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You will have difficulty looking at any decent menu these days without seeing the mention of aged beef. Why is it important and does it make a real difference? My own opinion, and I am known to have a few of those, is that if you see a steak knife alongside your steak, you’re going to need it. With an aged steak, this should not be the case, it should be soft easy to cut and easy to chew without the surgery beforehand.

When an animal is alive is relies on fibres in the muscles and the plumping of the various cells to move. Immediately after slaughter, the carcass will still be very close to this condition. This is the bright red meat you will see in packets in some supermarket fridges. The fibres are quite taut and the cell walls are still firm. The red colour is the young blood before the iron effectively starts to look rusty through contact with oxygen. As meat gets older, enzymes start to break down the connective tissues and this naturally softens the cut.

Aging does just this, by either the wet method or the dry method. Wet aging occurs in a sealed bag and after a few weeks the meat is a lot softer. This is a very convenient and safe way to age meat but nevertheless produces great results. The dry method sees the carcass, or at least a whole section of it stored at a certain humidity and temperature in very clean surroundings. A dry crust develops on the outside as it dries out. The loss of water causes a slight drop in weight, which in turn leads to a concentration of the flavour.

Combing both of these techniques leads to the optimum flavour but sadly something that is rarely seen. On a stay in the United States I visited a restaurant called Gallaghers and they had their own aging room. This probably contained the equivalent of 1500 dry aging steaks, so it gives you an idea of how many they sell.
So next time you offered an “aged steak”, that is bright red not purple and accompanied by a steak knife you need to ask the waiter a question, “How long was this aged?”. If you are told it was longer than 3 weeks, then ask them if that was the time between it going in the freezer and coming out again.