Recently in Japan, dry aged beef is getting people’s attention and becoming a trend. This buzz started with few restaurants started serving dry aged beef. Dry aged beef is literally beef that is aged by drying instead of typical wet aged beef. Dry aged beef are said to be tender and have depth in flavor. Now, this may sounds good, but there’s a reason why dry aged beef didn’t become popular before, cost and time. To age the beef, temperature and humidity must be maintained whole time, and 40% of the weights are wasted during aging process, costing far more than wet aged. Due to these reasons, dry aged beef are not something you can find anywhere even in the states. If you are one of those people who can afford it, or proximity of restaurant that serves one, must be really lucky.
After reading how costly dry aged beef can be, many would think that it’s hard to make one of your own dry aged beef from scratch. However, you can use traditional Japanese cooking technique to make something similar to dry aged beef. If you are avid reader of this blog, you probably guess it already, but it’s kombu curing. I’ve talked about this technique few times before, typically used for fish. Kombu curing is most common for fish to increase storage and umami. In Toyama prefecture where this technique originated, cures beef and consume it raw. When beef is kombu cured, kombu tenderize and increase in umami without spending so much time and energy.
All you need to prepare is kombu seaweed, beef and salt. When dry aging beef, due to its weight loss, beef must be a huge chunk. Though if its kombu curing, just regular piece of steak would be good enough due to no weight change occurs during this process.
Its 3 easy steps, just sprinkle salt on a steak, wrap around it with kombu seaweed, then wrap it with plastic wrap. Store it in the fridge over night. It is guaranteed that it taste much better than regular steak and much easier and affordable than dry aged steak.
pic 9725 / BrownGuacamole