Go to the Recipe: Steak From the Future: The Modernist Strategy to Dry Age Beef
Awesome piece. Just a minor correction, it’s actually not blood drawing out of meat, it’s mioglobin. Blood would clot 😊 cheers!
I have koji rice on hand, but not liquid shio--you mention that the dry and liquid kojis both gave great results when tested independently; did you happen to test the final marinade with dry or 'creamy' koji as well? If I'd like to use the koji rice I have, whether dry or blended, before buying liquid koji, would a 1:1 substitution of either work when paired with the cheese and fish sauce? Separately, would standard Red Boat fish sauce give the same result, or is the whiskey barrel aging of the Haku iwashi key to the flavor development?
I’ve got the Shio Koni but only Red Boat Fish Sauce. Will it work the same way?
If we wanted to experiment at home, how should be attack the ratios? For instance, I don't like blue cheese (though will try it because of this recommendation) but the molasses and worchestire sauce sound wonderful. Could I meld that with the shio and fish sauce? How much would I need to ramp down the salt? This is an awesome feature yall are doing and so appreciative.
Absolutely. I was about to make the same comment.
Here’s a tip for anyone with a Breville Smart Oven Air: put your steaks in at 130 on super convection for 20 minutes after Sous vide. You’ll get the best crust when you sear.
Any preferred ratio for the worcestershire/molasses marinade? I want to try that one, too!
By spooky coincidence, I just bought some Haku Iwashi Whiskey Barrel Aged Fish Sauce for another purpose...
I know that this is outside the purview of this column. But have you directly inoculated koji onto the steak (ala umansky and shih)? I love that technique at home but it is time consuming too. How does this stack up?
Excited to try this at home when I don’t feel like koji-fying my steak
I'm having difficulty finding liquid koji in Canada currently. Looking at the option of making my own creamy koji. With the creamy would you still use 15g?
Is that different from covering the steak in dry, pulverized koji rice? They said they tried it that way (and I have before, too, to great results!).
You don't taste blue cheese. Have used similar methods w/ blue cheese for guests that can't stand BC and it adds steak funk, it doesn't taste like blue cheese.
make the SK by combining it w/ salt and water. RBFS will likely work, but aroma is likely to be mildly different.
During wet aging, the plastic doesn't allow the meat to breathe, so it ages in contact with its own blood, which lends it "a more intense sour note and a more bloody/serumy flavor," according to the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/04/dry-vs-wet-a-butchers-guide-to-aging-meat/38505/
I'm trying this with the design your own wygu chop steak. Synergy of premium recipes.
You can swap it out in the same amounts, the creamy koji has a slightly sweeter flavor and will brown faster. But results will be close.
We did not try that one, but did consider it. We wanted to stick to a time frame of no longer than 48hrs and it didn't work within that.
That was at a 1:1 ratio, it was a tasty marinade. But just did not taste like dry aged.
Hi Ryan, is that 130°c? or 130°f?
The Worcestershire sauce and molasses was a 1:1 ratio, you should be able to just sub the shio koji and fish sauce right in with no worries of salt. The blue cheese has a good amount that you would not be including.
Any fish sauce should work well, we just had some nice stuff laying around.
Hi Tymon, Todd is right. You should be able to make something similar with the koji rice by adding water and no more than 5% salt to the weight of water. Then it will need to ferment for a few days at room temp to get it to the live culture state you would want it. Then strain. Go with 10% rice weight to water. Let us know how it turns out. Matthew and I are going to also start a batch right now to try it out as well.
What temperature did you use for searing? Would love to see more content on how to take advantage of the precision offered by the Control Freak.
yes different. This involves rubbing koji spores and corn starch on steak and letting the koji grow on it. .
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/science/786-articles/koji
I'm assuming he means F in order to basically dehydrate them?
Agreed, I recently bought a control freak and I love it, but there isn’t much information on it out there.
I've often done vac packed 3% (w/w) Red Boat fish sauce for 3 days (I think that was originally a Modernist Cuisine trick). I'll have to this and compare...
Hey all! We set the control freak at 400°f and seared for 1 min each side, then 1 min on the fat cap and back to 1 min on each side. 5 min total sear time
I am having trouble finding a place that I can buy the Shio Koji sauce. Is there another brand you would recommend or are they all pretty much the same?
Did you try Shoyu Koji (soy sauce and koji)?
You buy "kits" for dry ageing that consist of a bag with semi-membrane characteristics,. They allow air flow but block most of the moisture that would otherwise be lost in open ageing. The take home message in dry ageing is concentration. As the steak shrinks from moisture loss it concentrates its flavor. Or so goes the story. It also takes on funky cheese notes that many folks will NOT like and it looks horrid when first put on a block. I suppose you can mimic that funk but you're not going to do much concentration that way and lose out on the main act. I remember a bit by Heston Blumenthal on this stuff. He put Stilton ( English blue cheese ) in butter and butter basted the final steak to get that cheesy note. I'm pretty sure that after folks have done all this dry aging and pseudo dry aging they're going to go back to the regular steak.
I have located Shoi Koji in a block located in refrigerator at an orential grocery. Can that be used by itself mixed with bleu cheese and add some water to make a paste?
Hi James, if it is a block it is not the liquid shio koji we describe. There really is only the one producer. But you can use the inoculated rice koji to make your own.
So if your reduce beef stock by 30%, you think you can taste the difference? That's not the main thing going on in dry aged beef.
Did you guys try this method with the Create your own wagyu method?
It is. It's primary justification is flavor enhancement via concentration. I used to work in a joint that did it will all their steak cuts and that was the reason. There is some degree of tenderizing s well but it plays second fiddle. It also adds a taste that is euphamized as "funky" or "cheesy" but could better be described as gross.
Yes I can taste 30% concentrations just as anyone else could. That's the point in concentrating..or at least that's the reason Escoffier penned. But do it. Put some meat in the fridge for 40 days, carve of the thick black road kill eschar and then grill it up. I'll bet you don't do it again.
just FWIW, this method only requires 36hrs.
If you do want to try:
for one steak (approx 1lb)
coat steak with 1.75% by weight EACH of sugar and salt
as water is pulled from surface (after a few minutes), coat in a mixture of:
60g corn starch
0.15g koji spores (I usually disperse spores in rice flour first to make measuring more manageable)
then incubate at 30c with 90% relative humidity for 36 hours
You can cook with the koji crust on, but I prefer to scrape it off.
I made one last night, and was super delish!
I don't know about you, but I've gone as long as 90 days. You gotta keep the humidity up when you're dry aging it, because, while you are concentrating it by the moisture loss, you don't want to just dehydrate the meat. If that's all that was going on, you could do a lot faster in a vacuum chamber and some desiccant. There is a certain amount of enzymatic activity, and a controlled rot that you are allowing to take place.
Regardless, while dry aged meat isn't for everyone, some folks are very fond of that funky cheesy flavor that you classify as gross. Me, 90 day aged rib eye is about as close to heaven as it gets, when it comes to beef.
As CS says above:
Enzymes break down proteins, fats, and fat-like molecules (all of which are largely flavorless) into lactic acids, savory amino acids, aromatic fatty acids, and sweet glucose. These products continue to interact and react with each other during the cooking process, forming new molecules that further enrich aroma.
Similar is found in Modernist Cuisine, the Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology, and Food Chemistry 4th edition.
super interesting idea. We are going to try this out.
@Kyl Haselbauer just wanted to know if you'd had the opportunity to try this out. Followed the steps you provided above, and am going to get the marinating process started tonight.
... Getting it going today. Got Caught up last week.
My wife does NOT like steak. She loved this method and ate well. Thanks.
The Kosher Dosher blog played around with this and came to some interesting conclusions (24 hr is too short):
https://kosherdosher.blogspot.com/2020/10/review-of-chef-steps-sous-vide-faux-age.html?fbclid=IwAR0HY-zLw3BsrHeijtAOFMvkYuVNvjvJVmHi208OGhBfDetZEeHP4kKPCWE
You are unfortunately incorrect on all counts. If you were correct, beef jerky would taste like dry aged beef.
Working in a kitchen is a good place to learn to cook, but it is a terrible place to learn why cooking works the way it does.
Tried it last night (followed recipe exactly as posted). Underwhelming. Tasted like...steak slathered in blue cheese. A milder blue cheese might have yielded better results (as suggested in the very helpful kosher dosher review). I will stick with salt or fish sauce and stop trying to replicate aged steaks. It was a fun science class.
I thought it was pretty good. But I'll probably let it sit in the fridge for another day or two. Also the link to the liquid shio koji goes to a different one that you purchased. While it was fine, I feel like it would require different ratios than provided since it's... Chunkier...
I was hyped for this but made today and was disappointed in the results. I cooked three steaks, two this method and one just salt dry brined over night. I thought the two with this method had way less flavor than the salt dry brine and no funkiness at all. No idea why. I also felt like 15g of each of the liquids seemed light but I have never done much with fish sauce before. Maybe 48 hours next time?
Sorry Max, looks like our link out went too the wrong product. as far as we know this is the only brand to make this style liquid shio koji. it is available on amazon here. https://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Liquid-Shio-Koji/dp/B0763MPDQR/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2T5GEQTZR101C&dchild=1&keywords=liquid+ship+koji&qid=1603753907&s=grocery&sprefix=liquid+ship+%2Cgrocery%2C206&sr=1-1
Any thoughts on combining the quick dry aging process (for perhaps 48 hours vs recommended 24 hours, as some people have suggested, to enhance the flavour) with using a blue cheese slurry coated chuck steak done sous vide for 24 hours after the dry age? Would cooking the steak with the blue cheese, shio koi and fish sauce be a problem cooking that long prior to searing?
It will turn out great.
Kyl & Brandon, Applying this aging with the Design your own wygu chop steak. I think the fish sauce and liquid shio koji is too salty for the salt content already in the chop steaks. Could I substitute ground koji rice for the shio koji and for the fish sauce substitute low sodium versions of Worcestershire Sauce or oyster sauce, soy sauce + anchovy paste?
Hi, so I wouldn't recommend switching out the ground koji rice for the Shio koji, the Shio koji is more of a seasoning with active cultures. The rice will add the cultures but give you none of the seasonings. But it does sound like an interesting experiment.
Hi guys, just wondering if this technique could be combined with your Smokerless Smoked Brisket recipe somehow?
It is worth a try, but we did not test anything close to that so I am really not sure what kind of results you will get. I would say try it with a smaller piece first.
Due to circumstances I left my steaks for 48h in the marinade. I then again was pressed for time, so I skipped the sousvide-step and gave ‘em a brutal sear on the BGE. I had one control-steak to check and holy f*... this recipe is absolute killer. It blew my mind.
I’m a fan! I left it in the fridge for 48 hours, and after cooking it had a very Cheez-it flavor, which my GF and I really enjoyed. Steak cooking tip: if you have a Breville oven, throw your steak in on super convection at 130 for 15 min before searing. You’ll get the best crust ever!
I'm new to ChefSteps....
Anybody love this recipe?
From the comments thus far, it seems kinda eh?
Earlier today, I ordered the specific ingredients off of Amazon, before reading the comments.... .
I love it!!
Usually with steaks, I do an overnight dry brine with Kosher Salt in the refrigerator, then I add some black pepper, and Sous Vide, then sear.
With this "Rapid Dry Aged Steaks" method, I see no inclusion of Salt or Pepper.... is that correct? Will I not be salting this steak, or doing the overnight Dry-Brine before doing the rapid aging method?
Just wanted to clarify, before I try it out.
That is correct, we season lightly before searing or grilling. This is because the ingredients in the dry age have a good amount of salt so it brines the steak as it "ages" too.
Ok thanks. Seems like perhaps a good tidbit of info to include in the recipe info.
I really appreciate the "trials" sections that you guys add, they are super useful.
Thanks !
I tried this last night and was NOT impressed at all
