There are two methods for aging meat. The first - and best - is hanging or air drying.PurpleDragon wrote:Here's a question that occurred to me. When you slaughter meat, and you hang it, not when it is being smoked - just hanging - what is to stop the flies from having a right old buzz-fest and laying loads of maggots on your meat? How do you stop that, particularly in Aus where they have a surplus of flies if memory serves?
The meat is hung in a chiller or cool room. The ideal temperature is between 0 and 2.5C for things like beef, lamb and pork. You also need to control the humidity (about 85%) because while you want some reduction in water content, you don't want too much or you'll have biltong! Oh, and there needs to be a constant flow of air around the meat as well.
Properly aged meat is more expensive because the water loss means it weighs less. It also takes time and money to age. The other problem is that for meat to age well, it must be well marbled with fat and most commercial meat is either too lean or the fat is laid down on the edges of the meat instead of being distributed through it.
But it tastes better because the flavour is more concentrated (due to the water loss) and it's more tender (as enzymes have a chance to start breaking down the tissue).
There's also wet ageing - where butchers simply store vacuum packed meat in properly controlled refrigerated environments for a week or two. The meat is more tender than non-aged meat, but it's no more tasty.
And don't try ageing meat in your home refrigerator in this way - the controls are not accurate enough!
Beef is a very robust meat, so can take a couple of weeks ageing. Mutton takes less ageing than beef, lamb less than mutton, and pork least of all. But, pork must be hung for at least a day for the meat to set.
In Oz, people used to keep meat in a meat safe - basically a cupboard with tin panels than had small holes punched in them. Either that, or you had one that you could hang from a tree or rafter.
