Ok I'm particularly excited because i'm in dallas texas at John Tesar's steakhouse
called knife in the Highland hotel
I'm here to try five different steaks aged for different periods of time
come on in.
Dry aging, for all its great benefits also has its limits.
it's a process and that process will have peaks and valleys in terms of sourness
of sweetness and different flavor nodes. More is not necessarily better.
So I think what we're really looking for here is where is the tipping point where
a steak becomes so funky that you couldn't eat the whole thing.
So tell me what does john have planned for me.
You're going to get a few steaks that are hard to get. We got a 45-day ribeye
90-day, 180-day, a 240 and a 420
that's purely experimental all right how far we can go with it
so hopefully i'll survive this. Like if you go to your average dry aged steak
house
28 days is what most people do, Correct? —Exactly —Do you even offer 28-day dry-aged steak?
Nope.
-So you just start right off at 45. -We try to. -And then you're dry aging...
everything in house?
it's all natural mold. We didn't bring anything from outside. it's also cultured.
What do we have planned? -We're going to break down on all five of them and we're going to
lay them out let you see the mold progression and the age throughout.
-Tell me about cooking them. Do they cook differently? - the older they get the
longer they taking the more you have to baby them because they will flame up and
char really quickly. -and you cook them.... boilers?
yes we took all of our dry aged steak on a broiler.
so pretty classic Steakhouse vernacular cooking but pushed to an extreme that
nobody is really done before. -push the boundaries a little bit -- then go back to
classic cooking
excellent all right look forward to it! - all right let's do it
and here is the moment of truth look before me this is as many steaks that
you need in a week
and here they are all at once so let's go into the 45-day which already is
substantially more than standard 28-day that most steaks have traditionally been
dry aged for. So I'm getting--- you know it's it's dry aged you can tell immediately there
is those those notes and apparent right off the bat. overly funky it's
definitely a little more flavorful than the twenty eighth dry age but not
substantially. so let's move on
ok so the 90 day. I have a feeling this may be my favorite one.
And you already feel that it's really it's much different and dryer.
mmm
but this is substantially more flavorful
this one is somehow unlocks a different level of beef flavor it's just more
concentrated. Really spectacular
this is the hundred eighty day and texturally you can feel an immediate
difference from the prior two states. That takes like Stilton cheese. I mean it's
that sharp
well there's a certain sweetness to these other two there's nothing here
thats sweet. so let's move on
we are going to go to the 240 day dry aged steak. this one is actually on the menu at
knife
I suppose it's really one of their special items. I mean look at this it
just has no movement of all that if you look at a 45 day which is cooked rare also
it's really you can see there's a lot of give and jiggle there
the inside is supremely funky. really very the really deep flavors of dry aged
the outside less so i don't know if that's to do with water extraction of
what happened we pushed all of the flavor out
the flavors of the fennel injectable in the 180-day state and mellowed
so it reaches crescendo of sourness and then that levelled off and it's
leaving this very dry, a very cured sort of salty briny flavor
definitely like this more than 180 day but it doesn't really taste like beef oh it's
much more like charcuterie although i think i could probably eat the whole
thing
i am now going to go 20 days beyond where I've gone before
this looks like a fossil it is so.... it's just gnarled and desiccated.
it's not a pleasant experience. it's too salty
it would be excellent as flavoring for a component of the dish but yeah it's a
step too far maybe several hundred days too far as the case may be
well that was illuminating and most delicious the children. The 240 day was my
personal favorite
you know for a once in a lifetime or once the once-a-year thing I think
that's actually the way to go to the 240 day
steak at Knife is simply sensational. but i also made a 400 day dry aged wagyu steak
from Japan. to find out about that click here now!
I'm here to eat the most extraordinary steak on
I'm your mu ramen in long island city the chef is Joshua Smookler. He is a fine-dining chef who
has worked at per se and truly and some of the most amazing kitchens