Why is “aged meat” a good thing? I see a 30 day aged meat on a menu, and it’s like HOW!? WHY!? Wouldn’t it be “bad meat” by that point?
EDIT: Holy wow I learned so much about aging meat!! Thank you for all the comments and videos!
In: Biology
Dry aging steak is a way to increase the beef flavor in the cut while adding complexity to the flavor.
A dry aged steak is placed on rack in a controlled environment. Both humidity and temperature are kept at a specific level to keep the steak from spoiling.
Over time, the outside of the steak or round begins to dry out. The moisture of the steak is being pulled out so the outside becomes a rather gross looking dark crust. However, through pulling moisture out, the beef flavor on the inside grows stronger.
The final step is to trim away the dried out crust. You end up losing a lot of mass in the process, so for that reason its recommended you buy an entire round of steaks, pre-cut. Once you trim away the exterior you should be left with a dark but healthy looking steak.
As I mentioned, beef flavor is increased in this process. You also add additional flavors to the meat through aging as well. Shorter age times result in a nutty flavor, while longer ages can take on cheese-like tones.
If you want to try dry aged steak without paying restaurant prices, you can buy a dry age steak bag on Amazon. The bag helps regulate humidity to prevent rotting. I’d recommend trying a 10 to 15 day age. Shorter ages can be more palatable as an intro to dry aging.
As long as the meat is properly preserved, typically with some kind of salt rub, and kept in a controlled environment, it won’t “go bad.” It does start to break down but that just adds to the flavour and tenderizes the meat.
Beef that comes immediately from a farm and processed would be like chewing leather. Therefore, slaughterhouses and butchers who butcher sides of beef (supermarkets get box beef that is cut into primals) hang the sides in a controlled environment like a cooler for a period.
The standard period is about two weeks. During this time the pellicle forms and does protect the meat while the proteins break down.
Basically and frankly, aging means letting the meat rot in a controlled way.
If you go to the supermarket and see meats that are marked down because it looks greenish-gray, that is the aging process at work. That meat is actually better tasting and more tender because of the concentrated flavor.
Source: Cattle farmer and former supermarket meat cutter. I also butcher my own game.
There are endless numbers of microorganisms that grow on food which colloquially we refer to as food “going bad.”
But not every microorganism makes food “go bad” in a way that’s actually bad for your health and tastes awful. Some of them change the food into other food that we enjoy eating.
The desired microorganisms and the undesired ones are in competition with each other. Which of them wins is dependent on the factors of their environment. Some prefer it hotter or colder, some prefer it wetter or drier, some prefer more or less salt, some prefer more or less oxygen, etc etc.
With “aging” anything meat or cheese or whatever else you’re controlling all these variables in the environment in a way that makes it hostile to the bad ones and fertile to the good ones.
That allows that good ones to do whatever they happen to do in the type of aging you’re doing whether it’s meat or cheese or soy sauce or whatever other foods rely on microorganisms to assist in a type of transformation of the food.
It’s aged in specially controlled rooms to maintain an optimal temperature and humidity level, but the exterior still does rot. However the way the interior meat breaks down makes it tender and flavorful. The rotted exterior gets trimmed off, and that loss of meat plus the evaporation of moisture from the meat help explain why the cost per pound for aged meat is so much more than un-aged meat.
ELI5: It’s not aged by just leaving it out. Sorta like how yogurt is made or that gross-looking fermented bean thing people make. They use specific processes and controlled environments which prevent normal rotting.
Dry aging is a highly controlled process by which the meat is kept away from moisture (to prevent bacterial growth) and allows the meat muscle fibers to break down. This leads to a much more tender cut of meat and adds flavor notes to the meat.
As many have mentioned, it is aged in a specific environment that perfectly controls the environment to stave off complete rot.
I worked as a butcher awhile back and one of our jobs was to actually dry age beef. We would put those big ass racks into the dryer, and after 30 days, we’d pull it out and cut it into steaks (specifically striploin and ribeye). The outside was about as dried and horrible as you can imagine. The smell actually was surprisingly not that bad; it had the faint odour of vinegar. It was darker and more red than when it went in.
The meat, though, was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. The acids that the process of aging releases basically tenderizes the meat from the inside out, while the dry environment prevents the meat from actively rotting. It’s well worth it if you can snag a cut on a good deal.
Ironically, today’s gourmet aged meat is an extra step we take these days which used to be the average beef experience for hundreds of years until refrigeration was invented.
The process of aging the meat starts with a very well controlled environment, it’s so well controlled that it’s very similar to pasteurizing food. Good bacteria are allowed, and no bad bacteria can survive. It’s not sterile, and the hard work of keeping the meat clean is actually done by friendly bacteria.
Done properly, the outside of the steak becomes dry, not rotted. Rotted contaminated pieces do happen occasionally, but those are thrown out.
In the end, you cut the outside hard parts off and toss them in the garbage. Inside you are left with a steak which has transformed it’s connective tissues and natural cellular protein into broken down versions of themselves. These new versions of protein and collagens are much more tender, and have a distinct, more evolved and “meatier” flavor.
This is how aged beef is superior to fresh beef!
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