- Today on Prime Time, is this month on Prime Time.
- What?
- I know, it's crazy.
We are going to do a
one-month, 30-day experiment on dry-aging.
- We're gonna cut two rib-eyes.
These are from the same animal.
The same amount of meat off of each,
and then dry-age both pieces,
but one, a traditional dry-age,
just gonna put it in there, and let it do its thing,
let it do its thing.
What are gonna do to the other one, B?
- The second one we are going to cover in beef fat
to completely seal it,
let the enzymes keep working to dry-age it.
We want to see, will it change the dry-age flavor?
So do we think this is gonna be a better way to dry-age?
- I don't know.
- I'm very optimistic about this.
- You're optimistic?
Usually I'm the optimistic one, this is weird.
- Switching it up.
I think
coating the loin in fat will take away the funkiness,
make it a little bit cleaner.
I also think it's going to take the loss down.
- I think coating it in fat will be good.
I think dry-aging it,
and having the air flow is gonna be better.
- So, dry-age does two things.
First, enzymatic process is breaking down
all of the muscle fibers, making it more tender.
- Science, science, science, blah, blah, blah.
- Two, water loss.
The meat is just exposed to the elements,
so it is going to evaporate some water.
Let's just take two bones from each rib loin.
We'll weigh 'em so we can see what the water loss is,
and coat the one and then we begin to wait.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] Let's weigh this puppy.
10.8 pounds.
- Oh!
Whoa!
No one saw that coming, 10.8, 10.6.
- This one is gonna be the one to get covered in beef fat.
Let's cover this in fat.
- Butter this baby up.
- This is all kidney fat.
So, this is what we wanna use for our experiment,
because A, it's beef and we're putting it on beef,
that just makes sense.
Two, we have a lot of it, in case you couldn't tell.
So, what do we think's gonna happen here?
- I think the bit of mold that it picks up on the outside
will just all get absorbed by this fat on the outside.
Everything on the inside's preserved,
so it'll be more tender, but a little less funky.
- At 30 days dry-age,
I don't feel like you get too much funkiness,
so I'm not worried about the funkiness that much.
- You're always worried about the funk.
- I'm never worried about the funk.
I know where to find the funk.
This is really hard to cover in fat.
- [Brent] It is working.
This just looks like mashed potato mountain.
- [Ben] Which is not a bad thing.
So, the good thing about this experiment
is we can forget about it for the next 30 days.
- Forget about you for 30 days?
- No, you can't ever do that, that's mean!
Forget about the beef for 30 days.
- Alright, I'll forget about the beef for 30 days.
- Alright, we'll see you in 30 days.
Our walk-in cooler has about 90% humidity,
so the water loss takes a little bit of time,
which is exactly what we want.
(Brent making stretching noises)
(Ben singing)
- Wow, 35 days.
- It's been that long?
- What a nap.
- What year is it?
- This looks very interesting.
- Yeah, got some funky monkeys.
So we've been aging these for 35 days now.
- We're picking up a little bit of mold
here on the just regular dry-age.
- What do you think about this guy?
- This really hardened, it's super hard.
- It's basically mummified beef.
- So curious to see what the inside looks like,
and really just wanna cut into it.
- [Ben] Okay.
- First off, super excited to see
what the actual water loss is versus this,
because I'm really shocked how much is actually lost
for a side-by-side comparison.
I think this is gonna be significantly less.
- You can also see the muscles are kinda recessing
in from the bone,
and that's just all the water molecules
that have evaporated from the muscles.
So, we know we have some more intense flavor happening.
(upbeat music)
(saw running)
- [Ben] Whoa, it really got dry.
(saw running)
I didn't know what to expect,
but I didn't expect this.
- I know, this is crazy.
It looks like there's almost no water loss.
It still looks super fresh.
Whereas, I mean, we just took a bit of the face off here,
but you can see how much insane water loss is here.
Almost looking like a dry-aged ham.
- Yeah, this'll have like a more, yeah, more earthy flavor.
I think it's gonna cook quicker,
because of the intense water loss that we're seeing.
And this is just to remind people, this is the same animal,
the same cut from either side of the loin,
and just look at the size difference.
- [Brent] Totally.
- Let's peel off this fat, weigh 'em again,
see where we're at.
- Sounds great. - Alright.
(upbeat music)
Well this is gonna take a minute.
Oh, I don't like that.
There was obviously some sort of cavity there,
where it had a little oxygen, but no air flow,
and so it just rotted in a kind of typical way,
like if we hung it out just in the middle of the room
it would rot in the same fashion,
and if we ate that we would be sick.
- [Brent] We need to trim that and get rid of it.
- Yeah, this kind of funkiness here,
we can put this in a dry-age burger grind.
This kind of stuff here, it needs to be shaved off,
and thrown away immediately.
- Feel good about weighing this?
- I feel good about weighing this.
We started at 10.8 pounds.
- [Brent] 10.4!
- Whoa!
- Wow!
- That's a loss of less than a half of a pound.
- We should also reserve, as we trim this down,
reserve to see how much is actually usable.
- [Ben] Yes, I agree.
Okay, so this one started out 10.6 pounds.
- [Brent] On our face piece as well, and,
9.4!
- [Ben] 9.4, so an entire other pound of water loss.
This is right on the money of where we expect it to be
after about 35 days.
This has way more water retention than we would expect,
but that water retention and the environment
led to significant amount of rot that we just have to toss.
How about we trim them up to see
what the actual usable product yield is?
(upbeat music)
(saw running)
We're both trimmed up now and we're actually a lot closer,
kinda looking the same.
That eye is still much bigger than this eye.
The other interesting thing I think we got here is
look at your loss versus my loss.
- But this is usable,
whereas unfortunately this has all gotta go in the trash.
Let's weigh 'em.
So now we're at
5.8.
- That is a
five pound loss
from where we started,
then we had the .4 pounds of water loss,
and then we had a further 4.6 pounds
of loss that we have to throw away.
- [Brent] It's already not looking good for the markets.
- Where are we at on that?
- [Brent] Even six.
- [Ben] So that's 3.4 pounds of loss.
- You have three pounds of usable trim.
Let's cut a couple steaks and finally try 'em,
and see what we're looking at.
- Alright, let's do it.
Jesus, that's night and day, that's beautiful.
- Now I'm excited about this one again.
This looks amazing.
I think it's so cool how the muscle has actually
changed between the two,
where there's more water in the muscle and not the fat,
so that water loss has significantly shrunk the eye,
whereas this is actually a lot bigger,
and there's a lot more meat
to the one that was encapsulated in fat.
I do think the dry-age is still gonna be way more intense.
I think the fat-coated did a really nice job
of keeping the water in there.
'Cause this is gonna have a lot more mold-funk to it
than this, this is definitely gonna be a lot more mild.
- I generally don't like steaks that are aged over 30 days.
I wanna taste the animal as it was raised.
I wanna taste the minerality.
I wanna taste the grass.
This is gonna taste more like dry-age.
It's gonna taste more like that chemical process,
the enzymatic process has really taken hold,
and the humidity is really gonna be playing a factor there.
This is gonna taste more like the cow we received
on the day it was received.
Just with a little bit of that enzymatic breakdown
that'll bring out the flavor.
I think I'm probably gonna like this one a little bit more.
- [Brent] I think so too.
- Alright, let's season them,
and I guess we gotta cook two really big steaks.
(upbeat music)
- [Brent] Let's cook a steak.
- Let's cook some steaks.
- So let's cook the one coated in beef fat first.
- Beef fat baby.
- [Brent] Beef fat baby.
(steak sizzling)
- God, I never get sick of this.
- Cooking steaks?
- [Ben] Yeah.
(steak sizzling)
Good crust, good crust!
(Ben cheers)
Starting steak number two.
(steak sizzling)
- [Brent] Cool!
We have to do the beef fat first.
The whole thing, that it's gonna have a much cleaner flavor
than the open air dry-age.
Let's see if it stacks up to it.
- Alright.
- [Ben] It's cutting very tender.
- [Brent] Yeah?
- [Ben] Yeah, it feels very very good.
So, I think we can only use the eye of the rib eye
versus eye of rib eye.
Let's keep it scientific.
- [Brent] Can I?
I feel like you could just, yep, there ya go.
It just pulls apart.
- [Brent] Wow!
That enzymatic breakdown has really really taken hold.
I don't think we're lacking anything there.
A very very clean finish.
- That is phenomenal.
It's mild.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- But I actually like the mildness.
- A little bit of funkiness still.
- Right, it's not like punch ya in the teeth beefy,
which I feel like this definitely will be.
Very mild, the texture is so tender.
- [Ben] It's very very very tender.
- I don't know that I've ever had a dry-aged steak
this tender before.
It's a completely different experience.
- [Ben] We gotta cut into this guy.
- [Brent] Alright.
- I gotta know what's going on here.
- [Brent] Just worth nothing that in general,
100% grassfed steaks, especially dry-age, are best rare.
- Yeah, all this water runoff is from this steak.
There is nothing under this steak.
Let's see how these guys pull apart.
Yup, look at that.
Those proteins have been broken down.
You don't even need a knife.
It doesn't have the moisture of this one obviously.
The crust on it is more defined.
There's a little bit more texture,
but it's also almost like high grade tuna texture.
- Right, the minerality is much more pronounced
in the straight open air dry aged.
This is phenomenal.
I mean, it has a little crust on the outside
like fried chicken,
but the inside is like perfect beef tartare.
- This faded from my palate almost immediately.
This has really coated the top of my mouth.
I can still taste that steak.
Yeah, it's lingering around.
- I still prefer the traditional dry age.
- I think I'm with you.
If I didn't know that we had to throw away
almost 4 1/2 pounds of meat that was unusable from this.
- It kinda kills it for ya?
- Yeah, this I can get really great burger on the side
that tastes just as steaky as this.
This is phenomenal,
but this is more like what I would expect
a conventional dry-aged steak to taste like.
It's lacking the minerality and grassiness
that you were talking about with the dry-age.
This is unmistakably grass.
This, because it doesn't quite have the
lack of the water loss,
it tastes more like a really good steak
that I would expect anywhere.
- So, an experiment worth doing, learned something,
but the traditional way is still the best.
- We're old school boys.
- Sorry sacks. - That's how we live our life.