Aging Beef

[Al Smith]

I imagine just like beef the diet has a lot to do with what the meat tastes like .

Deer are browers like a goat and it doesn't help any that hunting season just happens to coincide with breeding season .There you are those bucks all hyped up with testosterone it's no wonder some are rather strong flavored .

Elk are more grazers ,buffalo are of course grass eaters .Moose I have no idea .I've only seen three in my life time and they were wading in a river in Yellow Stone park .

Ohio white tail just about have the occassion to be grain fed like a beef and therefore are milder tasting that those Mich,Pa and western deer .Even a beef if primarily grass fed isn't that good as compaired to grain fed .

 

[Tucker943]

I agree Al. I've known of people to switch hogs over to a total grain diet for several weeks before going to slaughter.

 

[Al Smith]

You have to feed a hog grain period .They only have one stomach and can't digest forage .They can process roots etc which is why they "root " .In the wild they eat acorns and things like that ,seed type stuff .Actually anything that won't eat them first truth be known .Especially fond of snakes .

 

[Tucker943]

I understand, but what I meant is that often people raise of hogs on slop and grain. Towards slaughter time, some folks switch to pure grain to improve the flavor of the meat.

 

[Al Smith]

If I told you an old practice called running hogs "after steers " you'd never eat another pork chop .I'll refrain ,you can Google it if you want .

As far as the hogs in some areas where they can get it they feed them boiled garbage .In these parts it's 100 percent grain . You gotta remember by nature swine are scavengers ,bottom feeders .

 

[Tucker943]

Clean animals though.

 

[Al Smith]

I wonder if Butch ate the steak yet ?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Nope, still in the fridge uncovered in a tupperware dish. I'll eat it in a few days or when it gets a 'lil brown on it.

I just flipped it.

 

[woodworkingboy]

Would pork taste better being fed grain over kitchen slops? I had a neighbor in Norther Cali that raised a couple pigs, and fed them from kitchen left overs primarily, is my recollection. They were a large family and always had lots of excess food around. That pork they raised was fantastic eating, the best I have ever had.

 

[Al Smith]

Speaking of which ,Mrs Smith got 4 sirloins the other .She did up a couple on the George Foreman,not too bad .

A couple days later I grilled the remainder on the grill which I drag off the patio in winter time and have it ten feet outside the back door ,handy . I must have either held my mouth right or had enough beer in me because the things came out wonderfull .She makes a marinade using Lee and Perins with other stuff ,Mrs Dash maybe lemon juice or something that really sets it off ,yum .

 

[stig]

Best feed for pork is acorns ( says the vegetarian)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamón_ibérico

 

[Tucker943]

Jay, grain fed brings out the best flavor. Stig, is right about acorn fed being supreme but that isnt common or cheap.

 

[Al Smith]

I don't eat much pork, some though .Cured ham etc is one thing but because it spoils so fast I'm not sure a person would dare actually age pork as such .The thought of food posioning doesn't appeal to me .

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Best feed for pork is acorns ( says the vegetarian)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamón_ibérico

I'll have to remember that when and if we get a pig. I can get LOTS of acorns

 

[stig]

Also, if you read up on it, you'll see that the Pata Negra pig has mostly unsaturated fats, because of the acorn diet.

So you can pig out ( Literally!) and be healthy, too!

 

[Al Smith]

I hear you can roast acorns and they are edible .I've never tried but they say the great big ones from like burr oak are the best .Some times depending the northern red oak has some large acorns too .

 

[stig]

They must be edible, since they have kept a lot of people alive during famines.

How they taste is another matter.

 

[Al Smith]

Hot sauce maybe .

 

[woodworkingboy]

The ancient peoples on the island here, during the Jomon period as it is called, acorns were very important in their diet. So much so that they revered snakes, you see them illustrated a lot on their artifacts. Snakes ate the rodents that competed for the acorns. A pack of rodents can move a lot of acorns. I had a large container of chestnuts sitting on my firewood pile under cover, some rodents found it and in a couple days they had taken them all. They kindly left a half dozen or so that had a worm hole in them. Thieving little buggers. Ha, at first I thought it was one of my neighbors.

 

[Al Smith]

It's my understanding that the native American peoples ate them in some form .

Henry David Thoreau mentioned making a flour from acorns in his work Walden pond .Which was supposed to be an account of him living in a hollow oak tree near some pond in Massachusetts I think . Another work of literature it's been decades since I read it .

 

[Al Smith]

Ha while we're waiting for Butch to grill his steak I discovered a little tid bit I never knew .

Acorns are the prefered diet of eastern white tail deer .White oak acorns are prefered over red oak or bur oak because having less tanic acid content they are sweeter .The time they drop from the trees just happens to coincide when the deer are trying to build up fat reserves for the winter months .

In addition it is also the time they are in rut which explains a lot of things .Nature is just plain amazing if you stop and think about it .

It also explains the reason Ohio white tails are some of the largest in North America. Lots of oak trees .

 

[woodworkingboy]

In these parts, they say that the years when the Bears are often coming into town looking for eats, are the ones when the acorn crops are small. The Oak leaves and acorns primarily make up their diet, and judging by the sometimes rather large to huge piles of scat, they must consume a lot of it.

 

[sotc]

I used to age my game but anymore the weather doesn't cooperate so I now butcher within a week, usually a few days. That said I love to buy meat in cryovac and hold at least a month in the fridge. There should always be a butcher date on the package. You won't get color in cryovac for a loooong time. A month to 6 weeks seems ideal for big cuts like brisket.

 

[Tree Reb]

I've been a bit tied up to get to answer but here's a couple of threads from a forum I belong to.

First one is current and short. http://www.aussiebbq.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6145&p=45996&hilit=ageing+beef#p45996

At eight days.

The second is long with a few pro tips, he did the one mentioned in the first thread, 25 days. http://www.aussiebbq.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2787&p=14852&hilit=+dry+age#p14852

 

[MasterBlaster]

WoW!!!

Still aging mine.