r/DryAgedBeef

Well, as some of you know, I ran one of the dry age rooms at Knife. Starting in 2016, this became a journey of love, devotion, study and hard work.

I've gone down so many scientific rabbit holes that led nowhere, but the few that produced did greatly increase my understanding of this biome. Let this be a lesson to always keep trying new things, and push the boundaries of what people say is possible.

Today marked the final clearing of the room as it exists. Not sure what the future plans for it are, but it will no longer have any of the remnants of the Knife dry age program.

Attached are random pictures through the years, with the final light off at the end.

Might be the end of the journey for the room, but not for me. See you soon Chef.

We are trimming for quality, not safety. We monitor temp to control the safety!

beef short rib from Costco: the top piece is thick, wide, and well-marbled. but after opening the package at home, the pieces underneath were all narrow, thin, with much less meat than what was shown on the top layer. that’s cheating! I can’t believe this is from Costco

28 days after dry ageing turned out pretty well.

Grabbed two steaks from my local grocery store that dry ages its steaks. While vacuuming them for the freezer - or at least one of them anyway - I noticed there’s a layer of mold (?) on the surface. Anyone know if that’s normal / safe to eat?

They smell completely fine.

21 days chuck roast in a home set up. A cleaned, cracked rotisserie chicken box at the bottom of the fridge. No smell. Before putting it in i covered it in salt pepper and some bacon fat. And hung it in front of a fan for a few hours to dry out all the cracks so that i could tie it together so that there would be less pecille in ratio to meat. I’ve dry aged steak like this before but ive never let it get this moldy before. Before it would just get a little discolored. Usually theres a cheesy funk but here theres nothing. I see lots of gray dots and a single dot of green. How do you ID mold? Or do you just trust the process?

This is my 6th time dry aging, I’ve had no problems… until now. My set up is stable averaging 1.7c (35f) and ~85% humidity with lows of 0.8c and highs of 2.5c (33.4f and 36.5f).

Unfortunately each bone in this Rib of Beef had this almost spoilage like narrow green channel along the sides, it absolutely stank and not the good dry age funk smell. I’ve trimmed it up and the meat itself doesn’t smell, but from reading I’m getting contradictory answers. Some say bone sour is a big no no and it should be discarded no matter what, but then I’ve seen it’s fine to trim it out as long as the meat doesn’t smell.

I’ve packaged each steak and frozen them apart from one I plan to test. I’ve left it vacuum sealed in the fridge and I think I’ll give it another smell before I use it and if I get even a slight whiff I’ll bin them. What do you think?

Meat was 2 weeks dry aged then I continued it now its on 3rd week. Am i doing it right, fridge is set to 2