I seriously cannot grill a steak without destroying it!

[Rob Babcock]

Proper aging isn't just buy meat, tossing it in the fridge, marking your calendar & pulling it out in 4 weeks! Meat must be dry aged, at the appropriate temp & humitidy. Modern dry aged beef is aged while subjected to UV light to kill bacteria on the surface of the meat. Yeah, you can get some of this at home (water evaporating from dry aged beef intensifies the flavor- the UV is a safety issue that has nothing to do with flavor, but safety is no joke...) it's not easy to get the kind of air circulation in your 'fridge as a locker gets.

As for cooking method, it's obviously subjective. That said, culinary legend James Beard conducted a series of experiments that showed the sauteed steak was preferred by the majority of people vs other methods. Appropos of nothing, I suppose, since opinions are like...belly buttons!

[GB]

Thanks for posting that Rob. I came in here to post much of the same although I did not know about the UV light. I am glad to have learned that now.

Proper aging can not easily be done at home. Your home fridge is just not equipped to do it right.

[Wart]

Originally Posted by Rob Babcock

Proper aging isn't just buy meat, tossing it in the fridge, marking your calendar & pulling it out in 4 weeks!

I know.

If it were that simple I would have already done it.

[AllenOK]

I bet, if I were to mount a UV light in the meat box at work, we could try to dry-age some beef.

But, our menu states that we buy Creekstone aged beef, so we probably couldn't deviate from that.

Maybe I should just break down and buy a couple tenders from the club (at cost), take them home, peel and cut them myself.

[Wart]

A while back a piece of steak got stored 'improperly' in the fridge for a couple of days. It looked a little dried out. I thought, Suppose to be good for up to a week at these temperatures, hasn't been near that long (about three days), doesn't smell bad, Darn I'm hungry ....

It was the best piece of box store steak I ever had.

Mayhaps I'm lucky to not have gotten the runs, or whatever, and have been tempted to try it again.

But I know enough to know I need to know more before I exceed time and temp storage guidelines.

If I didn't know I needed to know more I could probably get away with it. LOL!

[RPCookin]

I grilled a pair of nice 1-1/4" thick ribeyes tonight, and they were NOT bloody. They were juicy and tender and cooked to a perfect medium rare. On my Weber Genesis gas grill, that means 4 minutes on each side at high direct, then 2-3 more minutes on high indirect (I turn off the middle burner). Rest for 5 minutes, and enjoy. Before grilling, I lightly brush them with EV olive oil, then dust with freshly ground black pepper.

They were excellent steaks, yet they were relatively (for today's beef prices) inexpensive at $6.49 per pound, bought at Sam's club, and frozen for about a month (tightly wrapped in plastic wrap and then sealed individually in 1 quart Ziplock freezer bags)

There is a difference between bloody and juicy. My steaks do not have any raw left in the center, thus no blood. It took a few years, but I trained my stepfather out of well done steaks, and now he wouldn't consider anything but medium rare.

[Rob Babcock]

Originally Posted by Wart

A while back a piece of steak got stored 'improperly' in the fridge for a couple of days. It looked a little dried out. I thought, Suppose to be good for up to a week at these temperatures, hasn't been near that long (about three days), doesn't smell bad, Darn I'm hungry ....

It was the best piece of box store steak I ever had.

Mayhaps I'm lucky to not have gotten the runs, or whatever, and have been tempted to try it again.

But I know enough to know I need to know more before I exceed time and temp storage guidelines.

If I didn't know I needed to know more I could probably get away with it. LOL!

One of the best steak I've ever had was a T-bone that was completey green! Yeah, any sane person would have thrown it away, but I used a sharp knive to cut away all the moldy looking gunk. There's absolutely no way I've have ever served that peice of meat to anyone else but I was willing to risk it for myself (as I think I'm nearly immune to all common forms of food poisoning*).


* Yeah, I realize no one is "immune"- but I haven't had a stomach flu nor anything remotely resembling food poisoning since 1984, and not for lack of exposure. I've eat hundreds of pounds of medium rare pork, thousands of over-easy eggs and untold pounds of MR-Med burgers. Maybe someday it'll catch up with me but it hasn't for decades!

[Jeekinz]

Sounds appetizing.......

[Rob Babcock]

It might sound gross but it was a wickedly tasty steak!

[AllenOK]

Escoffier mentioned in his cookbook that meat was to be hanged and seasoned until it was "high" or "seasoned". Usually, this meant that it was starting to become somewhat spoiled.

Did you ever watch Shogun? Richard Chamberlin killed a partridge in one eppy, and hung it up to "season". He said you were supposed to "hang it by the neck until the head fell off." Sounds to me like they were letting the meat spoil slightly. LOL, in that eppy, the shamuri in charge of that village ended up cutting down the bird after a couple of days, as the smell offended him.