Everything You Need to

Know About Dry-Aged

Steak
The art and science of better beef.
By MARY SQUILLACE

Photo: courtesy Ray Kachatorian

A little age never hurt anyone—unless we’re talking about our increasingly
creaky knees and ever-more foggy memory, or sorer-by-the-day lower
backs. Okay, scratch that. For us mortals, age hurts, period. But when it
comes to such culinary delights as wine, cheese, and red meat, age has the
power to enhance flavor and deepen our enjoyment.

This is especially the case for dry-aged beef, which is known for a richer
flavor and more tender texture—as well as a heftier price tag—than its
fresh-cut counterparts. But what is it about dry-aging that works such
magic on meat?

Even if you appreciate what a dry-aged steak does for your tastebuds, the
nuances about how it delivers such a transcendent experience may escape
you. That’s why, with the help of food scientists and chefs, we’re unpacking
exactly what dry-aged beef is and how dry-aging works.

What is dry aging?

“An unsexy way to explain it is that dry-aging, in a nutshell, is a controlled
decay process,” says Katie Flannery, butcher and COO at Flannery Beef.
“You’re exposing the subprimals to oxygen, which allows natural enzymes
within the meat work,” she says. “They’re aerobic bacteria, so they need
oxygen to survive. They come alive and start breaking down the molecular
bonds of meat.” This, in turn, alters the flavor and texture of the cut.

What dry aging looks like is literally a room full of moldy carcasses. In the
dry-aging process, meat hangs in a humidity-controlled environment in a
way that exposes all of its sides with unimpeded airflow around the entire
cut. “Then there’s the good mold that finds its way onto steaks, which will
slowly start to break down and increase the amount of evaporation,” says
Chris Pandel, executive chef at Swift and Sons in Chicago. “You’re puling
moisture from the meats over time. As that happens the mold will extend
its life and grow. It’s like the mold on blue cheese—it’s good mold not bad
mold.”

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Of course, before that slab of beef makes it to your plate, all of the mold will
be trimmed away, leaving just “tenderized, funky, delicious meat,” Pandel
says. He describes the flavor of dry-aged meat as having a nuttiness to it
that you won’t get in a wet-aged steak. Likewise, it’ll be more tender and
have a different mouthfeel.
Steak from Pandel’s Swift & Son’s Swift & Sons

How does dry-aging change the taste and texture of

meat?
Moisture loss is one aspect that changes the flavor of dry-aged meat. “What
that does is essentially concentrate the remainder of the tissue,” says
Harold McGee, food scientist and author of Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide
to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes. “Meat is about 75 percent water.
If you lose a few percent to evaporation … what’s left will be more
concentrated, so the flavor will be more concentrated.”

For those who know their way around a kitchen, Flannery likens the
process to reducing a stock to a demi-glace. “You have that pot on your
stovetop. As more and more moisture evaporates, the flavor of the liquid is
getting more and more concentrated. With beef, as water evaporates, the
natural beef flavor intensifies,” she says.

But chemical changes also affect the flavor. “During the aging period, some
of the flavor compounds and other molecules in the meat undergo chemical
change that will increase some flavor components while reducing others,”
says Joe Regenstein, Professor in the Department of Food Science at
Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Muscle cells are made of lots of different materials, and chief among them
are the proteins that enable the muscles to contract, and the molecules that
fuel this process, such as glycogen, DNA and RNA. During dry-aging, these
large, flavorless molecules are broken down into smaller, flavorful
fragments, explains McGee.

“All of those molecules are relatively large, and when they’re broken down
by the enzyme activity, they form fragments that are more flavorful than the
original large molecules,” he says. “Some proteins get broken down into
amino acids. They can be a little bitter, savory, such as in MSG, and the
DNA/RNA material can get broken into other molecules that are savory and
enhance the savoriness of MSG. And glycogen broken into sugars which are
sweet.”

Dry aging transforms the texture of meat as well. “Meat has a very complex
internal structure that can be difficult to bite through. By breaking some of
these proteins down, the teeth can now more easily go through the meat,”
Regenstein says.

What are the best cuts of dry-aged meats?

Entire primals, rather than single steaks are dry-aged, but to be a good
candidate for dry-aging requires a good protective covering of bone or fat.
This means there’s less surface area that needs to be trimmed away later.
“Filets tend not to be aged because there’s no bone or fat protecting it,
Flannery says. Dry-aging is wasteful because every single side of meat that
is exposed to air will be breaking down faster than the meat on the inside.”
Bone-in New York strip or ribeye are good contenders for dry-aging, Pandel
says.
Ribeye is a great cut to dry age. Photo: Kevin Marple

What’s the ideal time to dry-age meat?

The ideal length of time for dry-aging meat really comes down to individual
taste. For Flannery, the sweet spot is around 30 to 35 days. “For retail
customers, we go 35 days, but for restaurant customers we go 18 to 20,” she
says. “That’s because in the restaurant industry, if a diner isn’t familiar with
dry-aged beef, their first reaction might be to think that something is off.”

Pandel says he likes meat that’s been aged around 45 days. “You can tell it’s
been aged, but it’s not unpleasant,” he says. “We’ve gone further. In
running a steakhouse it’s personal preference. Some folks like it really
funky, but for some people it’s too gnarly.”

And the longer you go, the funkier the flavor will get. “Dry-aged meat does
have a unique smell and flavor. Funky is a good way to describe it,” she
says. “It’s a more rich flavor up until the 30-day point. When you go farther
than that, and if you go really far out, like 60 to 90 days, you develop a
serious blue cheese funk to it. It will smell remarkably like blue cheese.”

Why Is Dry-Aged Meat More Expensive?

With a dry-aged descriptor comes a steeper price tag—but it’s for more than
just the fancy moniker. “There’s a reaction to higher prices without fully
understanding why dry-aged meat is more expensive,” Flannery says.
“We’re not slapping another 50 percent to the cost because we feel like it.
It’s a more costly product to produce.”

Between whittling away the moldy parts and the moisture evaporation, you
can lose up to 50 percent of the primal’s original weight, Flannery explains.
That means if your butcher bought 10 pounds of meat, she might only have
five pounds left to sell by the time it’s been aged, essentially doubling what
she paid for it.

Adam Perry Lang in his aging room. Photo: courtesy Josh Telles

Dry-Aging Vs. “Wet-Aging”

Occasionally, you may also hear the words “wet-aged” used describe a piece
of meat. Wet-aging describes meat that has been aged in a vacuum-sealed
plastic bag. “The meat is held for weeks or months enclosed in a plastic bag
that prevents evaporation from taking place, so you don’t get the same loss
of water and don’t get the same concentration of flavor,” McGee says.
“I’ll just say it: Wet-aging is bullshit. It’s basically to get the word “aging” on
a product without incurring the massive loss of dry-aging,” Flannery says.
“Because dry-aging so expensive is one reason people push wet-aging.
There’s no trim loss and no moisture loss. But you have that cool cache of it
being aged.”

Wet-aging won’t deliver the nutty flavor or same mouthfeel as a dry-aged

steak. “You can’t fake dry-aged. You can’t condense time. It’s a really
unique product,” Flannery says.

Dry aging at home

Most professionals will tell you to not dry age at home, but what else would
professionals say? However, they make a very compelling case when it
comes to flavor and even safety. Dry aging is a controlled fermentation,
which René Redzepi and David Zilber of Noma showed you can do at
home, but with necessary precautions and equipment. With dry aging
steak, the problem people run into is that they don’t realize the home fridge
doesn’t really work, for a couple reasons. You want your dry-aging fridge to
have a more consistent temperature and air flow than your home fridge
offers. Also, you don’t want anything else in the fridge, because over time
the steak will start absorbing the flavors of the other food inside the old
icebox with it. So when the steak actually has time to undergo the
enzymatic reaction that makes dry-aged steak so delicious, it will start to
have a muddled, stale flavor because of what it has absorbed in the fridge.
That doesn’t mean you can’t dry age at home. The key is getting a
dedicated dry-aging fridge that will eliminate all the aforementioned
challenges. And instead of getting individual cuts, by large slab that allows
you to trim the meat before slicing into individual steaks. Then again, you
could always just order the beef already aged by an online purveyor and
save yourself the time.