The Original Dry Bag Steak | Make Artisan Dry Age Steak at Home › Forums › UMAi Dry® Forum Questions › General Questions › What went wrong?
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Jim.
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March 20, 2012 at 3:47 am #1384
Paul Cooper
MemberSecond time aging, (first time went great) and I decided to do two at once. $200 later and I have a 15lb NY slab and a 15lb Rib Eye slab from Costco. I got each one into a standard subprimal size bag, seemingly without problems except some of the juice got sucked up into the Sinbo because I didn’t pat the slabs dry, as people were suggesting this would be better. I guess I should have drained them better, at least.
Anyway the seals looked good, very little in the way of air pockets, and both bags’ seals held up just fine until today (4 days later) when I was alarmed by the color of the NY slab, which was brown, compared to the ribeye which has not yet chanted color at all. The juice in the NY bag had turned dark brown, compared to the red juice inside the ribeye bag. There was also a faint smell in the fridge like that of spoiled beef. So I cut open the NY bag, and yep, it had spoiled alright. I know that smell, so I had to throw it out. $100 of Choice beef wasted!
I am puzzled, as the seal was good and the spoilage happened to quickly despite the vacuum. Anybody have any ideas how this happened? I think for sure in future I am going to pat the slab mostly dry, and use the paperclip trick, to get the best seal possible. I want to get another NY slab going, but am worried I might waste another $100 if it goes wrong again!March 20, 2012 at 4:57 am #5870Jim
MemberHi Paul, welcome to the forum. Wish it were under happier circumstances.
There is no definite answer as to exactly what caused the meat to spoil. However given the fact that you have a normally aging ribeye laying right next to the spoiled NY leads one to believe that the NY may have “grown a beard” prior to it being sealed into DrybagSteak. Based on some folks info here on the forum Costco does not put pack dates on their subprimal cuts and it may be one of those rare instances that the product may have been around longer than intended.
Its regrettable that you ended up throwing that NY away. It would have been better to take it back to Costco, since meat should not spoil in your fridge in 4 days no matter what kind of bag its packed into.
Your comment about patting the meat down most likely will not resolve any spoilage issues and in fact may negatively affect the performance of the DrybagSteak, since the meat juices do contribute to a better bond with the bag.
The clean transfer video posted on youtube has a suggested mess free way to transfer the meat from Cryovac into DrybagSteak.
March 31, 2012 at 11:01 pm #5919Scott Mark
MemberPaul,
Today I lost a Top Sirloin from Sam’s Club. I had aged it for 45 days. When I cut into the meat, in some places it smelled fine, and in some places it smelled rotten.
The one thing I noticed was one small area on the exterior of the sirloin, where two muscles met and there was some fatty tissue. That area smelled worst of any, and it looked to be wet still – no crust had formed at that spot.
Luckily, it was only $32, but I was counting on that steak for a dinner party next week. So, this afternoon I put in a ribeye. It’ll only age a week, but better than nothing.
There was no visual indicator, although I thought maybe I had packaged it with too much blood- because the blood/crust seemed to be brownish…
Sigh. It’s a painful lesson if you don’t have an extra sub-primal in the pipeline as a fallback position.
April 1, 2012 at 2:13 am #5920MemberHi toasty,
It seems from the description that the top sirloin may have been processed in such a way that either Sams Club meat dept. or more likely the primary processor may have cut out a portion of the muscle containing fatty tissue or gristle and it was “folded”. Actually by definition processing a top sirloin food service cut 184E (which is what appears to be the cut in question) involves separating the cap muscle from the top sirloin trimming the fat and packaging the two pieces together.
Also commonly done at Costco is when they sell partial ribeye cuts they cut out the fat kernel on the inside of the ribeye which they believe enhances the ribeye.In such both of these cases dry aging may need to be done on two separate pieces so that any part of the meat that may have come into contact with a knife is in direct contact with DrybagSteak material (have air circulation around it) and is able to dry.
When two surfaces of meat lay on top of each other they exude moisture and proteins that are trapped in between those two surfaces and may spoil.
A good resource for meat cuts may be:
http://www.chefs-resources.com/Meat-Buyers-Guide-PDF -
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