Cooking Skills

You Can Dry-Age Steaks in Your Fridge

Learn how to deepen your steak's flavors at home with cheesecloth, a fridge, and time.

Living in Montana has spoiled me on steaks. With then many ranches within 100 miles of me, I not only have my choice among several local purveyors, but I'm oftentimes able to buy directly from the rancher. (More often than not, that rancher is Oxbow Cattle Co. in Missoula.)

Such high-quality meat demands proper preparation and cooking. Generally, I've stored steaks in my refrigerator in the butcher paper or the cream container they came in. But I learned I could exist replicating the dry out-aging procedure—usually the purview of fancy steakhouses—in my own refrigerator. I thought my steaks were succulent before, only dry-crumbling has taken them across that baseline.

Why dry out-crumbling? Experts know information technology makes beef more tender and flavorful—butchers aren't simply hanging quarters of beefiness in refrigerators for aesthetics. When beefiness is exposed to air at low temperatures, its flavors get more concentrated as muscle poly peptide transforms into amino acids and peptides. Enzymes break down connective tissue during this process every bit well, making each bite more than tender.

By dissimilarity, moisture-aged beefiness—the kind that'south sealed in plastic—isn't losing as much moisture. So if a home melt wants the benefits of dry-crumbling from a regular, packaged steak, they'll have to replicate it in their kitchen. The technique is best practical to any cut of steak on which yous'd want a browned, seared crust: tenderloin, porterhouse, rib-eye, superlative loin, and strip steaks.

"Surface drying that happens over a few days in the fridge will profoundly amend browning, and thus flavor," explains Paul Adams, science editor at America'southward Test Kitchen.

Here's how to practise it: Pat the steak dry, then wrap it loosely in cheesecloth. (Habitation refrigerators are less humid than the walk-in coolers at a butcher shop, and then the cheesecloth guards confronting too much moisture loss.) Place the steak on a wire rack ready in a baking sheet, then set it in the coldest function of the fridge, which is generally the lowest shelf, toward the dorsum.

Now, the waiting game. The balance in dry-aging in a dwelling house refrigerator is to maximize the effects of drying without introducing bacteria that could spoil the meat. While beef stored in a refrigerator specifically designed for dry aging can safely sit for a calendar month or more than, Adams advises more caution in a home refrigerator. Temperatures to a higher place normal refrigerator standards—which could occur if the refrigerator door gets opened often, say by political party guests in search of beer—would increase enzymes' activity in breaking down tissue, simply would also potentially hasten the growth of bacteria.

Based on America'due south Test Kitchen methods, I've settled on three days in the fridge for my small-scale tenderloin steaks. Tasted alongside their non-dry-aged components, the steaks that had been aging for three days in my refrigerator had a noticeably more satisfying crust, creating greater contrast between the seared outer layer and the tender, succulent interior. Such a short flow of dry-aging didn't much impact the steak'south interior, just the meliorate sear alone makes the pace worth it. When cooking such beautiful beef, every detail counts.

Adams as well says I could employ the refrigerator dry-aging procedure to another Montana delicacy: venison, elk, and other game meat. In fact, those meats might benefit from an even longer aging period in my fridge.

"Dry-aging venison and the like will give the aforementioned poly peptide breakup and moisture loss effects," he says. "Fat breakdown volition be less noticeable because in that location'due south less fat, and that should allow you to leave information technology longer without starting to get rancid tastes."

I'k eager to effort this process with some of the venison steaks in my breast freezer, stored there after my husband'due south hunting trip final fall. Not-Montanans, though, might take to practise a fleck more legwork to find that raw cloth.