Growing up, I didn’t eat much steak. For me and many others, going out to a steak dinner was a real treat. For an eight year old, little is more empowering than ordering your own steak and being the master of your own destiny at the baked potato station and salad bar. Occasionally, I could convince my parents to take me to what I considered to be a fine eating establishment, the highly coveted steak buffet, which offered not only your choice of steak, potato and salad options but also a self-serve soft serve machine with all the sprinkles you wanted. Glorious.
For a time, 12 years in fact, I gave up eating beef. After reading up on conventional beef production and the horrifying treatment of these animals, I just couldn’t do it. Not until I was able to source meat from organic, pasture-raised operations, who are given a good life, fed appropriately and treated humanely, did I eat beef again. Fortunately, there are many great sources for beef these days as the public has demanded to know where their food comes from and have formed a more intimate relationship with their food. Among others, Joel Salatin, American farmer, food activist and author can be thanked for helping to bring these issues to light. If you’re looking for an enlightening read, I would suggest picking up one of his many books. Two great ones I can recommend are Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: A Food Buyers Guide to Farm Friendly Food and Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People and a Better World. Joel does ramble on a bit, as indicated by his highly verbose book titles, but he knows what he’s talking about.
It’s been almost one year since reintroducing beef into my diet. I have a lot to learn about how to prepare this protein since I missed out on over a decade of practice. There have been lots of ground beef meals, which seem fairly forgiving, and even a few attempts at roasts to varying degrees of success. So far, my favorite way to enjoy beef is a nice steak, grilled to medium rare doneness. Porterhouse is my favorite (just like my Dad) followed by the Ribeye.
My husband and I are lucky enough to live in a state with good access to quality, grass-fed beef. In the food world, there is a lot of controversy about this statement but I’m going there anyway: cows are meant to eat grass, not corn or wheat or soy or candybars. The industrialized food system has introduced these “foods” to cattle to fatten them up quicker, and bring them to slaughter faster. It’s also arguably meant to make the beef cheaper for consumers.
All controversy aside, grass-fed beef has some measurable health benefits. Grass-fed beef is rich in omega 3 fatty acids, lower in fat than conventionally grown beef, higher in vitamins A and E and has higher levels of CLA (conjugated linoleic acid). The downside to grass-fed beef would be the price. It can be about $2.00-$3.00 more per pound than conventionally produced beef. A great way to save money on quality grass-fed beef is to purchase a share of beef from a local producer. You can save money, know exactly where your food is sourced from and also get to try a few new cuts that aren’t typically found at your supermarket.
Now, grass-fed beef, given its lower fat content does have something to prove to corn-fed beef. The flavor is delicious but does lack some of the richness of standard beef, which is usually much fattier. In order to kick up our grass-fed steak, Dan suggested that we attempt dry-aging it… at home. Every great steak you’ve ever had was likely dry-aged for around 30 days. Dry-aging is essentially a slow dehydration process that breaks down the muscle proteins, resulting in a dense, more tender steak. This breakdown of muscle simultaneously encourages the formation of peptides and amino acids, which impart a smokier and “meatier” taste.
Generally dry-aging is done large scale, in humid refrigerators set at between 32 and 40 degrees F. But according to my Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook, this can be replicated at home, in the back of your refrigerator. Since Cook’s Illustrated has yet to let me down, we decided to give it a go! We also decided to be very scientific about this and do a side by side comparison to an equally-sized non-dry aged cut, to see what the difference in flavor was.
Per Cook’s Illustrated, we purchased two thick cut ribeye steaks. They also recommend a strip steak as a good option for home dry aging. Both steaks measured in at about .94 lbs each and had about the same fat content and shape. While we dry aged one steak, the other steak was wrapped in plastic and kept in the freezer.
With a square of cheesecloth, or a clean tea towel, wrap the steak up nicely. According to the instructions, this is done to prevent the steak from drying out too much since home refrigerators are less humid than commercial dry-aging units.
I created a sort-of burrito out of the tea towel and set the steak on a small baking sheet with a wire rack fitted. The theory here was to create an environment where air could move around the whole steak, rather than just the top. Put the steak (or steaks) in the back of your refrigerator, where the temperature is coldest. Then, just leave it alone for four (or in our case, five) days.
On the fourth day, I removed the second steak from the freezer and let it thaw out in the fridge. On the fifth day, I removed the dry aged steak from its blanket and compared it to the other steak. There was a noticeable change in the size and color of the dry aged steak, as was expected. The weight went from .94 lbs to .78 lbs!
Although Cook’s Illustrated didn’t specify, we decided to trim any really firm, dark pieces from the dry aged steak. With the use of a sharp knife, there wasn’t much additional loss of meat.
Next, as we always do when grilling, we drizzled both steaks with a little olive oil and coated them generously with salt and pepper. Dan cooked them on a blazing hot grill until they were both cooked equally to about medium-rare doneness.
After we grilled up the steaks, let them rest and divided them up on our plates, they pretty much looked the same. The steak below on the left, is the dry aged and the one on the right is the one we kept in the freezer. All that was left was the taste test.
The verdict? The dry aged steak was noticeably more tender. Dan noted that we didn’t have to chew it as much, which I guess isn’t really the most appetizing review but a positive one, nonetheless, when it comes to steak. Since we were really concentrating on the flavor of these steaks, we agreed that the dry aged one was more “meaty” but that it was very subtle. The rendered fat on the dry aged steak, however, was far better than the non-dry aged steak Both steaks were great but the dry aged one was definitely the superior steak.
Dan and I are sure that if we could dry age the steak even longer, the flavor would be that much more distinct. However, we had already “pushed the envelope” on this process since Cook’s Illustrated only felt comfortable with home dry aging four days, and we’d gone one more. I think we’ll add a few days on our dry aging next time and see what the consequences are. Live a little, eh?
So, was it worth it? I’d say yes. For the amount of work we had to put into dry aging, which amounts to little more than putting a diaper on it and sticking it in the back of the fridge, the reward is high. How many steaks have you cut with a butter knife, after all? The most difficult part is the wait, in my opinion. Dry aging really improved the flavor of our grass-fed steaks and we saved a TON of money by tackling this at home, rather than going to a steakhouse. Furthermore, I know where this steak came from, and that’s worth a lot to me.
So far, Cook’s Illustrated hasn’t let me down. I’m tempted to find the grossest recipe I can and give that a try. Tempt fate. There can’t seriously be 2,000 perfect recipes in this cookbook, can there?!