Re:Trimming Practices

[Anonymous]

Kime’s idea of using trimmings for stock is awesome!! I love it!

As for cleaning the knife, I don’t until I’m done. There isn’t anything in the bark that will hurt you if you’re using the drybag technique and keeping it under 40-50 days. Even past that, you’d only need to trim the very surface to get rid of any mold that had managed to start growing.

BTW, about heavy trimming…before we started the Wagyu experiment, we had to convince my friend’s wife that there were other edible parts of the cow than the tenderloin (filet). I took a couple of 36 day dry aged choice+ steaks and MEGA trimmed them. No bark, no exterior fat, no nothing. They looked like elongated filets. If I remember right they were around 15 oz to start with (untrimmed, full bark), and ended up at around 7 oz. Even with the extreemly heavy trimming, the flavor/tenderness was VERY good and very even throughout the meat. We lost some good meat there, but we made our point and got the green light on the Wagyu experiment 🙂

My point is that I don’t think heavy trimming causes you to lose out on anything, assuming you know that what your’e tossing is stuff you don’t want. So, try the bark. If you don’t like it, toss it. Just try it at least once so you know what you’re throwing away.

Or do like Kime and use it for soup stock!