 | |
 |
 |
Dead MeatThe reason? It was dry-aged, a process of aging beef that, after falling out of practice for decades, is on the rise again. Although not uncommon in New York City’s fabled steak joints, elsewhere dry-aged beef has been – pardon the pun – rare. But increasingly, specialty butchers and select restaurants are rediscovering a technique, and a taste, that harkens to a time when great care went into the preparation of all worthwhile things – long before family packs of stringy sirloin changed the very idea of how meat should taste. All beef needs to be aged. Steak fresh off the cow tastes like boiled shoe and is about as chewy. As meat ages, enzymes break down the muscle fibres, making it tender. The longer beef ages, the more tender it becomes (until about a month, beyond which only minute changes occur). Until the 1960s, there was really only one way to age beef – dry-aging, in which whole or partial carcasses are hung in a temperature-controlled freezer until ready for sale. Problem: Through dehydration and spoilage, almost one percent of the weight is lost for every day aged. To counter this, about 40 years ago producers began vacuum-sealing beef in bags, which aged beef in its own blood. The advantage? Much less shrinkage, waste and moisture loss. In other words, it was much more cost-effective, allowing butchers to maximize profits while still offering customers comparably tender cuts. But in this great march forward, something important was lost. Although I am hardly Proust, steak is my madeleine, triggering dusty remembrances from childhood. In the late 1960s, after my father started to earn well, our family would frequent the Steak Loft, one of Edmonton’s first high-end steak houses. The dimly lit room was a clichéd mix of red and black, a colour scheme that, perhaps not coincidentally, evoked the image of a charred, rare filet. The Steak Loft’s beef was amazing, but back in the days before cholesterol, steak meant more than just good food. Eating steak regularly was an ostentatious symbol of how far you’d come, like owning a gold Rolex or a winter place in Palm Springs. Over the years, however, as incomes rose and more boats floated, steak became accessible, an everyday meal. Demand went up; competition, intensified by the miracle of wet-aging, drove prices down. Steak became available to all, a triumph of free-market forces. But production efficiencies do not always make better products. Unlike wet-aged beef, dry-aged beef develops a highly concentrated flavour as it ages, a side effect of its moisture loss. This intensity of taste is what I had fallen for and, perhaps, vaguely recalled from years ago. And it’s what’s sadly lacking in bland, supermarket products that, through their ubiquity, have come to define what a steak should be.
|
