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Said I would never wet age my steaks, then a guy in Fresno proved me wrong
Ran a small shop for 11 years and always dry aged everything. Two weeks ago a rep from a meat supplier stopped in and kept pushing wet aging. I brushed him off. Then he brought in two ribeyes, one wet aged 21 days, one dry aged 21 days, and we cut them side by side. The wet aged one held more weight, about 8 percent more after trim, and the taste was cleaner than I expected. I still like the dry aged funk for certain cuts, but I was wrong to write off wet aging completely. Anyone here running a mix of both depending on the cut?
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faitha4013h ago
That 8 percent weight gain you mentioned sounds good on paper but it comes at a cost you are not seeing yet. Wet aging in a vacuum bag traps all that moisture and myoglobin, so you get a cleaner taste, sure, but you also lose that concentrated beef flavor that dry aging develops through evaporation and enzyme work. I ran a shop in Amarillo for years and tried the wet bag thing back in 2015, and after about six months my regulars started asking why the ribeyes tasted flat. The clean flavor you liked is really just the absence of the funky notes, not the presence of anything better. And that yield number drops fast once you factor in the purge you lose when you open the bag and the shorter shelf life after cryovac comes off. If you go all in on wet aging because of one side by side test, you are chasing yield over flavor, and your repeat customers will notice before your books do.
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