Understanding the Dry Aging Process and Why It Is Expensive
If you are a person of culture and substance, you would appreciate the art of dry-aging meat and the beauty of the method that propels fine dining cuisine to a world beyond normalcy. Aging meat is a process that takes the aesthetic of veins in a lump of meat and the juices of it and imbues it with patience and time to bring forth something incredibly delicious and rich in taste that you won’t want to taste anything other than a fine piece of dry aged steak. So, without further ado, let us dive into the topic of dry-aging itself.
What is Dry Aging?
Dry aging is the process of aging a piece of meat, mostly beef, in a controlled temperature and conditions that made it improved as a delicacy far beyond a freshly prepared steak ever could reach. When meat is exposed to oxygen, the natural enzymes within the piece of meat will begin the decomposition process as it breaks down muscle fibers and collagens that hold the meat intact. Thus, you’re looking at a tenderized version of the meat that won’t take two seconds to swallow upon entering your mouth orifice.
The meat begins to age properly when the room temperature is perfectly controlled not to be too hot; otherwise, the meat will rot or be too cold, which will stop the aging process as the meat starts to freeze due to the cold temperature. The goal of the dry-aging process is to let bacteria and mold fester on the meat’s surface, which will evaporate excess water moisture within the meat to improve the taste further and enrich the texture to be succulent; it’s pretty similar to how blue cheese’s taste is richer after mold did their work.
What Makes Dry Aged Meat Expensive?
Surely after reading the passage above, you would understand the intricate process and mastery over the decaying process of meat should be rewarded with a fine pay, right? And yes, they are indeed rewarded top dollars because of the amount of effort it takes to produce a piece of dry-aged steak. A dry-aged steak can be ranged from three days, one week, a full month, or a hundred days’ worth of aging, and the longer you age it, the richer the taste will become. That’s why you can imagine the expensive price of it sitting there for over three months and developing such a flavorful taste that goes beyond comprehension. Albeit they are fairly exorbitantly priced, people are fuzzing over it incessantly with evidence such as a long queue at Porter’s Steakhouse and Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant.
The Takeaway
Dry-aged meat always tastes better because of all that water that has evaporated from the meat, making the meat itself enriched in flavor and becoming more concentrated because of the natural juices flowing inside it, and it is well kept. If you don’t know of the wonders of dry-aging before, now you know! Try them out for yourself to see what we mean.
