Theres a reason steaks taste different at high-end steakhouses. Dry aging is a common way to keep bigger cuts of meat in a controlled environment so that the flavors stay strong and the meat gets tender. When I owned a restaurant, I used to serve a certain heritage breed of cattle that taught me how to dry age meat. Since my restaurant was the only business in the area, there were no ways to buy meat from a wholesaler. I had to buy the heads of cattle from the rancher and take them to a processor, where I would hang them for 28 days before picking them up. The carcasses would come through my back door looking beat up, dried out, and sometimes growing mold. They were perfect. They lost water, the beef flavor got stronger, the meat got tender, and in the case of mold, they got a prosciutto-like note to their overall taste after being hung for four weeks in a controlled environment.
He is the chef at The Shack and the soon-to-open Maude. We talked to him about dry aging and what kinds of meat work best in the process. C. s Tabard Inn. We talked about the best meats, the best ways to age them, and the most common mistakes people make when they dry age meat at home.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is drying their meat too quickly. An exterior crust, called a pellicle, forms on the meat during aging. If the meat dries too quickly, the pellicle hardens and stops water from getting to the outside, letting the meat rot from the inside out. There are also many ways to get sick from food, so it’s important to clean, keep things germ-free, and store and handle food the right way.
Dry aging beef at home has become an increasingly popular technique for getting restaurant-quality steaks from the comfort of your own kitchen. When done right, dry-aging concentrates flavor and makes the beef incredibly tender and juicy. However, not all cuts of beef are equally suited to dry aging. So what is the best cut of beef to dry age at home?
Look for Large, Well-Protected Cuts
The best cuts for dry-aging beef at home are large muscle or sub-primal cuts that still have the bone and fat cap intact. Examples include rib roasts, strip loins, T-bone steaks, porterhouse steaks, and sirloin roasts. The bone and outer fat layer help protect the meat from losing too much moisture during the dry-aging process. Small individual steaks don’t have this protective armor and will completely dry out if aged for weeks in the open air.
Here are some of the ideal cuts to use for dry-aging:
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Rib Roast – This is cut from the rib section between ribs 6 through 12. It has a large eye of meat and a thick fat cap that covers the top The bones and fat prevent moisture loss.
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Strip Loin – Also known as a New York strip. This is a boneless cut taken from the short loin. Leave the fat cap on for protection Tie it to hold its shape.
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T-Bone or Porterhouse – These cuts contain both the strip loin and tenderloin together, separated by the T-shaped bone. Great for dry aging.
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Sirloin Roast – Taken from the rear back section. Roast the whole roast first, then slice into steaks.
Why these Cuts?
So why are these particular cuts so well-suited to dry-aging? There are a few key reasons:
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Size – You need a large cut to dry age properly. Individual steaks won’t work because the exposed surface dries out too fast. Larger cuts have more protected inner meat.
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Bones – The bones help protect the meat and slow moisture loss from the sides. Areas near bones age especially well.
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Fat Cap – The outer fat layer shields the top surface from drying out. Trim it off after aging.
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Muscle Composition – Cuts from the loin and rib contain large singular muscles that age particularly nicely.
Other Tips for Dry Aging Beef
Follow these tips to get the best results when dry aging beef at home:
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Start with high-quality beef, preferably USDA Prime or Choice grades. Avoid pre-wet aged beef.
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Use an extra fridge or wine cooler if possible, and place a fan inside to circulate air.
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Put the meat on a wire rack so air can access all surfaces.
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Age for 3-7 weeks depending on your taste preferences. Mark the start date on the meat.
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Expect about a 30% yield loss from moisture evaporation and trimming.
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Trim off hard dried edges after aging before cooking as normal.
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Cook gently like a roast first, then slice into steaks.
The Aging Process
So what exactly happens to the beef during dry aging? Here are the key changes:
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Moisture loss – The meat surface dries out, concentrating flavors internally. Up to 30% weight can be lost.
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Tenderization – Enzymes break down tough muscle fibers and connective tissue.
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Flavor – Beefy, nutty, cheese notes develop from aged beef fat and enzymes.
It takes at least 4 weeks for the flavor to really develop and the meat to become tender. Let’s look at how some specific cuts evolve during dry aging.
Dry Aging a Rib Roast
The rib roast is one of the best cuts to dry age because it has a large eye of meat capped with a thick protective fat layer. Here’s how a rib roast transforms during dry aging:
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2 weeks – Up to 15% weight loss, no flavor change yet but starts getting more tender.
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4 weeks – 25% weight loss, distinctly more tender with some funkiness appearing.
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6 weeks – 30% weight loss, very tender with strong blue cheese notes.
Trim off the dried outer layer and cook it low and slow like a roast before slicing into juicy steaks. The spinalis muscle along the back is the most coveted part after aging.
Dry Aging a Strip Loin
The strip loin is another fantastic cut for dry aging. Tie it up into a neat bundle first so it holds its shape:
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1 week – Minimal weight loss and no flavor change yet, just lightly tenderized.
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3 weeks – 20% weight loss, obviously more tender, with nutty notes developing.
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5 weeks – 25% weight loss, extremely tender with rich flavor.
Slice the loin into New York strip steaks after aging. The center-cut steaks will be the most evenly aged.
Dry Aging Sirloin Roast
The sirloin doesn’t have as much protective fat, so slice this one thinner before aging:
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10 days – 10% weight loss, no real flavor change but definitely more tender.
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3 weeks – 25% weight loss, concentrated beefiness with cheese notes.
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5 weeks – Very funky and extremely tender, with uneven aging.
Season the roast after aging and cook it whole like a prime rib, carving across the grain into steaks. The ends will be quite funky.
Is Dry Aging Worth It?
Dry aging certainly requires some patience, with typical aging times ranging from 2-8 weeks depending on your taste. Is it ultimately worth the wait? For beef aficionados, dry-aged steaks are absolutely worth seeking out for special occasions and celebrations. Here are some of the rewarding benefits you can look forward to:
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Deeper, richer beef flavor – Extra aging concentrates the meaty, savory taste.
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Improved tenderness – Enzymatic activity helps break down tough connective tissues.
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Juiciness – Aged meat loses less moisture when cooking.
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Unique funkiness – Long-aged beef develops almost cheese-like flavors.
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Bragging rights – Impress your friends with your own dry-aged steaks!
While specialty dry-aged steaks can cost a fortune at restaurants, you can dry age beef at home for a fraction of the price. As long as you start with a nicely marbled, well-protected sub-primal cut, you can look forward to serving incredibly delicious dry-aged steaks in a month or two. Your patience will be rewarded with the best steak you’ve ever tasted.
How to dry age
Besides a fridge, you need a way to keep the meat dry, manage the humidity, and make sure air flows. A salt block, a fan, and a wire cooling rack on a baking sheet are all you need to meet these needs. The cooling rack keeps the meat out of water. For optimal results, keep the humidity below 85%. If your fridge readings are higher than 80%, a salt block will absorb some of the moisture in the air and lower the humidity. A small clip-on fan provides airflow throughout the process. This is fine if youre just trying it out, but Boden has thoughts.
“You know that food will go bad in your home fridge because there are so many bacteria and molds floating around,” he says. “Honestly, you can buy a small home dry aging chamber for a couple hundred bucks these days. So, if a home cook is really interested in it, I think it’s worth a small amount of money to get a more controlled environment, especially for a longer age. Its so not worth wasting the product. “.
Once you have your environment handled, you simply put your meat inside and wait. Some people put in starters like koji or blue cheese. Boden says, “It just makes things taste like koji, and people have gone a little too far with it.” I want my beef to taste like beef. Thats why Im aging it, right?”.
Size matters when dry aging because your meat will lose water via evaporation. Its safe to assume youll lose 15-25% of the original weight from moisture loss. Boden says, “I believe that putting less than four pounds in your chamber is a waste of money.” He has a point, since you could end up with three pounds of finished meat that weighed four pounds at first.
Bone-in ribeye is an excellent cut for dry aging. A quick Google search for “dry-aged beef” returns an astonishing percentage of ribeye photos that back his assertion. Boden looks for two things in beef that is being dry-aged: bones that add umami as the meat ages and a healthy fat cap that keeps the meat from drying out too quickly. A whole, bone-in rib sub-primal ticks those boxes quite well. Because he lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he can get ultra-fresh meats, like beef ribeyes that smell “super grassy, like cream” after being aged.
That access includes other ingredients for aging. “Right now I have two racks of veal in the aging chamber. We’ve never done that before, but I can’t wait to try it,” he says. It makes sense, since a veal rack and a rib sub-primal are both cuts from the same cow, but they came from different years. Because veal is younger than beef, it has less fat and marbling and hasn’t turned as dark red yet, but it does have a well-developed fat cap, as we already said.
A bone-in pork shoulder fits the bill of bone and fat cap requirements Boden looks for. While dry-aging a pork shoulder makes it more dense and flavorful for cooking, Boden likes to age shoulders for another reason. “The restaurant makes a lot of sausages and other baked goods, so I’ll get a whole shoulder and put it in the dry ager for a month before making sausages,” he says.
Youre certainly not limited to using an aged pork shoulder for sausage. For the stronger flavor and texture that dry aging gives, slow roasting or smoking are great options. But quick cooking methods shouldn’t be ruled out either. The denser meat is also an excellent candidate for cutting into steaks. A great way to cook a pork steak is to use your favorite dry rub that is based on pork and quickly sear a pork shoulder steak that has just come from the butcher in its natural state. But the funkiness and tenderness added by dry aging take the experience up several levels. The less water in the pork steaks helps them sear beautifully, and the rub makes the outside even crispier.
If veal and beef rib sections are great for dry aging, why not pork loin? It has the same basic structure as a ribeye, with rib bones attached to an “eye” and a nice cap of fat on top. “The loins, they dry just beautifully,” Boden says. Restating his reasoning for his drying technique, he continues, “I like bone-in. I think it’s pretty important because it helps with loss, right? When it dries, you get the same surface area and permeation, but you cut off the bones, so I think it’s a little more stable and you can age it for a little longer with a little less loss. “.
Because a pork loin has less fat and more water than a shoulder and much less than a beef rib sub-primal, it is safest to age it for 10 to 14 days to keep it from going bad or losing too much meat. If you trim the loin, you can roast it whole on the bone or cut it into chops that you can pan-sear, sous vide, or grill. The lower water content that comes from ageing helps make a great sear or Maillard crust when the meat is cooked whole or cut into chops.
What is dry aging?
On the outside, dry aging looks like setting meat on a shelf to spoil. Whats really happening is the meat (or vegetable) undergoes a controlled evaporative process.
In most cases, when you leave a piece of meat in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, you expect it to go bad. One of the biggest reasons for that is when allowed to sit in a container, any water that escapes the meat pools at the bottom, and that, combined with the moisture in the meat, is a channel for bacterial growth inside the meat. By not allowing the water to pool and controlling the humidity and temperature during the process, chefs manipulate the evaporation rate, which concentrates the meats flavor while tenderizing it. Boden likes to age meat at the highest temperature allowable by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 40 F, at 80% humidity.
Typically, meat dry ages two to four weeks but can age as long as 120 days. As the meat ages, it often gets a white mold on the outside that makes it tender and flavorful, like the mold that forms on dried sausages or cured hams like prosciutto. The meat starts to get tender around day 14, and between day 21 and day 28, it starts to taste “funky” because mold is growing on it. Once the right amount of time has passed, the moldy and dry outside is taken off and the juicy, flavorful inside is ready to go on the stove, grill, or oven.
How long should you dry age a steak? 7 RIBEYES go head to head
FAQ
How do you dry age beef without it going bad?
What are the names of dry aged steaks?
Does dry aging beef make it more tender?
Why doesn’t beef go bad when dry aging?
Which steak cuts are best for dry aging?
The following steak cuts are best for dry-aging: All these big guns in the steak arena will age well and improve dramatically in texture and flavor during the dry-aging process. Along with time, these are the keys to dry-aging.
Can You Dry aging beef at home?
Otto recommends telling your butcher that you’re going to dry-age beef at home so you’ll be recommended a good cut. There are special dry-aging fridges that you can buy for home use. However, you can also mimic the conditions of one by using a small fridge (optimally with a glass door), an electric fan, a wire rack, and a thermometer.
How do I prepare a cut for dry aging beef?
When preparing a cut for dry-aging beef at home, hygiene is extremely important. Any bacteria that touches your tender beef will have the perfect environment to breed on your steak for the weeks to come. Make sure to wear latex gloves and disinfect all working surfaces as well as the dry-aging fridge.
Can you dry age a steak at home?
Yes, you can dry age a steak at home! Next time you’re in a fine restaurant, and you’re eyeing up that $100 aged steak on the menu, be happy that you now know how to dry age beef at home and can recreate it yourself for a fraction of the cost. It takes time and patience, but it’s also a fix-it-and-forget-it process.