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

How are you planning on cooking these eventually? I have never dry aged, but wouldn't you get more air around it and better aging if you divided these into your final product (assuming you are not going to cook the whole joint?).

Just askin.

Nice looking experiment

I got the Umai Dry Age Bags sampler kit for christmas. I have done a choice NY strip subprimal at 45 days and a choice ribeye subprimal at 40 days. Both turned out great. The NY strip is gone but I have 7 1.5in ribeyes waiting to be eatten sometime (I already did up 5 of them)

I would recommend the Umai Dry Age Bags to anybody that does not have an extra fridge that they can dedicate to dry aging meat. Just vacuum seal the meat in the bag, throw it on a cooling rack and place it on a sheet pan. There is little to no drippage, and no drippage at all after 3 days. No wierd smells in the fridge or on the meat. And the quality of product rocks.

Thanks for sharing this, especially in such detail. I recall your previous thread where you discussed your fridge set up. I have wanted to really try it.
Tuned in!:thumb:

I just saw this post and don't really want to ruin your day, but looking at the pictures I don't think you have a ribeye what you have is a chuckroll,they call certain roasts on the chuck a 7-bone roast.
here is a u tube of a whole ribeye to give you a good look at what one looks like see how it has that large piece of fat (the tail) on the one side running the length of meat yours does not have that even if it was trimmed before they packaged it, it would not be that wide

here is a video showing a whole ribeye
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7zv9cM69I"]How to Trim Ribeye - YouTube[/ame]

Was happy to see a progress report.... Hope it all turns out as you planned. Looking forwards to the end result.

You need to change out your salt. You're looking to lose at least 10% of your meat's water weight. 2lb of salt is not going to suck all of that up. Replace what you have in there with a lot more salt in a shallow pan. I keep my fridge at 35 when I do it. Never have gone longer than 25 days. FYI. I am sure you can, I just am not going to play that game.

IMHO it looks like the humidity in that fridge is far, far too low. I've dry aged cured meats for a month and they have never developed a jerky like texture or really visibly dried out at all. The goal is to keep the humidity high enough to prevent any dry crust forming but to keep it low enough that an even drying occurs. I'd drag it out and use it

Loving this! I've dry aged a few rib roasts and basically did it just the way you are here and with fantastic results.

YetiDave said:

IMHO it looks like the humidity in that fridge is far, far too low. I've dry aged cured meats for a month and they have never developed a jerky like texture or really visibly dried out at all. The goal is to keep the humidity high enough to prevent any dry crust forming but to keep it low enough that an even drying occurs. I'd drag it out and use it

Click to expand...

Hmm... I'm not so sure about this. I am by no means an expert, but it seems like there is AWLAYS a significant amount of trim for dry-aged beef. Isn't that the point of dry-aging? If you look at some of the walk-ins primo steak houses use for aging you will note there is definitely a desiccated amount of outside "crust" which would have to be trimmed away. This is why dry-aged beef is so expensive because you lose so much of the usable meat to the process. The act of losing moisture content is exactly what the dry-aging process is all about, and that results in dried-out jerky type outsides of the product.

I'm happy for someone to correct me if I am wrong on this.

All, this said, I completely agree with YetiDave, that there is an optimal humidity level for dry-aging, but it still has to be low enough for the moisture to escape the meat. Check out the article below for some fancy research with et al. type quotes and footnotes that are too smart for me, but it does a great job explaining the process and current research on dry-aging.

I for one, can not achieve the humidty level I want in my aging fridge (~85%) which is why I use the dry age bags with what I feel is good success.

http://www.beefresearch.org/CMDocs/BeefResearch/Dry Aging of Beef.pdf


Here's a little quote from that article:

"Dry aging can result in substantial [FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style][FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style]losses in both shrinkage (moisture loss) and trim loss (discolored and/or dehydrated [/FONT][/FONT]lean and fat that must be trimmed before merchandising steaks and roasts from the [FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style][FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style]primal or subprimal)." Parrish et al. (1991)[/FONT][/FONT]

These were dry aged for a month - hung up in a shed at around 50% humidity at 46F. They definitely lost weight and became firmer, but I didn't get any loss through trimming. If those bits of beef do feel like water balloons it could indicate that they haven't dried properly as the whole cut should begin to feel much firmer, rather than just the outside. I'm sure they'll still taste great, just keep an eye on that humidity :grin:

You are a braver man than me to eat those without trimming down a bit!

50% seems SUPER low too. I would have imagined even more loss than what you reported. Also, 46F seems kind of high?

As long as you don't get sick, and the stuff tastes great then rock on...but here's another quote from the propeller heads in that article.

I think the studies quoted didn't test anything above 39F.

"Temperature of storage is critical in that if it is below freezing temperatures for meat [FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style][FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style](-2 to -3°C), the enzymatic processes involved [/FONT][/FONT]with aging will cease. If the temperature of [FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style][FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style]storage is elevated, the enzymatic processes involved with aging will work quite well, [/FONT][/FONT]but so will the microbial spoilage process [FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style][FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style]resulting in the development of off-odors and off-flavors. In addition, elevated temperatures may promote pathogen growth, so finding the [/FONT][/FONT]appropriate storage temperature for dry-aged [FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style][FONT=Bookman Old Style,Bookman Old Style]beef is very important."
[/FONT][/FONT]

These were cured, there's no way I'd have eaten anything kept out for a month at that temp otherwise :-D the black ones are just covered in black pepper by the way, they've not gone ultra crusty! And yeah 50% is low, however they were really supposed to be kept out at around 60F at 85% humidity, so I figured it'd balance out

Phew... I was honestly thinking in the back of my mind what kind of an idiot would do that, but not wanting to say it... so glad to hear that was cured meat!!

Haha, if they were uncured then calling me an idiot would be perfectly justified!

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