DIY Dry Aged Beef

Firstly, Happy New Year to you all. I had a wonderful Christmas eating well, drinking well and, in one particular area, saving well.

About two months ago a friend mentioned they had seen an article on air drying beef at home. This was facilitated by a special bag and that was as much information as I had. A little while later with the help of Google's search engine I found these Dry Aging Bags

 . I ordered some and split them with my friend. A day or so later I managed to buy a nice cheap piece of topside with a reasonable marbling. It was not 'matured' or 'dry aged' so it was around £15 for a large joint. I followed the simple instructions and bagged the meat before placing it in a clear space in my fridge on a metal rack . They advise that for the first 4 days there must be a clear space around the meat while the bag 'sticks to the meat'. A week or so later all was looking well and Ikept a weather eye on the joint over the next 2 months while it slowly turned black and shrunk.

Just before Christmas I removed the meat from the fridge and wondered. It was black, dry with just a little hint of a salami type mold on the surface. I removed a thin layer of the 'rind' before cutting the joint into steaks with a beautiful purple brown colour and a fantastic nose. I froze the steaks immediately to stop any further aging or deterioration but the smaller ends were cubed and popped in my Instapot to brown prior to creating a simple beef casserole with root vegetables, onion, leeks beef stock, herbs and lentils and a half bottle of cheap port (used to make 'Smoking Bishop' but more about that later). An hour later I was greeted by a wonderful, comfortable bouquet of the casserole as I released the steam. The first bite of a beef chunk told me the wait had been more than worthwhile. A tender and flavourful mouthful of this fantastic aged beef was reward a plenty. Better still, I have the steaks to look forward to. 

There is another joint bagged and drying in the fridge now. I will take photographs over the next few weeks as the next treat matures.

The supplier I ordered from ships from the US and it was not cheap but I did notice that these are now available at a much more reasonable price thanks to reduced postage costs but I have not tried them myself.

Dry Aging Bags at Butchers Sundries

A Prize Beef Joint

Last Friday I pottered up to my local social club with my wife for a well deserved beer to end a busy week. Having delivered me a good pint of London Pride, the landlord asked if we wanted to enter the weekly meat raffle so we handed over £3 and were presented with 3 tickets. Thirst sated and reminded that we were to be at the club the following day for an end of season drunkards v the pro's bowling match. 

The following morning we strolled up to the club to find we had won the top prize, a good piece of beef. After the bowling where we demonstrated our skills and came joint last, we picked up this rather fine joint of beef which, I am sure you will all agree, was a bargain at £3

 There is only the two of us and we were not in the mood for guests having spent the rest of the weekend pulling down the old summer house in preparation for the delivery of a new one later this week. This in mind, I decided to cut the joint into three.

We don't have beef very often as it is not my wife's favourite meat so, to date , I had not tried cooking a joint in the sous vide. Since this had cost us so little I thought I would give it a try. All three pieces were vacuum packed. Two for the freezer and one for supper.

Though I like my beef blue, my wife prefers her meet slightly cooked so I set the sous vide to 56.5C to cook the beef to medium rare and once it had reached temperature I submerged the meat in the sous vide for five hours. On removing it, it looked like this.

After removing the vacuum bag the meat looked cooked but very uninteresting as you can see.

I was not worried at this point. Anyone who uses a sous vide knows that you need to brown meat  before or after cooking to caramelize the outside and add that necessary something to the flavour. To this end I had a very hot cast iron skillet ready. I seasoned the beef and treated it to a short but very hot sear in the pan. This made the beef much more interesting. Once rested, I carved it and served it with roast potato cooked in goose fat, broccoli, peas and a jus made by de-glazing the pan with red wine and adding from the juices from the vacuum bag. 

As you can see, cooking meat in the sous vide enables you to get a constant level of cooking through the joint, A sear in a very hot oven, or my preference, a very hot pan or barbecue and you have a perfectly cooked joint that looks great when carved and served. I had confidence that this meat would be tender but I could have left the beef in the sous vide for 10 hours. This would have broken down the collagen in the meat and made it even more tender without cooking it any more than medium rare.