Text 7750, 96 rader
Skriven 2013-12-10 18:16:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DALE SHIPP
Ärende: Aged 575
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 DS> What is the deal with "aged" beef?

You tell the story of the hung poultry in the butcher
shops in England 40-50 years ago. Extrapolate that to
beef, but bear in mind that standards of hygiene are
a bit better now and over here.

The purpose of aging beef is twofold: changing the taste,
making it riper and more complex; and changing the texture,
making it less stringy and both firmer and tenderer.

The mechanisms are: enzymatic action inside the muscles,
shortening the protein chains and making the meat more
tender; breakdown of fatty tissues and connective tissue
adding tenderness and flavor, but one has to be careful,
because there's a fine line between broken-down and rancid;
evaporation, which concentrates flavors; and mycelia growth,
meaning that mold grows on the surface but also enters the
meat itself, leading to further breakdown and also to the
introduction of cheesy flavors that some appreciate but that
on the whole I don't.

The main techniques used are twofold. Wet-aging is a recent
technique. You essentially take the meat and sling it into a
bag and let it macerate in its own juice. Before vacuum
sealing and proper hygienic techniques, this wouldn't have
worked, as meat juice is a great place for bacteria to live
long and prosper. Now, bacterial growth can be slowed or even
essentially stopped, allowing the desired changes (aging) to
happen without the undesired ones (putrefaction). This method
doesn't of course produce all the aging effects, just the
first couple. Dry-aging is the traditional method - you hang
a half animal in a cool, dry place ("meat locker") with good
air flow around, and let what happens happen; this leads to
external fungal growth to some extent but mostly surface
drying, which allows the enzymatic changes to proceed largely
undisturbed. The ideal length of dry-aging is usually said to
be between 2 to 4 weeks; some say 6 to 8, but they're lying.

After sufficient aging, the large cuts have most of the fat
cut off (some may be rancid) as well as any dried or moldy
bits on the exterior. Then butchering is completed, the large
cuts being broken down into serving pieces. For dry aging,
weight loss is claimed variously as 15-30%, with the throwaway
parts pretty unsalvageable. For wet aging it's close to zero,
and the trimmings can be used to make stews, chili, and so on.

The economic advantage goes of course to the wet method, but
the dry method is widely reputed to produce a tenderer and
more flavorsome product. I like them both; I also like fresh-
slaughtered beef. My preferences are long-aged wet-aged,
because that bloody flavor is what I have become accustomed
to, with second place going to moderately aged dry-aged,
because I don't care for the really concentrated cheesy
moldy taste of the good stuff. On the rare occasions when
I've had a completely fresh cut from a really good breed of
cattle, I've liked that too.

 What I have seen on
 DS> occasional cooking shows looks like beef that has been kept far past
 DS> the "use-by" date until it looks putrefied, or something that you might
 DS> expect to see on a mummy.

Don't believe everything you see on TV. The shriveled
parts get cut off before the meat is cooked, let alone
served; if they showed the meat after the gross bits
were removed, you'd see that it looked like meat, only
maybe a little more purple.

 DS> Have you ever had any?  If so, give us a report.

I don't think that most people have ever eaten wholly
unaged beef. I have, on farms here and in Europe, and
it's fine but not as tender as one expects. The stuff
you get in restaurants is usually "wet aged," and this
is the flavor profile you are most familiar with, though
longer aging is relatively uncommon as economically
disadvantageous. Dry-aged meat is twice more expensive,
in part because of the trimming loss and the evaporative
loss, also because one's capital is tied up longer. I've
had it aged up to about a month, and it's fine, definitely
tenderer than less aged, with that depth of flavor that
the writers write about. Is it worth the cost, I'd tend to
say no. I grew up with almost exclusively dry-aged meat,
but back then it was pretty much the standard, and the
premium paid was little, a few cents a pound if anything;
now if you can get it at all you pay through the nose.
Beyond a month, you get a taste that I don't like - many
refer to it as being like blue cheese, no surprise as at
this point fungal growth becomes a major factor. I believe
I have never had the superfancy connoisseur cuts that have
been aged 60-120 days, but I bet they'll be gross.

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