberal sprinkling of Adobo.



I got the grill up as high as it would go.



After 4 minutes on each side, they had a nice sear, and plenty of juice despite being "dry" aged.



Came out a nice Medium/Medium-Rare.



Threw together some blah and blah blah to go with the meat.



So, how did they turn out...? I have to be honest- this is the first time I ever cooked a steak that smelled like it was from a steak house. The taste was great- very beefy and more complex than a fresh steak.

The only thing that would have made them better is if they were actual ribeyes like the box was labeled. The lower quality cut didn't seem to affect the flavor or tenderness, but there was quite a bit of gristle I had to chew around.

Perhaps next time I will cook 2 that don't have as much fat.

All in all, definitely worth the extra time to age, if you have the space/equipment.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Good luck with YOUR future dry aging endeavors.