Dry Aged Burgers

[Rob]

Hey folks,

Ive been doing a lot of dry aging lately and thought I would post about my dry aged ground beef experiments.

I’ve been aging a lot of bone in prime ribs and top sirloins. Once aged, I intentionally over trim the primals, leaving picture perfect steaks and an excess of trim. I do this as the first time I dry aged a prime rib, I ground the trim with some fresh chuck and reserved dry aged fat and made possibly the best burger Ive eaten.

I love a good steak. Like.. a lot. But I equally love a good burger. This why I don’t mind having excess trim from my primals. What I’ve been doing is separating the lean meat from the fat and sealing them in separate bags and freezing until I get enough to grind. This allows me to very precisely control the fat content and also to adjust the grind on the fat vs. the lean meat. I’ve been shooting for a 70/30 ratio when grinding it all as one, but experimented with grinding the fat a little finer and was able to get a 60/40 blend that was extremely juicy and very tender while still holding together without over working the meat. The finer grind on the fat seems to help it render evenly without needing to over cooking the burgers.

I’m hoping to grab a few whole Chucks to dry age soon. As much as i love the prime rib in the burger, Id rather keep the premium meat for steaks and truth be-told, once ground chuck and prime rib become more similair than different. Toss some sirloin into the mix and the ground meat is damn good.

My plan is to grind about 50lbs of dry aged chuck, with about 25lbs of dry aged sirloin + the required fat to get the ratio right. Ill likely form half into paties using a ring form and the other half will tuned into meatballs or simply packages of ground beef.

Honestly, As much I love the steaks, I’m just as impressed with the burgers. Ive also used dry aged ground ribeye and sirloin in chili, meatballs etc and loved the results. I ran out recently and had to resort to using grocery store ground meat.. soooo disappointed in the finished results.

I’ll post some pictures of the process once I get the chucks dry aged and let you know how it goes!

Anyone whos thinking of dry aging meat for grinding. DO IT. simply the best ground meat you will ever try.

[Ron Pratt]

I can NOT speak for the owners of this UMAi Dry site and therefore am merely speaking as one of its moderators.

This recommendation posted by “Burchell” should be treated as one person’s opinion and NOT a recommendation. Most times the hard exterior of a dry aged sub-primal looks like dark hard leather often called “bark” which to a newbie looks unappetizing. These same newbies are prone to OVER trim it off. While IF that bark is left on it is normally safe to eat AFTER being cooked to safe meat standards. BUT – grinding the bark and adding it back in to raw beef as suggested by this poster (Burchell) may or could produce problems with youngsters, elderly or anyone else with sensitive stomachs.

Again…I am NOT speaking for UMAi Dry, but as my personal opinion! Ron

[Rob]

Thanks for reply Ron!

I should have clarified, I do NOT grind the bark into the ground beef. This is trimmed off and saved as dog treats. Rather, I use thinner ends of the primal that make for less than desirable steaks, meat surround bones, and large chunks of trimmed fat.

All of the meat I refer to in the above post has been trimmed of said bark.

[Ron Pratt]

and i thank you for your clarification as well. BTW what I refer to myself as those slanted end pieces I too save and freeze them after cutting into bite size pieces and use for tasty kabobs! Ron

[Rob]

I often do this as well. I have a bag full of sirloin cubes frozen and awaiting the right time to be turned into braised sirloin tips!

[Author]

Posts