Sourcing beef for dry aging

aaron.c.schroeder

My first dry aging experiment went very well: 45-days, a less-trimmed piece of bone-in, choice-grade ribeye, in a dorm fridge with fan and salt block. Tasted great, normal moisture loss, and no rot.

Now that I'm confident it works, I'd like to source some higher quality product, but I'm having trouble finding any at a reasonable price. Most places want to charge well over $20/lb for prime grade - and I've had an impossible time finding it at a relatively early stage of fabrication (think 107/109). If I could find an early-stage choice for <$10lb, I'd count myself lucky. And untrimmed, $15/lb for prime seems very reasonable. But everything I've found has come within a few dollars of the the $35/40 you pay for dry-aged from a butcher, when part of the point of the whole project was to save some money!

So, help me out. Anyone who's dabbled here have any tips? Most appreciated would be a butcher/processor recommendation from you Chicagoland Chefsteppers.... Thanks!

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Comments

FrankM_3301

Costco sells prime beef at reasonable prices.

krdeleon.peralta

I have almost no experience in the Chicago area (sorry) but have you tried this outfit? I'm not sure it 100% meets your needs but they do list a few prime cuts at less than $20/lb. Again, I can't vouch for them, I've just been doing a lot of basic searches for wholesale meat and ran across that pricelist (which is kind of rare in and of itself).

Also, because of the current quarantine an unprecedented number of wholesalers are selling to the public and putting pricelists online (at least in the LA area). It may be worth doing a targeted google search for local companies like that and then seeing if they have any policies selling directly to the public for the time being. You still can't get the big, big distributors to sell to you without a license but if you start with places local to your city/county there's a good chance they will. Restaurant Depot is the one exception I know of that's selling to the public currently (again, in California) but having only been there a few times I can't speak to their meat selection for your specific use.

If nothing else, I've found the following google search with operators somewhat helpful especially if you're willing to tinker with it:

wholesale meat price list filetype:pdf

The "wholesale meat price list" part is pretty self explanatory and I would try it as is and in quotes for the whole phrase (and then try different versions of the phrase like +wholesale meat "product list" filetype:pdf), plug in the nearest large city you're willing to travel to, etc.

You can also lose the "filetype:pdf" part of the search but I recommend holding onto it because a lot of product lists are posted on pdf which (I think) are not subject to search operators so finding those pdfs is sometimes more fruitful than trying to find the company itself.

Eva_Adem_1471663

Where to buy salt block