I’d always thought the optimum goal of the meatpacking industry was to kill the animal, render and butcher the meat, and get it to the consumer ASAP in the interest of freshness and safety. But I’ve notice that beef is often advertised as having been “aged” for a number of weeks. How and why is this done? It’s not as if they’re smoking it. And how do they keep the meet safe while it’s being aged?
(It’s about food, that’s why I put it in CS.)
Aging allows enzymes to break down connective tissues in the beef thereby making it more tender and flavorful. There are two types of aging: dry aging and wet aging. Dry aging is done by hanging meat up in a refrigerated cooler kept between 36 F and 32 F for a while. Dry aging is very expensive and not done too often these days. Wet aging involves vacumn sealing beef abd letting it age in the package. Aging times range between 3 and 21 days with 10 - 14 days being the most typical.
[Hijack]
The hardest thing about smoking beef is keeping it lit
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Do you guys not even look at the front page?
Actually I don’t, I consider boards.straightdope.com to be a superior to www.straightdope.com as a font of wisdom. In truth, I rarely visit the SD main page.
My front page on my address bar list.
Explanation here
'm on my college meats judging team and we go to the slaughterhouses about once a week or so. I remember we went to one meat locker and they had the same set of four beef carcasses there that we saw three months earlier. There was a date tag on them so I know they were the same ones. They looked like giant hunks of beef jerky and when I asked my teacher what they were going to do with them (because they certainly didn’t look edible) he said that they’d just use them anyway in hamburger or something.
Go to Gallaghers steak house in NYC. The have an aging room with a window facing the street. IIRC the beef is kept 21 days before serving.
Exquisite. One of the best dinners I’ve ever had.
Since this is, in fact, answered by a Staff Report, I’m moving the thread to a better forum.