The extended drying makes sure the surface is dry when you sear it. That's always a good thing. Next time, salt it before you put it in the fridge. Thank me later.

I put the steaks on a cooling rack after salting to make sure dry air is getting to all surfaces.

Putting a steak in the fridge for a day or so before cooking is a good thing. It removes surface moisture which helps create a better sear.

So we're talking apples to apples, though, it is not really dry aging. It's practically impossible to dry age a single steak. (At least by traditional methods)

By the time the enzymes have had time to go to work on the proteins and make the fats taste all nutty and delicious, the steak would be shoe leather or worse.

Dry aging is a bulk process done to primals or sub-primals. After the dry aging period is complete (30-60 days typically), the dry exterior of the cow hunk is trimmed and then cut into steaks.

I do recommend trying this at home. I have done it in my primary refrigerator before, but I think the humidity was a little too high. Plus towards the end of the stint, the whole fridge started to smell a little...aged beefy.

If you have a chest freezer, you can use an inkbird (or similar) temp controller and make your own dedicated dry age rig, if you're in to delicious cuts of steer.

I'm not a food scientist or anything, so feel free to correct me if I misspoke.

Cheers.

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I do recommend trying this at home.

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Hey Chili...for not being a Food Scientist you are pretty spot on with your thoughts/perspective.

Here's an option that I've done (and do) and it works.....

https://umaidry.com/collections/steak

I used to work for a portion-cut steak processor. I was so impressed with Umai that I took this idea to our R&D team. Ironically, they'd already tested it and showed it to our biggest steak customer. The steaks were superb but the restaurant group didn't think they could call them dry aged since they were in a bag.

Here's what I do...I buy a bone in Ribeye and dry age it for about 30 days. I then pull the bone, trim, portion, then vacuum pack and freeze individual steaks.

FWIW, if something is advertised as "14-days dry-aged," this is a complete gimmick and should be viewed warily as such. 14 days is a pretty typical time frame for normal non-dry-aged beef to hang.

fav13andac1)c said:

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FWIW, if something is advertised as "14-days dry-aged," this is a complete gimmick and should be viewed warily as such. 14 days is a pretty typical time frame for normal non-dry-aged beef to hang.

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