Home Dry Aged Beef

[PaulPower]

Hey FOH! Do you need another expensive hobby that may be detrimental to your health? Is your doctor always trying to get you to consume more red meat? Is your wife always nagging you that you’re too frugal and never buy things for yourself? Do you want to both impress your friends and alienate health food nuts? Well then do I have a money pit for you: Home dry aged steaks!

 

That’s right, for only pennies a minute you can do what you could easily pay the butcher or restaurant to do, but at home and with a greater chance of failure!

 

OK, joking aside I really enjoy doing this, and it ain’t cheap but it’s not much more expensive than just buying good steaks, and definitely cheaper than buying dry aged beef at the grocery store (when you can find it). When you age beef beyond 35 days, the flavors get so complex they’re comparable to wine. Nutty, mushroomy, Blue cheese flavor start to come out, and the beef gets insanely tender. Here’s the long and short on how you do it:

 

1)Create a separate fridge, install a humidification system (I’m sure you guys are familiar with this) to keep the humidity in the 70 to 80% range. Put the beef on a metal rack, not a glass shelf, and just let it sit.

 

 

 

2)or purchase vacuum sealed dry aging bags like UMAi dry. These bags are semi permeable membrane’s that allow you to dry age in your home fridge. they keep the humidity high inside the bag, but let gases through, and prevent all your food from smelling like beef. Put the beef on a metal rack, not a glass shelf, and just let it sit.

 

 

 

Then cut it into delicious steaks cutting off the exterior Pellicle, Saving it to use in soups and stews or up to 20% Ground in hamburgers (Best hamburger you’ll ever have)

 

 

 

Is anyone doing this? If so, I’d love to chat.

 

Is anyone interested? If so, I’d love to chat.

Loop

[mrmessy]

Thought about dry aging. Saw those bags before but wasn't sure if it was the same. How is it? Good stuff?

 

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[PaulPower]

Thought about dry aging. Saw those bags before but wasn't sure if it was the same. How is it? Good stuff?
 
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No, the bags work really well. All the finished beef you see in that post was bagged. I see two major downsides:
1) They take up a lot of space in your fridge. Since they have to be laid flat and on top of a wire rack you talking about a solid sixth of your fridge unusable. And Lord help you if you want to do two in rotation.

2) It takes longer to develop those funky flavors in a bag, and they don’t develop as well as open air dry aging. Obviously, the bag acts as a barrier, which doesn’t allow some of the beneficial bacteria and fungi to get on the meat. Don’t give me wrong, it still makes delicious meat with a solid nutty flavor, just not as good as open air. However, your standard fridge is way too dry to dry age without a humidifier


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[Hammer Smokin']

sounds like something I wish my neighbour or brother did...

you know, let them do the work, and I'll reap some benefits.

[PaulPower]

sounds like something I wish my neighbour or brother did...
you know, let them do the work, and I'll reap some benefits.

That’s the spirit! I feel the exact same way about my neighbor who homebrews


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[DeskSmkr]

Results look fantastic.  I've considered dry aging a couple times before today after watching a few videos. Thanks for the reminder.

Half the time, I do refrigerate my steaks uncovered for 24 hours or so, in a regular refrigerator to remove some moisture before cooking, it doesn't do much for flavor, though I like doing it. I'll add a wire rack next to try for a bit longer. Maybe I could use the vegetable crisper and a bowl of water with a digital hygrometer/temp sensor.

How are you keeping your separate fridge at 70-80% humidity?

Purported to mimic dry age flavor to some degree, I tried the Koji rice ground up and rubbed over the steak, then left for two or three days in the refrigerator. It adds a mild flavor. The starch from the rice also browns quickly and will easily burn while cooking on anything over medium heat, fun experiment, though not something I do regularly.  If I try this again, I'm adding some Miso paste with the ground/powdered rice, and I'd describe it more as a dry rub than mimicking dry aging.

[PaulPower]

How are you keeping your separate fridge at 70-80% humidity?

 

So, I have a separate purpose built fridge made for dry aging. It’s called Steak Locker, and it’s pretty fantastic, aside from some minor issues. You can see here it has a water reservoir and humidification system, that is controlled by a panel on the fridge.

 

It’s a little spendy, but the step up option is DryAger, Made in Germany and run almost 4 grand! The step down is cheaper, the SteakAger, But it’s made by Kingsford and is apparently trash. You could easily create your own for under $500, if you don’t want one of these ready built models

 

People also use passive humidification combined with salt; usually a block of Himalayan salt or a tray of kosher salt. You can see my kosher salt there in the tray on the right. There’s a lot of pseudoscience about what salt does in dry aging, but essentially it’s simply helps maintain a 75% RH. Undoubtably, you have heard about using salt and a couple of drops of water to calibrate hygrometer. Same principle. Whe I was considering making my own I wanted to use a cigar oasis, because I thought it was the perfect solution that none of the other dry age folks I thought of.

 

I would strongly encourage you to look into the bags. You can get a set of three for around 20 bucks, and then all you need is a vacuum sealer, which you should have anyway we’re going to be dry aged steak because you’ll have to freeze a lot of it. If you love it after trying a couple times, you can always buy a fridge or make a rig.

 

 

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[DeskSmkr]

@PaulPower beautiful, with the extra pictures and recommendations, and yes, I forgot about the 75% wet salt, been a long time since checking a hygrometer with this - my first humidor, nice memory!  I'm going to experiment with this and see where it goes.  I'm getting hungry!  ?

[Lunettesman]

I always have a big piece of meat in a dry aging bag in my fridge. I keep it 45 days which is the sweet spot for it. Then I cook it in the oven till internal temperature reach 52c and last but not least sear it y rub it with garlic and finish it in butter. Yesterday 400gr one

[DBNInc]

I’ve thought of doing this with a small fridge and some Himalayan salt blocks stacked along the rear wall.  Saw a show a while back on food network or travel channel where a big steakhouse had a walk-in freezer for dry aging.  It had Himalayan salt blocks floor to ceiling along one wall.

[WLC]

I must be getting old. When I was growing up all beef was dry aged.  Whole sides were hung for 14-21 days before being butchered. Now we have to pay extra, or do it ourselves at home.

 

I have done a couple of whole rib roasts for 30 days. Makes for some mighty tasty ribeyes.