Dry Aged Beef - What’s All The Hype About?

So today we're going to unravel all the secrets behind dry age beef have you ever wondered why all the top steakhouses around the world and now pretty much exclusively using dry Edge beef well let's find out and stick around cuz I'm going to show you exactly how you can dry Edge beef at home at the end of this once we're finished here cuz not everyone has access to all these fancy dry edges like I do let's get stuck in so first things first what is dry aging well it's not just leaving meat out to dry dry aging can be from anything from 24 days like we've got here all the way up to I did one at 200 days last year I did a short on it um it'll be linked below go check that out if you want to and but hot tip it wasn't great it was way too far for me so what's most important about dry aging is the temperature the humidity and the air flow you got to get all those three things right to make sure that you dry age safely and effectively humans have actually been dry aging for Millennia before Refrigeration um some parts of the world where it was cool and windy people would literally store their beef and all types of meat just by hanging them in dark sheds so the wind and the temperature will be controlled by the natural environment which is what we're trying to imitate here now let's get scientific well as scientific as this Chef can get I am no food scientist but dry aging effectively moisture evaporates from the muscle creating greater concentration of beef flavor and tastes there's also a natural enzyme that breaks down the cellular walls of the meat molecules as well that breaking down of the cell walls makes the beef way more tender and the longer you do it the more tender it gets oh look at that so why doesn't the beef spoil well the outside of the meat hardens and it protects the inside muscles bacteria from going crazy bacteria need moisture to survive if you take that away from the equation they simply can't survive any longer once the outside of the beef has hardened molds do start taking over which is why it's really important that you don't put anything anything else in the fridge that you're dry edging in the molds are very similar to the penic silia type molds that you find in lots of cheeses which is also why you find people that enjoy really ripe stinky strong cheeses also enjoy really long dry edged beef so we just cut this thing open the first thing I always do is give it the sniff test and it shouldn't smell strong it should smell nice and clean and not very par that doesn't smell like much at all to be perfectly honest it just smells like like nice beef what I'm looking for is no blemishes no real nasty dark spots you want nice Rosy looking flesh here this is a very young piece of drage this is like 24 days maximum I think which is way younger than I would ever normally pull it out but I kind of wanted to show it um you know for the sake of this video don't worry it will get eent you can see here this is where the the outside is dried up on the crust which you can't you can't leave on there it's super tough you've got to cut that off before you start to cook it but I'm pretty happy with this piece this is a piece of Blue Diamond uh you can see it's still nice and Rosy red uh this isn't like a super high marble score piece of meat but you can see it does have some really nice intramuscular fat delicious piece of beef that's only going to be made better by dry aging it but let's cut a piece off and cook it and see what it actually tastes like the big question should you try dry edging beef at home well first of all that's delicious by the way it's only at 24 days of age doesn't taste really strong or anything at all it's definitely very tender and got great beefy flavor but let's talk about the pros of dry edging at Home well it's a lot cheaper right you're going to lose about 25 to 30% in uh in loss so if you're buying dry EDG beef someone's going to charge you for that whether it's the butcher or the processor whoever is dry edging it so you can take that cost on yourself it's also way cheaper to buy big cuts of like meat like that yourself then buying individual Stakes the other Pro is that you can kind of start taking stuff to different l L and playing around and seeing what you like I know for me I like my steaks at about 45 to 55 days that's the sweet spot for me personally and the negatives well it costs a bit of money to set up you're going to have to buy a fridge you know a little bar fridge or something like that uh and a few other things that will run through in a minute is also the safety aspect of it you've got to be careful when you're doing this stuff right now by all means I'm going to show you how to do it and if you want to do it at your own risk go for it I've never had an issue with it but I do just want to caveat I'm not a meat professional I'm just repeating information that I've leared along the way working in this industry so the safety you got to be careful of the space you've got to be careful of you have to have somewhere where you can store a fridge and you can't let anyone else use it it can't have anything else in it you can't even put a slab of beer in it you can't put anything else in this thing you've got to make sure it's just there for dry aging beef and if you're not scared away just yet then let's head home and I'll show you how I set up a dry Ager in my own home actually it's not even in my own home it's next to Mitch's desk but that's the problem before we go we're going to get Mitch to taste this piece we're going to cook another piece or dry Edge another piece and we'll see what you think of that in 30 more days what is it 24 that's 24 it's delicious it's good huh yeah all right remember that cuz in 30 days I'm going to ask you do it again let's try this too this is there that marble score 9 Jade that's on the on the thumbnail Jade's a pure blood Australian wagu product this is as good as it gets marble score9 you can still see the intramuscular fat I actually don't think I've ever eaten marble score 9 plus and Jade oh my good Lord that's also had 24 days of age and that's probably one of the best Stakes of editing in my life I'm not just saying that that true I'm pretty damn excited wow that's about as good as it gets it like butter wow I thought it was going to be too rich it's not and you said you can't eat that whole thing I'm like I reck I could eat I re you could too delicious sh anyway back to work Mitchell I got I got work to do that's so good good all right we just got back from the test kitchen um and it's really hot here so I changed it into shorts I wasn't wearing shorts in the kitchen um but this is the setup this is what we've got this is your average rof the M baridge uh I got a glass door one here you can it doesn't have to have a glass door it's just easier to see as your as stuff's happening inside the other thing that is important though is the wire shelves you don't want the flat glass shelves that's super important and you want to make sure it's clean so ideally you buy a new one which you quickly sanitize out if you've got a baridge and you don't want to go and buy a new one that's totally fine but make sure you clean it really really well and then you want to have it somewhere that doesn't get super hot so here in quenson I couldn't put this in my garage it' be in 40° a couple of times a day no problem at all it makes it really hard for the fridge to keep temperature so this one's actually in Mitch and Caleb's offers so let's talk about the setup bar fridge cleaned out really well what is necessary is air flow so what we've got down here is a little USB fan that's just pushing air around the whole time we're going a we've also got a humidity U monitor this is just a a pretty kind of cheap one from Bunnings it's nothing crazy ideally you want the humidity between 75 and 85% at all times now those big fancy ear drers that I have at work uh that does control the humidity and you can set it this you can't control it but what you can do is Monitor it and then what we're going to do what I'm going to do is Monitor it throughout this whole process and see if it does kind of get out of that out of that kind of 75 85% and if it does see if I can do stuff to combat it I think you can put salt in there which kind of helps um there's a few other tips and tricks but let's just see if it holds that percentage so temperature so you want this fridge running between 2 and 4° C which is like 35 to 39° F really important make sure you're between those parameters and if anything I'd stay on the lower side so I I like to run them at like 2 2.5 de anyway let's get this meat ready and get it in the fridge so this is what we're going to dry age this is a carara wag marble score 6 to sorry marble score 8 to9 strip line I prefer to do what we call short loines in the industry this is all I could get from the test kitchen so what a short loin is is effectively the Sirloin on the bone like we saw in the the Jade one that we saw in the test kitchen so this is just a a sirine now the reason I like to use the short loine is it's got got a big bone which protects it and you get less wastage especially if if you're in a butcher or a restaurant you'll definitely choose short lines over sir lines all I'm going to do is take it out of the bag this is one of the times that I do use gloves I usually don't use gloves when I'm cooking but we really want to control the amount of bacteria on the outside of this meat so I'm going to use gloves and I'll just use them once and then they go on the bin same with paper towel I'm going to use paper towel cuz I don't want to use tea towels or anything that has any other bacteria on there make sure my board's nice and clean and we're just going to get this as dry as we can now the next predicament I have is that as you've just seen the fridge that I have which is just your rofe M bar fridge is not quite big enough to fit the in lengthways there's two ways you can deal with that you can chop it in half then you're going to lose each more in a side of each of that effectively or you can take the edges off uh these edges and just cook them mistakes so that's the option we're going to have cuz then we're going to have still a nice big piece uh but there something to be weary of if you do go to your Butcher and order a short loine make sure it will fit in your fridge cuz you're not going to be able to cut through that easily most butchers have a band s they will be able to shrink that for you if you ask them they'll be able to cut it down but I do suggest that you buy meat that's in the packet that it comes from the abire in if this is hanging in a butcher shop you don't want to take this home and and dry Edge it and the reason being is you don't know what's happened to that piece of meat you don't know how long it's been out you don't know who's touched it if it's come from the avire and country like Australia or the us or anywhere where the coal chain supply is really good you're pretty good to know that that piece of meat is going to be in a good piece a good position when you finished dry edging it so all I'm going to do is take the face off each side of this purely so it fits in the fridge and I'll keep these two steaks and probably have them for dinner nice P meet there stunning all right to our nice clean dry Eder so here goes The Silo did I cut enough off oh I did just and then we got the rib which has already got about 25 days on it so so there you go we'll come back in I think when is this posting Mitchell 35 days 35 days 35 days so we'll come 37 days so we'll pull this out and cut it a couple of days before we post this video and we'll show you how it went all right this piece went in at 25 days and it's had another 30 days and this has had 30 days from start to finish I struggled to keep the humidity at that desired kind of percentage of like 75 to 85% the whole time I struggled with it the whole time I I did things like put a glass of water in there I put a wet sponge in there I tried every trick I could find and I could not get that humidity to stay above 60% and as the time went on it keeps dropping so I've never dry aged like this I have no idea if this is going to work or not I have read some stuff that if it's too dry that you basically just dry it out too fast so let's see what happened so this thing went in there 30 days ago I'm going to cut this right down the center and we'll see what it's like in the middle the temperature definitely stayed fine so I'm not concerned about it but oh it looks pretty good the the pelic or the you know the part that we have to cut off isn't that deep smells fresh you know I'd love to dive into into some more about why you need that percentage higher and I think if you're doing really longer dry age processes that you know you probably need it but that looks pretty good I'm pretty happy with that you can tell when drage has gone wrong if you see uh misolation if it go it's going dark if You' got air pockets you'll smell it you'll know straight away that that's not right this looks perfectly fine what I was really concerned about was that pelico getting large so the pelico is what you have to cut off you can kind of grind it and use it in Burgers if you want to you know 15% or something but that looks kind of okay if anyone has any you know other solution to other than buying an actual dry Ager to control that humidity I'd love to know in the comments let's just have a look at this rib so that's had that had 25 days in my dry edges at work and then it had another 30 days in my pretend dry age of downstairs the other thing that happened when I was putting the water in there which was keeping the humidity higher is that the back of the fridge keep freezing over so we keep having to defrost it that looks pretty good too now naturally the pelic is a bit thicker on this piece because it's been dry Edge for an extra kind of 30 days but it smells good I can't see any bacteria that I'm concerned about on the outside I think we're in the clear anyway I think it's time to cook some of this up we'll get Mitch to have a taste I'll have a taste too and I'll give you my final thoughts and let you know whether I think it's worth dragging at home it's a good looking steak so you see here this is a great example of an air pocket and unfortunately you're going to lose a lot part of that of that kind of that's a tomahawk or a ribey bone in I should say but because of that big pocket there I'm actually going to take that bone off to try and Salvage at least the riy steak from it it's the other thing you got to take into account when you're doing dry age is that the wastage is is pretty high just hence why these steaks are so expensive in restaurants now that was the end piece but that's what we've ended up with a very small riby steak it smells fine there's nothing wrong with that at all also withth mentioning this is a wagu product this is a much more expensive piece of beef so I've let these rest for a while let's see what they came out like stting cook nicely delicious tender nice beefy flavor nothing wrong with that at all and then cut some of this up so this is effectively how long 55 days Mitch really good we'll get MIT to come taste some too cuz he tasted some last time I'll be interested to see if you can tell any if you can see any difference mate come on try that one next one first yeah so that was the one that you tasted at 25 days last time 55 days this time it's funy good day um not a food connoisseur it's probably not even the right term but honestly I'm not in this profession enough to tell the difference but it is damn good I would not I would not be sad about that take your piece of Wago and get out of here you you know that is good that is so good that is good good so for me the the extra time delivered a slightly more tender steak and a more flavorful steak and it's not strong at all it's not nutty it just tastes beefier so conclusion after all that should you dry a your own beef at home the long story short is if you want to do it as an exercise or a hobby then go for it have a play with see how you can get control of the humidity so I could not master it I think it has something to do with the fact that we are in Queensland right now it is been summer and it has been excruciatingly hot so the AC has been on the whole time which I think is drying the whole house out positively most of the time negatively in this case I could have done change that by putting the fridge in the garage that's not air conditioned but the issue with that is that it's way hotter and that fridge would struggle would work very hard to keep at that kind of temperature that you're after so should you drage at home without a proper Drager a a dedicated fridge that's designed to dry age sure go for it I don't see any reason why why not I feel like you probably don't want to take them to the extreme length that you do sometimes see people taking them to cuz I feel like you just it's just going to dry out too much and you're going to form too much of a picle and have a huge amount of wastage but should you buy dry Edge beef absolutely there's a reason top restaurants to doing this there's a reason that I love it and that lots of people like me love it it intensifies flavor makes it juicier and necessarily juicy but it definely makes it a a more tender steak so try dry Edge beef if you can't can't afford a a dedicated beef Drager and you've got a fridge lying around at home definitely try it with that the most important thing is making sure you got that air flow make sure you put that little fan in there to keep that ear anyway it's probably a long video thank you so much for watching I hope you took something from it please let me know in your comments your experience with dry aging uh if you've got any tips or tricks of how to control that humidity and we'll see you next week for another video peace you got some beef to eat m

Channel: Andy Cooks

Views: 141,212

Keywords: Cooking, food, dinner, lunch, meal ideas, dinner ideas, recipe, home cooking, dry aged, dry aged beef, dryaged

Id: lG9AfbA3Aoo

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024