Umai Bags vs Dry Aging Steak Wraps: The Battle of the Membranes

welcome back everybody Eric here today we're gonna be doing a special battle of video where we take two products that do similar things pit them against each other and see who comes out on top we're gonna be looking at the sausage makers dry-aging steak wraps and they're gonna be going head-to-head with a very popular very established ooh my dry dry-aging steak bags so let's get into it first let's take a look at the sausage makers brand-new product they're called premium dry-aging steak wraps everything that you need comes in this little package let's go ahead and open the package and see what's inside and as I grab the first thing out of the package those are the wraps that's a plant-based material and the next thing I grabbed out of the package is some elastic netting and then finally there are some DIY instructions along with some frequently asked questions now let's go ahead and look at the my dry version of their dry aging product and this is called the dry aging steak artisan meat pack and in this particular pack it looks like we're gonna have some my dry bags something called vac Mouse strips which is what that white cloth is and then also some easy-to-follow instructions the bags that are used for the Umayyad are some sort of an extruded plastic probably made from something called dublin ten although I'm not entirely sure about that either case they're a special type of plastic that forms a membrane around your meat so along with the bags in this vacuum a strip that keeps the liquid from going into your vacuum sealer it looks like this kid is relatively simple both kits look easy to use the instructions are easy to follow let's get into it with project number one we're gonna be dry-aging a veal strip loin for 90 days I wanted to see what a small roast would do with both of these dry aging kits the instructions for the sausage makers wraps say to dampen your roast put it in the middle of that plant-based material and begin to wrap it making sure there's no air pockets once you do that and your roast is completely wrapped put it inside of that elastic netting and according to the sausage maker that's going to make sure that that wrap stays firmly attached to the roast and it's also going to help maintain the che of your meet through the dry aging process [Music] now that that's done let's do the same thing but with amide rice product and oh my suggests that the roast is also wet that's going to help the roast adhere to the bag during the dry aging process but so far the difference is that with oh my we are gonna have to vacuum sealant so let's take this roast in the bag and let's stick it in our vac master to get this thing vaccine [Music] it is important to know that these aren't vacuum seal bags and so they don't act the same way as vacuum seal bags do as you can see I've already lost the seal that I put on mine because it's very fragile it opens up very easily you do need a lot of heat from your vacuum sealer and as you can see in attempt number two with about seven or eight seal marks we're good to go so I'm gonna go ahead and put that on a tray with my other strip loin from the sausage maker and we're gonna put that in the refrigerator ensuring that it gets the airflow on the top and on the bottom and at this point all we do is wait and now on to project number two for this project we're looking at a Wagyu strip loin marbling score seven plus and we're gonna be dry-aging this Wagyu strip loin for about sixty days now we're gonna be using the my dry bag first so our strip loin has been moistened it's nice and wet we're gonna place it in that my drive bag and then we're gonna go ahead and seal it up [Music] [Music] and now we're gonna take our other roasts and use the sausage makers of dry-aging state grants we want to make sure that our roast is damp you don't want it too wet because trust me if it's too wet you will rip the sheet it gets very fragile and I know this from experience we want to make sure that we wrap it so that there's no air pockets and then once our roast is completely wrapped we're gonna put it inside our elastic netting so that it'll hold the shape and it'll keep that wrap nice and tight to the roast [Music] now that both strip loins are complete I notice that the my dry bag lost its seal again and that's because the seal on it is very fragile if you mess with it or jostle it too much it will open up but no worries I grabbed a new bag two more attempts in the vacuum sealer and now it's all sealed up so finally before we put it in the fridge we're gonna record our green wait' and then once we're done with that into the fridge it goes for 60 days the time has finally come to see what everything looks like it's now already our veal strip loin has been dry aging for 90 days we're gonna open it up right now so you can see what it looks like and then we're gonna open up the Wagyu strip loin because it's also finished dry-aging I want you to pay special attention to those white marks on the Umayyad dry bag right there with that strip loin that's mold and salt that happens and that's a good thing that's what you're looking for that's gonna begin at about day 45 and that's gonna help add to the complexity of the flavors why don't we go ahead and weigh these in I took the original weight and what we're gonna do here is figure out the percentage of weight loss by taking our current weigh dividing it by our starting weight subtracting it by one and our weight loss is 38% all right so there we go 38.4% technically is the amount of weight that we lost in 90 to 95 days now we're gonna do the same thing with the sausage-makers dry-aging steak rafts that's our current weight we're gonna divide that by our starting weight subtract it from one and it looks like our weight loss percentage is thirty two point one basically that gives us a difference of about six percent that means that the Umayyad dry bags lost six percent more moisture over the course of almost a hundred days it's not that big a deal and it may have something to do with that elastic a netting but I'm not worried about it if it was double digits maybe I'd make a big deal about it now it's time to weigh in the Wagyu strip loin we're gonna do the exact same thing this has been dry-aging for 60 days and all we're gonna do is take our current weight divided by our starting weight and then subtract that from 1 and that's gonna give us a percentage of weight loss that we have currently and it looks like it is seventeen point seven eight I'm gonna do the same thing with the sausage-makers dry-aging steak wraps let's take our current weight divided by our starting weight and subtract that from one and that's gonna give us a percentage weight loss of sixteen point two one or 16.2% and that simply means that the my bag lost one point five percent more moisture than the sausage-makers bag but the numbers are so small it's negligible so I'm not worried about it you see the mold striations right there on both of the meats and that looks beautiful as we make our first cut into the Wagyu using the umai dry bag the color looks beautiful the smell is incredible there's nothing wrong with it so far the sausage-maker dry-aging steak wraps we're gonna go ahead and make our first cut into that and you know it's always great when you make that first cut you get that sneak peak into what seems like a small eternity that you've been waiting for and it also looks amazing it smells amazing it's funky cheesy very appetizing I did notice that the sausage-makers wraps really hold the shape of the steak together with an elastic netting whereas the my dry bags kind of flatten out a little bit but you can easily overcome that if you trust up your roast before you begin the drying process now it's time to trim off the bark and I did notice that between the sausage-makers dry-aging state graphs and the umai dry bags the bark was relatively close to the same need the product stood out over the other one as having an exceedingly thick bark and in here just a second I'll show you what the bark from the you might dry bag looks like and it was roughly about the same just a couple millimeters and now that our steaks have been trimmed I formed most of them into 12 ounce steaks there were two six ounce steaks that I got out of it which is what we'll be cooking today and here's something to think about just because Wagyu is some of the most expensive meat on planet doesn't necessarily make it the best it simply makes it expensive Wagyu beef offers a richness and a sweetness that's very different than regular meat so let's cook these up and see how they taste [Music] [Music] first up is the veal strip loin that this one is from the sausage makers dry-aging steak wraps and everything that so far looks amazing the cook was perfect it's juicy it smells great and the flavor is exactly what you can expect out of a 90 day dry aged piece of meat it's very beefy very strong it's not hiding its dry-aged flavor I mean it's in your face this is the umai dry bag same texture looks juicy just like the other one and here we go that's delicious and they're both tender they're both juicy they're both delicious they both have that same 90-day dry aged flavor let's try the Wagyu strip loin this is from the sausage makers dry aging steak wraps Wagyu beef known for its marbling we've dry aged it for 60 days we're gonna give it a little taste and I'll tell you right now very juicy very tender very flavorful that was the sausage makers dry-aging steak wraps now we're gonna do the in my bag and it it if you didn't know any better like if you had a blindfold it looks it smells exactly the same and and yeah and it tastes exactly the same as we finished this up let's go ahead and compare both products side by side so that we can get a better picture of what we're looking at the first category is cost I found that both of these products were really close in price depending on the time of year and what promotions were running they were within a few dollars of each other and for that reason they both get two check marks our next category is ease of use i found that both the dry aging wraps and the ooh my backs required some learning curve if you wet the wraps too much they become too delicate and could rip and the oh my bags were slightly clumsy and difficult to seal both of those issues are easily overcome aboard with a little practice but what really sealed it for me was that the my bags required a vacuum sealer in order to operate whereas the dry aging steak wraps did not and for that reason the dry aging state wraps get my vote for ease of use our next category is trim and waste and I found that both the dry aging steak wraps and to my bags as compared to traditional dry aging both had relatively close to the same amount of trim and waste and although I thought the wraps controlled the moisture a little bit the results were mostly negligible so for that reason I consider this to be a tie with the wraps in new my bags they both get a check mark for the last category let's look at flavor I think that the dry-aging steak wraps from the sausage maker and to my bags have both delivered virtually the same exact flavor the same flavor you could expect from dry aging meat at 60 days and then again at 90 days so both give check marks as I found it to be a tie in this category there you have it everybody the Battle of the membranes and the way that I see it it comes down to ease-of-use and that's a decision you're gonna have to make personally I can tell you this if you're gonna dry aged beef at home in your refrigerator you can't go wrong with either one of these products and if you want more information check out the description box below if you've got your own personal experience that you'd like to share leave it in the comments section below thanks for watching if you're new don't forget to sub like comment share see you next week

Channel: 2 Guys & A Cooler

Views: 67,061

Rating: 4.8571429 out of 5

Keywords: Umai Dry, Dry Aging Beef, The Sausage Maker, Wagyu A5, How to cook a steak, The best way to cook a steak, How to dry age beef, dry aging in the refrigerator

Id: 7hWQWxHj4Kk

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2019