From the Krabill Cucina this Week: Ageing Your Own Beef
At the Krabill Kitchen, we’ve just been experimenting with ageing our own beef. So what is aged beef anyway? If you’ve been to (or treated to) Al Biernat’s in recent history, the price of the dry aged beef steak ($49.95 for a bone-in strip) couldn’t have missed your notice. What’s the big deal? All beef is aged after its euphemistic “processing“, resting for a time while enzymes break down the muscle tissue to produce a more tender cut of beef. Beef can be either “wet aged” in plastic or “dry aged” in air. Dry aged beef rests in a refrigerated area (40 degrees or so), losing some of the water weight (hence the expense), but gaining in flavor.
We tried this at home, and the results were gratifying. It’s good to wait and anticipate, and savor the taste, rather than go for quantity alone. We took a cut of beef steak and placed it fat side down (allowing more of the juices to stay in the meat), and then covered the beef with paper towels on top. We changed the towels a few times, roughly every other day for ten days. On the tenth day (sort of a little mini-creation story!) we trimmmed the outer coating off (another euphemism - it gets a little grungy) and threw it on the grill. Unbelievable tender texture and satisfying flavor.
Give it a try - just use a thermometer to check that your frig stays at 40 degrees or lower, and remember to change the “dressings”. Waiting and anticipating are part of the treat.