factor as you’d think, and we’ll find out why soon.
Selecting Meat to Age
Q: What cut of meat should I buy for aging?
To age meat properly, you need a large cut that is best
cooked with quick-cooking methods. This makes the
standard steak house cuts—New York strip, rib, and
porterhouse—the ideal cuts for aging. (see here for more on
the four high-end steaks you should know.) The easiest to
find whole (and my personal favorite) is the rib.
Q: What’s the minimum size I’ll need for proper aging?
Can I age a single steak?
Nope, unfortunately you can’t age individual steaks. You
could wrap the steaks in cheesecloth or paper towels, set
them on a rack, and leave them in the fridge for about a
week, but during that time, no detectable texture or flavor
changes will occur. Try to age them even longer, and
(assuming they don’t start rotting) the meat gets so dried out
as to be completely inedible. After trimming away the
desiccated and slightly moldy bits (perfectly normal for dry-
aged meat), you are left with a sliver of meat about a half-
centimeter thick, impossible to cook to anything lower than
well-done, making your effective yield a big fat zero.
The simple truth is that in order to dry-age, you need
large cuts of meat, and you need to age them in open air.
Q: So, of these larger cuts of meat, what should I look
for?
Rib sections come in several different forms, each with its