I want to share an unpopular opinion from Reddit. It didn’t get much attention, but you may be surprised to hear that I share in this opinion. It involves dry-aged beef. There are chefs and restaurants that, in my opinion, owe their entire reputation, and perhaps careers, to a time-consuming and wasteful process that renders an already luxury ingredient, fine cuts of beef, more luxurious, at least according to the taste of a relative few diners.
Here is what the Redditor wrote:
People and restaurants swear by dry aged. YouTubers like guga has made his career out of dry aging meat. It is overrated and a waste of meat. Have you seen how much of the meat has to be trimmed and discarded once you make a steak out of the dry aged cut? Restaurants sell it for ridiculous money and all this just so your steak can taste a bit more like cheese. — lalabadmans
Note that while dry-aged beef is served as steak, individual steaks are not dry-aged as this would be even more wasteful. Instead full cuts are aged and then trimmed and sliced. I’m not going to discuss whether dry-aged meat is overrated, but I will discuss the most frequent defense of dry-aging, that the people’s enjoyment of it justifies the waste. I will also debunk another defense that serves as a smoke-screen.
Dry-Aged Defense One: The Moisture Loss Smoke Screen
When beef is dry-aged, a lot of the weight of the original cut is lost in the form of moisture, otherwise known as water, or H2O. From 10 to 30% of the weight is lost this way. This is not a loss of muscle tissue. The loss of moisture results in a more concentrated flavor.
Moisture loss is not the part of dry-aging that is wasteful. However, a frequent defense of the dry-aging process is when a dry-ager claims that they control the moisture loss process to reduce waste. This is a red-herring, or an attempt to side-step the real problem by introducing a false one, moisture loss. Nobody thinks that the evaporation of water from the meat during dry aging is wasteful. That would be like saying reducing a sauce is wasting sauce. Instead, it is making the sauce.
Dry-Aged Defense Two: People Enjoy It, So…
A second popular defense is an appeal to Hedonism. Hey, it’s OK to waste food if people enjoy the results! When restaurants defend wasting beef by saying “it’s all about the customer,” they neatly ignore the corresponding value, “it’s all about the money.” Dry-aging beef results in wasted beef and the remaining beef is sold at a premium to hungry and “discerning” customers so the restaurant can make a profit. Nobody is running a dry-aged charity. This is capitalism, not altruism.
The Real Problem: Trimming Away the Bad Stuff
This is connected to moisture loss but is not the whole story. After a cut of beef is finished dry-aging, the outside becomes desiccated and gross. It develops a hard crust or “pellicle.” This is a dark red or almost black layer that forms during the dry-aging process. The pellicle needs to be trimmed away. Depending on how long the steak is aged, more or less will need to be trimmed off. This could be waste. Claims of controlling waste by the careful control of moisture loss is a load of woo. If a steak is properly dry-aged, a large amount of trimming will be required.
The pellicle is actually safe to eat and has several uses. It can be used to make dry-aged burgers when mixed with other fresh meat, like ground chuck. It can also be used in sauces. Or, it can be added to other dishes as a flavor enhancer.
If a restaurant uses most or all of the pellicle trimmings, then there would be no waste. But, while some restaurants do use some of the pellicle trimmings, others do not. It is unlikely that a successful steak restaurant would be able to use most of the trimmings. So, in this way, dry-aging is a wasteful process. Premium beef is being thrown away.
The Energy Required to Refrigerate Large Amounts of Beef for Prolonged Periods
In a successful dry-aging operation, large refrigerated rooms are constantly filled with beef that is being rotated to other large refrigerated rooms. The rooms also have to be humidity-controlled. This results in a huge use of electricity, especially since the restaurant will also have other walk-ins for food ingredients that require refrigeration or freezing. If a typical restaurant is wasteful, a dry-aged steak restaurant is much more so.
No matter how you slice it, dry-aged beef is a wasteful luxury that is only undertaken to improve (depending on tastes) the flavor and texture of beef. While the process can be made less wasteful, waste is built in, no matter what. There is no real justification for this waste. It is a purely Hedonistic, for-profit-driven process.
Am I condemning dry-aged beef? No. It is possible to come to the conclusion that something is wasteful without becoming “up in arms” and starting an anti-dry-aging crusade. As food waste goes, this is a drop in the bucket. The unpopular opinion I started with, as exemplified by the Reddit quote was, “Dry-aging beef is wasteful.” Objectively, it is.
Do take note that there is a reason only large cuts of beef are dry-aged. If individual steaks are dry-aged, the resultant loss due to the trimming of the pellicle will result in a loss of profit. This is why you should not dry-aged individual steaks at home if you don’t want to waste a whole lot of steak.
