How would you like your steak?
How about aged for at least a month before it’s cooked? For when it comes to steak flavour, it’s age before beauty, and there are an increasing number of chefs in the UAE who are sharing the magic of dry aged steak with their discerning customers.
Anything around 35 days is normal for chefs who love the richer flavour and tender texture ageing imparts to beef.
Of course, it’s not a matter of simply leaving the meat in the fridge, as chef Lij Heron at the Waldorf Astoria Ras Al Khaimah’s Lexington Grill explains. The hotel’s steakhouse is one of the few restaurants in the UAE to dry-age meat on the premises, in a temperature-controlled locker; later this year, they’ll be getting a cabinet where customers can view the process. Dry ageing has two functions: Enzymes in the meat break down connective tissue, while removing water condenses the meaty taste.
“You get more of a robust meat flavour,” says Heron. “The tricky thing is it has to be done at a controlled temperature. If not, it’s out the window. The temperature cannot fall below 2 degrees; if it does, it gets too cold, the enzyme activity stops. It’s very tricky because if it gets too hot your steak will be spoiled. It has to be between 2.5-5 degrees and the humidity has to be specific.”
Heron dry-ages three cuts of US grain-fed beef — sirloin, sirloin rump and rib eye, which benefit from the tenderisation that comes from the enzyme-driven breakdown of tissues during ageing.
The whole cuts are hung from meat hooks in a room that not only is cool, but also airy; fans help move cold air around to dry things out evenly. At Lexington Grill, cuts will spend around three weeks drying. Meat is then tested by the municipality before it’s cut and cooked, to confirm no spoilage has taken place, said Jamaica-born Heron.
It’s also not a cheap prospect, with 20-30 per cent of the mass of the meat lost during ageing; once dry, the meat’s exterior becomes a hard crust, which must be trimmed off before cooking.
Dry-ageing (as opposed to modern wet-ageing, which is also popular among steakhouses but mainly delivers tenderness) isn’t new; in the past, most animals, especially game, were hung to tenderise them.
Fat is also a factor, says chef Kreaton from 55&5th, The Grill at the St Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi, who also ages meat in-house.
“We only age meat with a high fat content and only use three cuts of beef: prime rib, striploin and rib eye. The reason for this is that while the meat is ageing, enzymatic and bacterial action takes place, along with the oxidation of fat and other fat-like molecules, which is also a contributor to enhancing the flavour.” An Irish grass-fed rib-eye is Dh320.
So who’s it for? Certainly for anyone that would like a robust steak, but surprisingly, also for those who like their meat cooked closer to medium and medium-well: thanks to the tenderisation, even when cooked to a higher degree, the meat is juicier and softer than a non-aged counterpart. (Not that I am recommending anyone ask for an expensive dry-aged cut be cooked well done).
Also doing its own dry-aging are The Butcher Shop and Grill, a South African chain with outlets at Mall of the Emirates, JBR and Mirdif City Centre, and another South African chain, Meat Co, with two restaurants in Dubai and one in the capital. “Each particular cut of meat is aged in its sealed Cryovac-vacuum bag. This maximises the tenderness created by the enzymes in the meat. Each cut has it’s own “perfect” ageing period,” says Meat Co’s executive chef Roy Soundranayagam.
“From the moment the beef arrives at our restaurant it is entered into a spreadsheet known as the Meat Book. The butcher in the store uses this vital reference to determine which batch of beef to cut first, based on the number of days aged.”
Meanwhile, more and more steakhouses are importing aged beef.
Wolfgang Puck’s upcoming restaurant The Cut, due to open this month at The Address Downtown, boasts 35-day aged Nebraska corn fed New York strip, sirloin and rib eye.
In Abu Dhabi, the new US steakhouse Boa, at the Eastern Mangroves, serves 40-day dry-aged Black Angus New York Strip steaks (Dh275), while a bone-in rib eye gets 28 days.
