Dry Aging Steak

During Thanksgiving break, I had gone back to Korea to stay with my family. The day after my arrival, my sister and I visited a famous steakhouse in Seoul named Twin Creeks for dinner. The restaurant had a magnificent view of the public park beside it. After eating some bread and a Caesar salad, a delicious and juicy medium-rare steak was served with horseradish sauce and whole grain mustard. Unlike the crispy surface, the inside of the steak was very tender. This steak was cooked by using a technique called dry aging. Dry aging beef is a method used to make steaks more flavorful and soft. In order to dry age beef, you must put the steak in a temperature of 34F to 38F and humidity of 50%-75% for10 to 28 days. This causes moisture to evaporate from the meat and eventually becomes softer due to the meat’s natural enzymes that break down the tissues of the muscles. Dry aging also decreases the amount of fat in the meat and makes the remaining protein compounds more concentrated. It is also helpful to use a fan or cooler to circulate the air around the meat, which would assist the process of dry aging. Dry aging will cause the steak to shrink because of the loss of moisture but also causes the meat to become tender. You can also use the growth of certain fungi, such as Thamnidia, on the meat to enhance dry aging. These fungi help increase the flavor of the meat; they make the meat more “juicier.” The fungi are cut off from the steak before it is cooked and are harmless to the human body. Although many steakhouses are beginning to use this method to improve the quality of their steaks, dry aging was rare in the past because it required much time and effort. There was also a possibility that the steak would be spoiled due to the fungi. Though people today use ultra-violet rays to prevent the meat from being spoiled by such fungi.