When I was in Amsterdam I started to learn to cook more. This started out of necessity as I could no longer rely on a meal plan for my daily meals. As I started to cook more and more I learned that it was a skill I could get better at. Since I have come home I have kept working to improve my cooking ability. Since getting back I have learned how to dry age steak.
The goal of dry aging a steak is to make the beef more flavorful and tender. This is achieved by covering the steak in butter and letting it sit in a fridge for 2-4 weeks. Once this time is up you can remove the steak from the fridge. At this point there may be mold on the steak, cut any moldy parts of the meat off. As well as any excess fat that needs to be trimmed off. From this point cut the steak into serving sizes and cook with your preferred method.
Dry aging steak is so effective due to the enzyme content within the meat. The naturally present enzymes break down the collagen in the meat that holds the muscle fiber together. When present this collagen causes the meat to tighten up and become tougher. By dry aging the meat also loses roughly 15% of the water content contained within due to evaporation. This evaporation of water is what brings out the more of the taste in steak. These two reasons are what make dry aged steaks taste so much different from regular steaks.
Dry aged steaks are similar to moldy cheese in the way that they sit for a long time before being prepared giving them a more pungent flavor. The mold that we are normally scared of on our food is what gives both of these foods their unique tastes. A quote from my friend Ryan the grill master and a connoisseur of steak “you can’t understand the true taste of beef until you have had a dry aged steak”. This is a slightly different type of post from the previous ones on this page but I hope that you learned something from reading and give dry aged steaks a try at some point.