Aging Meat

[cohunter14]

Who ages their meat after a harvest? If you do, share the details of what you do. Where do you age it? Is there a certain temp you age it at? How long do you age it? Do you butcher the animal first, or do you age quarters or even an entire animal? Hide on or off? Any other details you want to share would be great!

 

[mainebrdr]

I age my deer by using the gutless method to butcher it. Remove bones. then put the meat in a cooler with Ice for 5 to 7 days, depending on when I have the time to finish it. I make sure most of the fat is trimmed off before putting it in the cooler. Seems to taste better than when I used to hang gutted animals for a few days with the hide on.

 

[Swede]

I always get the hide off as soon as I can. Very very rarely does an elk get to the truck with any hide on. All game is aged until after the rigor mortis is gone. I find no real benefit to aging game more than a few days. I read of some people aging game for up to a month. I don\'t age it near that long.

 

[Jaquomo]

I read an article a few months ago written by the most famous (highest paid) gourmet wild game chef in the country. He manages the sort of game restaurants where the piece of meat on the plate starts at $75. I wish I\'d saved it but essentially he said all wild game should be aged 7-10 days unless it has frozen in the field. He said it takes 7 days for the enzyme break down to be efficient, and after 10 days the effects at are pretty much finished.

 

[Deertick]

I quarter everything and put in a cooler and age for a week or so. Maybe I should go longer.

I read of another guy who did the same thing and just replaced ice right over the top of the meat with the drain open so there was no puddle of water. I think I\'ll try that method this year.

 

[OldMan]

I live in an apartment, so I can\'t hang meat like I could when I had a house.

So, I use the gutless method at the kill. Then skin, quarter, and bone it out. In the freezer when I get home, and then age it in a spare fridge.

I\'m thinking of getting a pressure canner. I\'ll can the whole bull,except the backstraps and loins which don\'t last long with me. The canning will eliminate the need to age the meat.

 

[Jaquomo]

We\'ve had great luck ageing meat in our old elk camp in September, too. We hung the quarters in the thick timber at the bottom of a long north-facing slope. Cool descending thermals cooled it at night, then we\'d wrap the bundle of quarters in a couple old sleeping bags during the day to hold in the chill. Worked great. We kept the burger and loins in a cooler.

We aged plenty of elk and bears that way for up to a week and they were always excellent, even when daytime temps were warm.

I do the same sleeping bag trick for deer in the garage if it\'s warm during the day in November.

 

[elkmtngear]

If I\'m hunting solo, it\'s gonna get almost 3 days hanging in the shade (takes me that long to pack it all out). Then, it goes on dry ice for the two day trip home.

I instruct the processor to hang the quarters for a week, but I keep the loin in my fridge for a few days before cutting up and vacuum packing it.

On a deer, I will quarter it up and leave it in a refrigerator unwrapped for a week. I\'m in the process of building a \"cold room /meat room\" in my workshop using a wall mounted AC unit (I already have a drain installed in the floor). I will leave my deer, pigs, etc. in there hanging for a full week.

 

[Wake26]

I am lucky enough to have a walk in cooler. Most of the time the meat is de-boned and hung in the cooler for at least 5-7 days.

 

[cohunter14]

So is there a certain temp you guys are trying to stay below when aging? I assume when you have them in coolers or hanging in the woods, you want to keep them below x temp, maybe 40-45 degrees? Is there a temp that is too cold? Obviously you don\'t want them frozen, but how about in a refrigerator? I have also heard of people aging them in room temperature, which seems weird to me, but I have actually seen it done in a nice steakhouse as well. They had all the cuts laying out on display at room temperature, visible to most of the restaurant. Seems like there are way too many ways of going about this! :lol:

 

[Jaquomo]

I don\'t know about aging at room temp, but chefs will all tell us that red meat should be brought to room temperature before putting on the grill.

 

[cohunter14]

So you prefer to age it at a colder temp Lou? Like on ice in a cooler? I know you mentioned hanging it in your garage. What\'s a suitable temp for that?

 

[OldMan]

You can age at 65 degrees, but it has to be for a much shorter time. I wouldn\'t try any warmer. The animal has something to do with it too. You age a bull longer than a small cow.

 

[Deertick]

You can age at 65 degrees, but it has to be for a much shorter time. I wouldn\'t try any warmer. The animal has something to do with it too. You age a bull longer than a small cow.

It think that\'s right ... I think the bigger the chunk of meat, the slower it needs to age, so that it all reaches the same temperature at roughly the same time.

I don\'t measure the temps, but I usually just like the meat cool to the touch. I put frozen 2L bottles of water in the cooler with quarters. When the frozen bottles first go in, they though quickly as the meat warms them. But once the 2Ls start to stay frozen over night, I know I\'m in \"aging\" temps, and I leave it like that for a week, changing the bottles about every 2-3 days.

 

[Baby Huey]

The CO Div of Wildlife had a video (yes, I\'m that old) called \"From the field to the table\" that showed the standard gutting and quartering methods in field as the first segment. The next segment had a butcher instruct the viewers how to process and make the proper cuts of meat. The butcher mentioned that wild game is not like beef, where beef is aged and provides a better flavor. The better flavor was the result of all of the fat in the beef being able to marble and harden in the meat. Since wild game doesn\'t have nearly the same amount of fat, the butcher indicated it would be a waste of time to age wild game.

So, based on that butcher and DOW endorsing the video, I?m not sure if aging wild game truly provides any flavor advantage - or if it is perhaps the perception that if you age game it will taste better, since that process works for beef and we expect it will taste better since we aged it. It would be interesting to age half an elk and not age the other half, mark the packaging and take the Pepsi challenge on aged and non-aged meat cooked the same way from the same elk...


We\'ve never aged any of our elk/deer over the 20-30 years we have been hunting. We take care to get the hide off quickly to help get the temperature down to decrease the chance for bacteria to grow. We are also quite cognizant of keeping, dirt, hair and other debris off of the meat when in the field and utilize the gutless method. The dirt/hair will taint the meat and it will not taste as good, so we strive to keep the meat as clean as possible. We carry the large ziplock bags in our hunting packs in order to get the back straps and tenderloins in them ASAP, so that they do not dry out and stay moist. We process ourselves within a day or two from getting back home.

 

[Jaquomo]

I\'ve seen that old video and the butcher was incorrect. He was a butcher, not a chef. I had a butcher tell me one time that aging was nothing more than \"rotting\", which is also untrue since we\'d all be eating rotten beef. Aging is not about the fat, but about allowing lysosomal enzymes to break down the connective fibers inside the muscle tissue. If anything, it is more important to age wild game, since the muscles are far denser than beef that has been standing around all its life.

The guys who get paid a lot of money to cook great wild game in very expensive restaurants have detailed all this. I would post some links but I left my laptop at the cabin and only have a phone for a few days.

To be fair, freezing the meat does have a tenderizing effect, so a cut of frozen meat from an unaged animal should be more tender than a fresh steak cut from the same animal.