I just built a soup because Im pretty sure my cholestorol is through the roof.

I'll post it tomorrow, after I have had a chance to see it being prepared tonight.

I picked up the last of the 82 day dry-aged ribeyes this afternoon. Walked out of the place with 3 of the usual size beasts as well as a mini-beast of mishapen proportion that probably weighs 8 oz. or so — it would make a nice breakfast steak.

Here is the meat packaged up — Kyle, the butcher, has a sense of humour when it comes to labelling:



Kyle also reported that 82 days is the longest they've ever aged beef at their shop. I've been sending him pics of my previous beast exploits and assured him that he will be receiving more for the last three ribs.

I'm taking 'Big & Little' over to my buddy's place tonight. We'll be preparing 'Big' and 'Little' will serve as a back up, in case his teenage son is around. But given that it is Saturday night, he kinda expects him to be out. If so, I'll just be leaving 'Little' so he can cook it for his son tomorrow — or he could always scam out his son and cook it for himself. It may turn out to be a bit of a test as to what kind of father he is...

I'm really looking forward to tasting this 82 day old beef!

Can someone explain the concept of aged beef lol? Forgive me but I thought if beef gets old its not good anymore, know what I mean?

Clearly theres some kind of aging and preservation going on at the same time or something.

My doctor reports that my cholesterol is normal. Gotta love that!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_aging

Moisture evaporation being important in beef aging has been debunked IIRC

Not really. This only applied to aging your steaks at home, dry aging in a specialty store is a different story.

When Kyle was prepping the beasts they were a deep purple in colour. Looked pretty damn intense. I'll be interested to see if they are red from oxidation when I unwrap them later or whether the deep purple colour has been imbued from the aging process.

For the previous beasts, they were all a nice looking red when I unwrapped them.

Meh. I'm not convinced that any 'concentration of flavor' would be noticeable independent of the work the enzymes put in—even in the case of professional aged steaks. In other words, I'm not sure moisture loss would be noticeable in and of itself (taste wise). Not really sure how I would go about demonstrating this or the converse empirically though.

Choice ribeye, not a fancy lad.


Pre-oven


Post-oven, pre-sear


Post-seared steak, bleu cheese foam I made with my isi-whipper


Okay result

Bleu cheese foam has me intrigued. How does it hold up?

It seemed to stiffen a little rather than break down over time. Not that you can tell from pictures, but I should've reduced the mixture a bit more before I cooled it* to make it more intense tasting.

*basically I melted bleu cheese (~4oz) into heavy cream (~1 pint), cooled it, and dissolved the nitrogen gas in it (2 charges) with a cream whipper. It was the first time I tried it, I probably could've shaken the canister a bit more to thicken it a little as well.

Thats funny

Speaking of dry-aged beef *cough* last night's 82 day dry-age turned out great — the crust was pretty damn elite iidssm.

My buddy took the pics tho on his phone and he still hasn't sent them to me — but he says he will ship them over early this evening after he gets some stuff done, so hopefully I'll be posting the results later tonight.

The bad news is my dry-aged was an abject failure.
The good news is I took a 50 man down later that night. There will be pics.

Who wants to see pics of you going down on 50 men?

Okay, time for the first 82 day dry-age ribeye TR.

No brag, just fact, that I have three 82-day beasts that I'm going to be plowing through over the next few days.

In fact, I cooked no. 2 of the 82 day-ers this evening and I might post it later tonight, but probably more likely to go up tomorrow itt.

Anyway, as mentioned yesterday, I took a beast over to my buddy's place to cook yesterday evening and this is what he looked like nude — the steak, not my buddy:



I dressed him up a bit with some smoked Maldon salt and black pepper, after which he went into a 250°F oven with the timer set for 50 minutes — after which time an internal temp check would take place:



Unfortunately, DISASTER struck when the beast was pulled from the oven — I almost wept as I saw the reading skyrocket up to one-hundred-and-mother-****ing-thirty-degrees.



Gah… nothing to do but carry on, knowing that I had a medium on my hands.

Let the poor guy rest for 10 minutes and then gave the edges a sear in grape seed oil:



It was about this time that I figured that since I knew I had a medium on my hands that I might as well go for it and punish the beast with a sear that he wouldn't soon forget. Stage one of the sear:



The oil sear was then followed up with a punishing stage two butter sear infused with garlic and rosemary. DAT CRUST!:



I gave that bad boy a ten minute rest while the side dishes were brought up to speed — fry pan roasted potatoes, which I've posted before — along with this incredible roasted cauliflower with brown-butter sage, proscuitto and grated parmesan:



The moment of truth had arrived, so I sliced open that beast — only to be confronted with pretty much exactly what I had expected: MEDIUM.



Ah well, them's the breaks. Just goes to show that I should have monitored the oven more frequently. It obviously runs a bit hotter than mine.

Disappoint, I know — except for dat sear .

However, I will say that as far as medium's go, it was a pretty damn solid medium.

As a thread saver, here's the cauliflower recipe:



Enjoy.

I'm going to say this right now, that's the best crust of 2014!

I'd still lay the wood to that steak.

That looks like my steak, so you got that going for you.

I tried a couple of strips last night and just could not product a good sear... each side would have specks of good sear surrounded by grey areas that just would not crisp up I had plenty of heat and plenty of oil & butter... but results were meh. Help? (am I not drying the steaks enough before searing?)

Try a weighted sear. I have a small cast iron omellete skillet that I use, but some in this thread have purchased bacon presses.

Best steak press in the thread was by Spaceman Bryce.

27: You are the Tens of the steak thread.

bip: I've had that exact same problem with strips in the past, using the same techniques that provide a great uniform sear on a ribeye.

Thanks - but I actually did weight it too (sry - should have mention that in the post)

El D - yeah, I did the same process I used for ribeye... what would be so different about a strip