ageing/hanging of meat

No, as a rancher, I can say ageing only improves the quality of meat!

I dont know I work for a large ranch and get all the
aged beef I need and it isnt anything compared to this lamb.

maybee it is tenderer but the flavor is lacking and in my opinion the drippings are almost rancid.

Had a couple of different butchers recently one the meat
was almost green the other was not bad one of our cowboys
commented like you that he prefered it well aged.

Grass fed is the key. Grain fed tastes like shite.

yeah i tend to agree.

I am eating beef from 4 year old grass fed steers this year, and it is the best beef I have eaten! Nicely marbled, tender, and the flavor is great!

Cheers

Its probably just my personal taste

Could also be the cut, and/or how it was prepared too

we started grinding our own meat, at least we know our hamburger comes from 1 cow

Dry aging improves tenderness & concentrates flavour, there is a loss to mass from dehydration & discarded cuts & must be done in a controlled environment.

I don't like the idea of meat hanging around for days, like a decaying corpse.

I have always hung our lamb for up to a week before butchering(20 years). The concentration of flavour and tenderness the main reason.
Grain fed beef tastes wrong IMHO and since cattle are grass eaters, they probably don't like it either..

The hard outer layer and gets discarded where the bad microbes are.
Inside the meat is amazing)

Last Edited by M1.618 on 09/27/2013 06:38 PM

they don't like it.. but they are addicted to it.

I agree, when I was in Montana last year I had a 28 day aged steak...fucking awesome!

I think what the rancher thinks...we always hang our deer for a few days or longer...natures tenderizer.

Last Edited by CMcC on 09/27/2013 06:49 PM

I buy grass fed and its aged for 28 days.

It's truly awesome. Especially the steaks. And the burgers. I
Ike the hearts too. Lots of natural CQ-10.

I agree under good refrigeration that aging beef makes it taste better. It is a dangerous practice under collapse or primitive conditions.



Under collapse conditions, in the absence of a good supply of salt and refrigeration, then the old practice of hanging meat could result in terrible food poisoning.

The reason that this is so is meat that's been around too long at the butcher shop has been exposed to the bacteria that has been transferred from the butchering process and contamination from gut anerobic bacteria.

That kind of meat is not salted and the longer it sits, the higher and higher the bacteria gets through colonization. That means that meat needs to be cooked longer or else if not, then the rarer portions have very high bacteria counts.

Shigella in tiny amounts can seriously make someone ill. Salmonella in vastly higher amounts is needed to make someone ill, but it propagates easier.

Under no refrigeration, aging meat by hanging could kill you.

Under today's conditions, it's very tasty and pretty safe.

yeah, well under primitive conditions, one would not butcher when it is 90 degrees outside! You wait until it is cold, then do it. Hunters do this with deer and elk all the time. It is fine.

Yes. If you watched the 2nd season of The Alaska Experiment, it was cold enough that they could harvest some of their game animals like the heart and grill that, then butcher the meat into sections, then continue to eat that for some time.

One would more likely smoke meats to preserve it though. There are nitrates to use to do that. I discussed making bacon once before. One can salt meat and preserve it some with less refrigeration. Ultimately you're going to dehydrate it like jerking it, but that has the fat trimmed off and so a lot less calories, which is unfortunate in a survival situation.

The window of aging meat under primitive conditions is narrow and entirely dependent upon refrigeration.

Folks a long time ago used to die from food poisoning all the time. It is not safe to merely hang meat. The title is confusing because aging beef and hanging a game animal are two entirely different things.

Today people confuse the term hanging with curing. Those are also two separate things in history. Curing is the process mostly of smoking which is not cooking but a very low heat operation like this for smoking carp:


Obviously one can smoke hams this way.

But hanging was often done with fowl like a pheasant. See:
[link to www.youtube.com]

That can be done at a much higher temp (50-55 deg F) than aging beef.

In the old days, they might hang a pheasant at higher temperatures still and people got very sick doing that. They might hang it in a shady spot for ten days and get blowflies. They might hang it until the neck literally rotted. Yuck.

Wrong link. Here's hanging pheasant:
[link to honest-food.net]

AC542 thanks for those vids and links

Sorry about the title if its misleaing ive never practiced
any form of ageing/hanging of meat with any game I have hunted or stock I have raised.

I did not grow up in the USA but have lived here for more than 10 years and the meat just has never tasted great untill my Peruvian friends gave me that fresh lamb.

I dont know how to describe it but it just tasted more wholesome.

Where I grew up meat was killed, butchered and either eaten or preserved ASAP.The only aging it got was the time it took to get it to the freezer or the fire.

I mean seriously I think all taste is aquired how did people begin to appreciate half rotted old meat?

I wish i could do a side by side taste test with some beef
that was fresh or had been aged.

Last Edited by chowan on 09/27/2013 10:15 PM

You're welcome.

The sea salt draws the moisture from the meat. Think about a watered down stew. It takes bland. Drawing away that excess moisture condenses the flavors.

Meat is muscle surrounded by connective tissue. If you study anatomy, which all preppers should, then a muscle is surrounded by connective tissue called fascia.

When you age beef, that salt accelerates the breakdown of that and some fat. For that process to happen, whether hanging a fowl like pheasant or aging beef, then you need some refrigeration.

In the old days, there were limits upon our ancestors in how much they could refrigerate. They made root cellars and spring houses and sometimes used evaporative coolers (sometimes called swamp coolers) and these were the main ways to control food preservation outside of direct ice usage.

Otherwise, meat was smoked or it was jerked.

A lot of men used to die from age 45-54 because of poor sanitation. The higher than normal bacteria counts in meat and water resulted in damage to the heart. That lead to early heart attacks and decline and premature death.

The number one preventative health measure was clean water. You can look that up. Likewise, probably in the number two spot was better food preparation and preservation to control bacteria.

Now the standard refriegerator isn't kept at 35-37 deg F, right? Your milk would freeze. You'd have issues with eggs. Everyting would need to be thawed. This means having another refrigerator at the proper temperature to age your beef.

I don't know about you, but a lot of guys have a beer fridge in the garage that could do that function instead.

You're right, aged beef tastes great. I encourage you to try it.

If you only knew (like I do) what is done to the meat at the finest restaurants in the country (think Ruth's Chris Steak House), you would have a vastly different opinion.

They hang their beef in humidity/climate controlled rooms and actually have people that scrape the mold off the meat on a regular basis. Yes, the FDA would have a fit if they knew - but the resulting taste is to die for!

fresh meat - I don't think so...

LOL thats kind of what im afraid of

Actually, I have heard of people hanging wild game and letting it get moldy. They simply cut the mold off, like you would a block of cheese. Seriously, it was fine.

yeah ive heard stuff like that

LOL

not 4 me

Mold is a common and expected part of curing country ham. I don't know that I'd let that happen to my beef though.

" Why does my uncooked country ham have mold on it?

Mold can often be found on country cured ham. DO NOT DISCARD the ham! Wash it under running hot water and scrub the mold off with a stiff vegetable brush. The mold on the outside does not affect the quality of the meat and indicates the ham has been slow aged properly."
[link to www.meachamhams.com]

It might only be an aesthetics issue though as some people report slight mold on the exterior. Since you cut that "rind" off anyway (see the sea salt aging beef video) then it doesn't matter.

Yes like allowing good microbes to add value with the bad ones then eliminating the bad ones... yes some of the mass is loss...
Yet the optimization benefits the remaining concentrated whole.

Why are you comparing lamb to beef?

I dont/didnt intend to

I remember beef being better and lamb for that matter
then it is now.

Ive eaten hung/aged lamb as well and it was good but not great.

There is lamb and mutton as well as cuts of the meat... The difference from mutton to lamb in meat is great...