OT: Aging Beef

(just in time for the Mad Cow scare & cheap prices soon to follow ;-)

i have aged my store bot steaks since visiting London in the 70's and learning that we (amerikins) did a lousy job of it. now i understand that beef is aged in the retail chain, almost has to be, and no beef sold it truly green (fresh).

my aging method has been to simply place the package in the fridge until i could smell it and then either prepare or freeze and this generally works well. my question for you rcm'ers that care about this: "how do you age a roast?". do you? does it add to flavor?

my sis-in-law has been serving "standing-rib" roast for several years over the holidays and they really like the change. i hate to try this with "green" meat, i would just rather have a steak. prime-rib roast would be another choice for me.

the Hotel/Restaurant surely does it's own aging or buys aged beef, can a single retail customer find access to these products? they are probably pricy or not avail. anyhoo, i hesitate to throw the roast in the fridge for aging (10-20 days for a steak), but that's my plan for now. of course it's already too late for New Year's dinner.

i need to try one soon, so i can decide when the prices crater if it is practical for me to age several roasts for freezing. Happy New Year to a great group, and Best Regards, --Loren

PS: it doesn't stay cold enough here (Dallas-Plano) to use the garage or the shady northside for aging.

Any time we have a cow slaughtered we let it age at the butcher shop for 21 to 28 days, then cut it all up and then freeze it. I have been told it gains nothing after 30 days or so. There used to be a steak house in NYC that had all kinds of beef carcasas hanging up in the a huge display freezer, that were of various aged times, and you could go choose what cut and from what carcass you wanted your meat from. I was told ageing breaks down a lot of tough fibers and such in the meat and in the process adds to the taste.

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You will have several problems "aging" store bought cuts. First, if it has ever been frozen in transit the enzymes quit and aging stops. Second, dry aging requires fresh cut sides or quarters, very close temperature control, lots of clean air circulation and close supervision for 20-28 days. Not easy to do in a home fridge. Wet aging in the vacuum bags that wholesale boxed beef ships in will tenderize the meat over 8 to 14 days but does not give the aged beef flavor that dry aging does.

You can dry age larger roasts if they have lots of r> (just in time for the Mad Cow scare & cheap prices soon to follow ;-) >

On several occasions, my wife has brought home beef from the discount end of the meat counter after it was no longer "red" and cooked it. I found the taste to be unpleasent as well as the smell. Seems there is a fine line between "aged" and "rotten"

There is a small grocery store in my area that sells beef to most of the local restaurants that are fit to eat at. Old, wood floor building that dates back to WWI or before. You might find a similar place in a small town in your area. One of the radio stations in a bit larger town near me has been carrying advertisements from a store that just opened that claims to sell "restaurant quality" food to the public. The ads sound like it may be part of a chain.

that "unpleasant taste/odor" is what i am looking for. an aquired taste, for sure. my host in London wanted a signed oath before he would let me order an aged prime steak in a restaurant ('do you really, _really_ like beef?' ;-). it was almost intimidating at first, and the first time i ever used horse radish straight.

if you have ever seen hanging, fully aged, "bull meat", green on the outside, you will have an idea of what i was served. the meat is a _very_ dark brick red before cooking. culinarily, we lead pretty sheltered lives, here in the colonies. the wife always opted for a hamburger when the steak got to the 'perfection' state. not surprising since she always took beef well done, in any form. --Loren

Meat that has been cut up in smaller chunks and kept in a display counter is not "aged" beef it is just old. When I worked in a beef packing house the employees were allowed first pick of anything we wanted to buy, at the wholesale price that day. I liked to buy whole loins and I would leave them hanging in the cage for two to three weeks before cutting them up. I always bought PRIME and that was in the late 60's when a prime cut was almost white from all the marbling. Damn that was good eating. The shrinkage and trim loss is significant when you age a primal cut that way but for truly fine dining it is worth it. There are still a few steakhouses in the country where you can get a steak like that but very few IMHO. If you are lucky enough to live on a farm you can still raise your own beef like that but getting it at a regular grocery store is impossible. DL

i have to agree here, same for my "average" results in the refrig. still, to me, the flavor improves. there is very little "tenderizing" going on, however. what i do cannot be recommended to many, just a few "iron- stomach die-hards", i guess. after 30+ yrs, you would think i would be dead if it wasn't safe. and no, i cook it medium to medium-rare.

i know it has worked well when the flavor makes me think of that steak back in London and i wish for some horse radish. that is not something many 'average' dinners would relish. the aftertaste is the most obvious hint that you have succeeded. the less than "ideal" results vary from just "green flavor" to very good flavor, much better than average otc beef.

that very _last_ outstanding beef purchase i made was in Seattle in about

1966. you could inspect the quarter or half before purchase and watch it being cut and wrapped (then flash frozen). the owner actually cooked a sample before we decided, he had an electric skillet right on the floor.

the best advice was to put some "boneless bull" into our trimmings (for hamburgers), i still remember how much better they were than otc. ah, shades of another time. --Loren

Back in the '60s there was a steakhouse in Princeton, NJ, that charged you for three steaks and served you one. People came there from New York and even Boston for the steaks.

They served only two cuts -- tenderloin or rib-eye -- but they treated them the same way. They took three steaks cut in sequence and sandwiched them back together, and then hung them for a couple of weeks. Then then took the two steaks on the outside of the sandwich and threw them away. The idea was that the enzymes migrated to the middle one but it didn't get dry or moldy. They served you the one that had been in the middle, and you'd better not ask to have it cooked well-done, or they wouldn't serve it to you. Literally.

I never paid my own way there but I did get taken there a few times. I don't remember ever having anything like it anywhere else.

Ed Huntress

Alton Brown on Good Eats did a show on ageing a roast in the fridge 3 or 4 days. Do a search at:

Karl