smaller than the fresh rib-eyes on the display? Or that aged
bone-in steaks are not stretching and pulling away from
their bones? (I mean, surely the bones aren’t shrinking as
well, are they?)
The fact is, with the exception of the cut faces that will
need to be trimmed off, the edible portion of an aged prime
rib is pretty much identical to that of a fresh prime rib.
Q: OK, let’s say I’m now convinced about that. Does that
mean that the whole idea that “the meat flavor is
concentrated” in an aged steak because of dehydration is
also false?
I’m afraid so. It’s a great idea in theory, but the facts don’t
support it.
First, there’s simple visual inspection: a trimmed steak cut
from an aged piece of beef is pretty much the same size as a
trimmed steak cut from a fresh piece of beef.
Next, I measured the density of beef aged to various
degrees against completely fresh meat. To do this, I cut out
chunks of meat of identical weights from the centers of rib
eyes aged to various degrees, making sure to avoid any
large swaths of fat. I then submerged each chunk of meat in
water and measured its displacement. What I found was that
meat aged for 21 days displaced about 4 percent less liquid
than completely fresh meat—a slight increase, but not much.
Meat aged all the way up to 60 days displaced a total of 5
percent less—showing that the vast majority of moisture loss
occurs in the first three weeks.
What’s more, once the meat was cooked, these
differences in density completely disappeared. That is, the