hello this is chef john from food wishes calm with dry-aged prime rib that's
right I'd raged a prime rib for over 40 days and 40 nights and I could hardly
believe what happened or should I say what didn't happen okay the results were
surprising a little bit confusing but very interesting but anyway I don't want
to spoil the ending although I will say if you've ever thought about dry aging
your own prime rib you really should watch this video first so with that
let's go ahead and get started and the first thing you're gonna need of course
is a prime rib and this beautiful specimen weighed in at about 10 pounds
and not only do we want to make sure there's still a fair amount of fat on
top but we definitely also want to make sure we use a prime rib that has the
bones attached and speaking of attached I'm gonna go ahead and detach whatever
that is right there and then the only thing we're gonna do before we put this
on our drying rack let's go ahead and quickly clean the surface with a little
bit of salted water okay just dissolved like a spoon of salt
in a cup of water and we will use that to wipe down the surface okay some
people like to rinse this under running water and then Pat it dry and then
others will actually dip it in a brine but I think this quick wipe down with a
saline solution is more than adequate and that's it besides some clean beef
the only other thing we're gonna need here is some kind of tray and rack to
put it on which for me will just be a sheet pan with this roasting rack and
then before we rack our beef I'm gonna put some salt down on the tray first
okay some regular sea salt plus some pink Himalayan salts and people that
know things about this stuff say that that will help control the humidity and
purify the air whatever that means but you know what it looks cool it feels
right plus the best rice beef I've ever had was in Chicago and was actually aged
in a room that was lined with this pink salt but anyway you decide I mean you
are after all the Barry Gibb of your dry aged prime rib and I really don't think
there's gonna be that much of a fact on whether the bacteria in your
refrigerator is gonna be stayin alive stayin alive and that's it once we have
our beef Panda up we can head to our hopefully dedicated fridge okay I'm
doing this in my empty spare fridge in the garage which really will make this
whole operation a lot easier than trying to do it in your regular fridge that
you're going to be opening and closed a million times and what we'll do is
leave it in this fridge from anywhere between 30 and 45 days okay they say in
less than 30 days not much happens and after 45 days maybe too much happens and
by the way the temperature of your fridge is critical okay we really want
to maintain a temperature between 34 and 38 degrees and so then I wasn't guessing
I used this probe thermometer that I have dangling somewhere near the meat in
the middle of the fridge and this is actually what my prime rib looked like
after two weeks of Aging alright it was getting dark it was getting dry but
happily there was nothing dangerous looking growing on the outside oh and I
should mention a lot of people recommend you have a fan in your fridge but I
don't have a fridge fan or a fan to put in my fridge and that didn't seem to
cause any problems but anyway that's what it looked like after two weeks and
this is what it looked like after six weeks when I finally pulled it out okay
it was even darker and even drier and it had a very subtle pleasantly funky smell
so I was feeling pretty good except I did not want to do what is traditionally
the next step and that would be trimming all the hard dry surface off until we
get down to that nice soft fresh meat all right I was okay trimming off a
little bit of the fat since I'm not gonna eat all that anyway but I really
did not want to Tremayne the meat away I mean sure was super hard and almost
black but I thought that might be the best-tasting part although I was
thinking is that safe to eat so I decided to do an experiment okay I was
gonna slice a little piece off the side so that I could cook it and test it okay
sure I'm a chef but I'm also a horribly under educated scientist so I cut a
little piece off the end that was mostly fat and it was funny even though it was
dark the meat underneath really did feel like fresh meat whereas the other side
felt and looked like a cross between beef jerky and leather but anyway like I
said I went ahead and trimmed that up and then seasoned it with a little bit
of salt after which I quickly pan-fried it and what I was thinking was I would
eat this piece and if I didn't get horribly ill I would know it was okay
not to trim all that stuff off and yes I have to admit as I cut into
this I was a little bit scared because it's not every day you eat a piece of
medium-rare meat attached to Blackheart and if you're wondering what this tasted
like I'm not going to tell you okay we're gonna save the flavor review for
the end but texturally I determined it was very edible and I'm happy to report
I survived this experience with no adverse effects at all so I did go back
to trim off a little bit of the fat in any areas I thought were even remotely
suspicious looking but as you will see from my pile of scraps
I really didn't trim off any of the meat at all which is good because this thing
lost like two pounds of weight during the dry aging process which had $20 a
pound means I lost like $40 into the atmosphere but anyway like I said I went
ahead and did the minimal amount of trimming at which point we'll go ahead
and transfer that back onto our rack only this time it's in a roasting pan
and then once that set we're gonna have to generously season this with salt and
to help us do that we'll go ahead and spray the surface with water so that the
salt sticks okay otherwise that surface is so dry and slick the salt really is
not gonna hold down so I gave that a spray all over before very very
generously season in this with kosher salt okay this is a big hunk of meat so
you almost can't put too much salt on the surface and that's it once we have
that surface covered with salt finally after six weeks we can cook this in one
or two more days since we really do want to give this meat enough time to pull
some of that salt from the surface in so I went ahead and pop mine in the fridge
for 24 hours about 48 hours is probably even better at which point we can pull
it back out and yes finally we can cook it in a couple hours all right we don't
want to put a roast this big into the oven ice cold so we'll just leave that
on the countertop covered up in case there's any curious critters flying
around and we'll let it sit there warming up a little bit
at which point finally no more sykes we're gonna put this in the oven and
because I'm gonna use a traditional roasting method I'm going to use this
probe thermometer so we get it perfect and of course we want to place that
right in the center and then what we're gonna do here is use the old 500 300
method which means we sear this in a really hot 500 degree oven for 20
minutes and then reduce our heat down to 300 until it's cooked to our liking
which for me was supposed to be about 125 to 130 internal temp but
story the probe thermometer I used could not take the 500 degree temperature in
unbeknownst to me stop working but luckily I figured that out just in the
nick of time and even though this went up to more like 135 I still was okay so
you probably don't want to stick in your thermometer until your oven temperatures
come down to 300 but anyway all's well that ends well and I went ahead and let
that rest for about 30 minutes before slicing in which by the way is highly
recommended I do not pull these right out of the oven and cut straight in and
even though I accidentally cooked this closer to medium it was still absolutely
gorgeous and juicy and still beautifully pink and I could not wait to grab a fork
and knife and start eating and by eating I mean analyzing so I went ahead and
plated up a giant portion all right usually it's one bone for two portions
but not for me today and because I wanted to focus on the flavor I did not
serve this with any fancy sauces although I do have something of a
horseradish fetish so I did serve a little bit of horseradish cream on the
side for the later bites but anyway I went ahead and dug in and it really was
incredible just extremely juicy and tender and I absolutely loved everything
about it except it taste or lack thereof and what I mean by that is that this
tasted just like really good beef but I really didn't have any of that funkiness
that one would expect after dry aging beef for six weeks okay for me that
really is the single most important reason you would do this so while this
really was delicious I cannot honestly say it tasted that
much different than just a regular old prime rib we threw in the oven and
roasted and I even tried that outer crust by itself because that should have
a stronger flavor but it didn't now having said that I do think the aging
helped make this a little more tender and because we lost two pounds of weight
I do think the flavor concentrates a little more but it just concentrated
that regular beefy flavor and not that kind of extra flavorful cheesy funkiness
I really wanted and if I'm gonna wait for six weeks and basically lose $40
worth of product through evaporation is something that's a little more tender
and a little more beefy worth it and I even tried a little bit of extra salt to
see if that would bring it out but it didn't so to summarize I really don't
know I mean I guess if you have the budget
and the extra fridge give it a try maybe yours will be funkier okay maybe
we should have left it longer but I do have to say the results were
inconclusive so I can't officially say I really do hope you give this a try soon
but what I will still say is head over to food whooshes dot-com for all the
ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy
you