Dry - Aging of Beef executive SummAry

D ry aging beef to enhance its flavor and tenderness is used by a very small number of meat purveyors for upscale hotels and restaurants and by an even smaller number of retailers for the gourmet market. Dry aging is a process whereby beef carcasses, primals, and/or subprimals are stored – without protective packaging – at refrigeration temperatures for one to five weeks to allow the natural enzymatic and biochemical processes that result in improved tenderness and the development of the unique flavor that can only be described as " dry-aged beef. " Dry aging beef may be more art than science. Popular articles, sales brochures, and Web sites devoted to promoting or merchandising dry-aged beef use terms such as " buttery and rich, " " superb in taste and texture, " " superior in taste and tenderness, " " mellow and intense, " and " earthy and nutty " to describe the advantages for dry-aged compared to wet-aged beef. In fact, differentiating between dry-aged and wet-aged beef has been a relatively recent event. Up until the development of vacuum packaging and boxed beef in the 1960s, if beef were to be aged, the only option would have been to dry age it. As vacuum packaging became an alternate way to ship beef, first in the U.S. and then internationally, its dominance as the primary way beef was transported, stored, and aged took off in the 1970s. By the 1980s, well over 90% of beef marketed was in this form. Compared to the historic way beef was handled, the advantages of vacuum packaging were such that avoiding shrinkage and trim loss made economic sense to both the packer/processor and retail/foodservice sectors. Two very important scientific articles published in the 1970s – Minks and Stringer (1972) and Hodges et al. (1974) – demonstrated the advantages of vacuum packaging from a shrinkage and shelf-life standpoint without sacrificing palatability traits found in unpackaged beef. The growth of boxed beef, for the most part, transformed how steaks and roasts were prepared for the foodservice and retail channels, making the dry aging process a minor contributor to the processes used in purveying and retailing beef. Compared to the volume of research studies on a wide variety of topics related to beef, dry aging has not been the subject for much scientific literature. Studies devoted to the direct comparison of dry aging to wet aging may …