Dry-Aged: How to Make Sure Your Meat is Tender and Tasty

In meat processing, there is always some discussion about how to prepare your meat - would you have it dry aged or wet aged? Any meat has to have a cool-down period between harvesting and packaging to get the temperature down, not just in Missouri. This means that a minimal delay exists in all cases from the time the live beef is delivered and the wrapped, frozen packages can be ready for pick-up and delivery.

Meat should always be aged before it is cut and then wrapped. This increases tenderness.

"Wet aging" is a process used to age wholesale beef cuts in vacuum packaging and not often used by smaller-scale meat processors. Beef purchased directly from farmers or ranchers and processed by a local butcher will typically be "dry aged," meaning the carcass will hang in a walk-in cooler while aging. Aging, measured in days, refers to the time from when the animal is slaughtered to when the beef carcass is broken down into retail cuts.

As you dry age beef, it does three things: 1. Increases "beefy" flavor 2. Improves meat tenderness 3. Causes meat to lose weight through evaporation

While the traditional time is set at 2 weeks for aging a beef, it's subject to individual taste. Aging beef longer results in stronger flavor and increased product weight loss. Most of the tenderness increase happens within the first two weeks.

The longer it hangs in the freezer, lean beef will lose more actual meat to the processing floor. This extra time means the greater likelihood of organisms growing on the outside of the beef, which will have to be trimmed off to avoid an off-taste. For fatty beef, this isn't a problem. You just trim the fat.

Additionally, beef that is "hanging" takes up the butcher's limited cooler space, so you can expect to pay a fee for additional aging. The desirability of the increased beefy flavor that develops through extended aging is purely personal preference. Aging beyond 28 days may result in off flavors. Confirm with your butcher how long your beef carcass will be aged.

As a general rule, younger animals will be more tender than older animals and fatter animals will be more tender than leaner animals.

Another note on this, each aging process has different outcomes and your preferences can determine which type you want. When you have really lean beef that is dry-aged, you will lose some meat on the outside. This can dry up as an exterior crust and will have to be removed.  

The general average is about 2 weeks, while traditionally beef has been aged for 3 weeks. Most of the tenderizing occurs in the first couple of weeks, with additional flavor and weight loss occurring later.

Some beef has been anecdotally reported to be "wet-aged" as it's shipped from plant to plant in its processing. Wet aging is simply cutting and then immediately wrapping the beef in air-tight plastic. This is mostly used by corporate processors, as it tends to preserve the color. As well, it takes up much less locker space.

On this assembly line, some plants dispatch the live animal, then cut and seal the "primals". These are then loaded onto trucks. These primals are shipped to other plants where they are cut into their them into smaller pieces. Here the packaging is done for various food store chains. Finally, it's shipped to your local supermarket. It then finishes it's "aging" in the display case - sometimes less than a week from the time it was a live animal.

Dry Aged meat is popularly preferred over Wet Aged, even though it takes longer.