Does Steak Get Better With Age? (2 Weeks to 160 Days)

I'm Butcher Brent Young,

and today we will be looking at four different

sirloin steaks dry aged at 14 50, 80,

and a whopping 160 days,

to answer the question, is steak really better with age?

[hip hop drum music]

So this is a 14-day aged sirloin,

what we consider fresh meat.

To first talk about its appearance,

at 14 days you see, doesn't have any crust on it,

nice dark red color to the meat, and it is still pliable.

It just looks like really nice healthy beef.

Here we have a 50-day dry aged sirloin.

There's a hard exterior because a pellicle has formed,

that hard exterior from rotating air

around the piece of meat in the refrigerator.

It's just drying out the outside,

really dark, almost leathery in actual appearance.

It has really hardened

to a point where you can actually knock on it.

The fat still looks really clean,

we don't see any black, red or green molds.

That's a good thing.

You wanna be super careful that you're

actually not eating any bad molds.

80-day dry aged steak.

We see on the outside that there is some mold

that's developed, which is called thamnidium.

Thamnidium growth is cool in that we know

that it's imparting more flavor.

It's even harder than it was before.

The main difference between the 80 and the 50

is really the water loss.

You can just feel that this is a lot harder.

Here we got 160 days.

[knife handle tapping]

It sounds hollow.

[skin fat crinkling]

[giggles] This is just the little bit

of kidney fat that's left over.

We have even further the medium growth.

We can see that it's even a little whiskery.

We still don't see any like blue, black, green molds,

anything that looks dangerous.

Compared to the 80-day,

we can see that there is a drastic difference.

There's more mold formation, there's even more water loss,

this is about as far as we can take a steak

to see, is it better with dry age.

I'm super excited to cut into this

because ultimately we really don't know what

it's gonna look like on the inside.

[mellow hip hop music]

First of all, it smells very clean.

Smells minerally, smells irony, nice, clean, fresh.

This is freaking exciting.

It smells way more of a cheese shop

than it does of a butcher shop.

Still super clean, really minerally, [sniffs]

but we're definitely picking up some like blue cheese mold.

So this doesn't have the same barnyardy

grass quality that the 14-day had,

but it already has way more of a aged leather smell to it.

The exterior definitely has real cheesy qualities.

The interior of it is still super beefy.

It's got a sweetness to it.

The nuttiness is definitely more like

subtle almond nuttiness.

There's almost a tart smell to it, almost similar to Sherry.

At this age the smells are going to translate to the flavor.

This is why you would dry age something

like to this many days.

It's going to impart another flavor onto it.

It's going to be radically different than 20, 30 or 40 days.

Way more complex smell, therefore a more complex taste.

If you don't like the smell, you're probably not gonna

like the way that it actually tastes. [sniffs]

It's [bleep] crazy.

It's funny cuz there's like there's no nice words

to actually describe this

because it smells like perspiration.

It smells like sex, like it smells like sex.

It smells so meaty, so beefy,

yet with all of the like super

umami driven flavors of blue cheese, of aged ham,

of leather, like I am definitely

the most excited about this 160-day.

I was a little skeptical at first, I will admit it,

but I think this is gonna be an amazing stake

that I am super excited to cook.

I'm just gonna take a moment with this beauty. [sniffs]

[mellow funk music]

We just have our 14-day sirloin

that we cooked about five minutes a side.

Not dry aged, this is just our

control measure for our experiment.

Nice texture to, it doesn't really

have any water loss to it yet,

so it should just be a nice clean steak.

That was very easy to slice.

The muscle fiber itself looks really nice.

The texture of our 50-day steak feels really nice.

You can tell that it's radically different than our 14-day.

You can tell that it's just not holding the same amount

of moisture that a younger steak is.

It has more structure, it's been lifting some weights.

Muscle fibers in and of themselves are also a little tighter

than a younger stake.

So as our first jump from 14 to 50 days

we've greatly surpassed the 21 day mark

of the enzymatic breakdown to actually tenderize the stake.

I think it's really cool to notice that

the dry aging process has already

drastically changed this steak.

It already looks and feels

better than the 14 day.

80-day from dry aging, we have two things going on.

We have the water loss

and then we have the enzymatic reaction.

These proteins actually breaking down,

boosting flavor-enhancing amino acids.

It's gonna make it really nice brown

and crusty on the outside, which is upping umami,

which is making it even more desirable

for us to actually want to eat it.

And also, noticeably, there's a thicker more defined crust

on the outside from cooking from Maillard reaction.

Looks fantastic, the fat looks perfectly rendered.

It just looks like a really, really nice steak.

So even with the water loss

we still have a super juicy steak.

In the process of dry aging, the enzymatic reaction

that you're going to have really caps out

at about 21 days of actually affecting the tenderness.

The moment we've been waiting 160 days for!

This freaking stake.

There are parts of it that I know it was a stake,

but honestly feel like cured salami.

The way that it feels, all of it very similar

to the 50 and the 80 day,

I do think that the rule is true that

like you're not going to necessarily gain

more tenderness after 21 days.

There's a really nice hard crust to this

which is just a nice example of the Maillard reaction.

I can eat it? Mmhm.

All right.

Super straightforward.

Does taste really clean.

Little sweet, it's grassy, has nice minerality to it,

little barnyardy, little oyster salinity to it,

but just a really, really nice clean, fresh steak here.

Here we got 50-day dry aged sirloin.

You know, this is a pretty lean steak,

but even having to bite with a little bit more of the fat

you always pick up more of the age with the fat.

That's where you're gonna get a lot

of those flavor compounds, and even that was super clean.

Remarkably better texture,

shocking that I'm not even thinking necessarily

about the taste because the texture

itself is so much better.

Really interesting and worthwhile to note that

while we did pick up some of the molds

and some of the further development in smell,

really not picking up on that through the taste.

The taste is very, very clean.

So I think if you're looking for like the best version

of a steak from a farm, you know where it came from,

you really can't beat 50 days.

It just seems like the best option.

That's a fantastic steak.

Texture of this 80-day steak is really tender,

very nice, great mouth feel, great chew.

A little surprised, honestly, that we were picking up

a lot of different molds and leather smells

when I first cut into it,

and I'm not really picking that up on the flavor.

It still eats really clean.

Actually, now that I continue to talk,

what I am noticing that in my mouth

I'm getting like a little bit of that Parmesan feeling.

The more I kinda sit with it,

it's like kinda mellowing out.

All right, I take all of it back.

I'm totally lying.

This is phenomenal. [laughs]

It just took a minute.

Holy [bleep], that's cool.

You get a lot of the mold that actually just like

comes through but in a very subtle way,

not in like a Roquefort blue cheese sort of way.

It just kind of, again, lingers in the back

in a really nice like foresty mushroomy way.

The difference between the 50-day and the 80-day

is definitely just the nuance.

All of the other nuance from the smell

really come out and they come out in a nice,

slow, easy subdued way that just kind of like sits with you

and you're ready for your next bite.

This is a very specific steak experience.

When you have some super nice ingredients

and really wanna like celebrate them,

80 days is exactly what I would recommend.

[mellow R&B music]

That is truly a dramatic transformation.

This more resembles a washed rind cheese

than it does any of the blue notes that we picked up before,

any of the molds that we picked up before.

This is actually really subtle.

The beefiness in and of itself actually feels

like it's dialed down a little bit,

and everything else is actually

like melded together in a really subtle way.

I thought it was gonna be way more punchy,

way more in your face.

Quite frankly, it's not.

All of the nuance is just in all

of these little undertones that are

just lingering in your mouth.

It's a subtle Sunday afternoon sort of experience

that you really want to take your time with.

You can tell that's still rare.

It tastes super juicy.

It doesn't have a lot of juice coming out of it,

but the texture itself slices and eats more similar

to an aged ham than it does to an actual steak.

[mellow funk music]

The 50, the 80, the 160, the texture was actually

very, very similar, but the flavors were wildly different.

At 50, we had very straightforward

really nice, beefy, grassy, fantastic steak,

80 got even more complex,

and 160 was almost otherworldly

in all of the different nuances that the whole thing held.

Final verdict, gotta say it's better with age.

If you're looking for dry age

either in the butcher shop or at a steakhouse,

ask yourself what kind of experience

do you really want out of this steak?

Talk to your butcher,

make some decisions about the experience

that you wanna have,

we'll guide you in the right direction.