Fossil Farm Dry Ageing Process

Jul 10, 2024

Our Beef are all Aberdeen Angus and are grass fed all year round on a diet of maize and grass silage in the winter months. We then mature each carcass on the bone for 28 days as this allows the natural enzymes within the meat to slowly tenderise the muscle.

Dry aging as the name suggests is a dry process of dehydrating some of the moisture content within the carcass and with the optimised 28 days of aging this vastly improves the flavour and eating qualities of the meat.

Supermarkets do not follow as a rule this dry aging process as it incurs’s some loss in carcass weight, they tend to wet age the primals which are sealed in a vacuum bag to age for between 5-10 days.

If you compare any Dry Aged Beef to wet aged, you will see that the dry aged meat is a deeper and darker shade of red instead of a blushing pinky red for the wet aged and the fat will be firm and an off-white shade.

Marbling is a term given to the tiny flecks of fat within the meat, this is what we are looking for when our beef come into us as this marbling slowly melts and bastes the meat during cooking resulting in a superb flavour and texture, if the meat is plain as in no marbling the best advice is to leave alone as it could end up ruining a good meal.