What is a matured meat?
Surely you have heard of aged meat before, either dry aging or vacuum aging. When you read 'aged meat' you may be thinking 'old meat that's been sitting in the fridge too long', but think again. In fact, it is a controlled process that could also be replaced by meat aging.
Why make it to age meat?
Why is it important to age meat before eating it or even selling it? Simply because after slaughter, the meat of the animal is completely rigid and therefore almost inedible. We must then age it for a few days to make it good for consumption. Generally, the meat that you will find at the grocery store has been aged between 7 and 12 days. At the butcher, you will sometimes find meat aged between 14 and 28 days.
What happens during the aging process?
By waiting these few days before sale, the enzymes present in the meat are allowed to gradually destroy or eliminate the fibers (muscle connective tissue), which relaxes the muscles and makes the meat more tender. The more it is aged, the more the fibers disappear and gives optimal tenderness to the piece and brings incredible flavors, almost approaching a nutty taste, according to some.
Two ways to age the meat:
As mentioned above, meat aging is a process in an intensively controlled environment that involves aging meat to make it better. Two methods are possible; dry aging and vacuum aging.
The dry aging process
Dry aging consists of suspending the pieces of meat in an environment above the freezing point (between 1°C and 3°C) and in a humidity between 60% and 80%. This process allows the water to evaporate. In a freezing environment, water freezes and does not evaporate. In an environment that is too hot, the meat rots. The dry aging process causes weight loss, mainly due to the evaporation of water from the meat and shrinkage. What is interesting in this case is that the flavors do not evaporate and concentrate in the remaining meat mass.
The ageing under vacuum
This ripening process is perhaps more common since it requires less expensive and less complex equipment. In English, we speak of wet-aging. With this method, there is no evaporation of water, and therefore no weight loss. If the tenderness of the meat increases all the same, the intensity of the flavor remains about the same. You will have an accentuation of flavors only in dry aging.
