STATE OF THE ART OF DRY AGING

Designer Beef has built the largest dry-aging facility in Texas and possibly North America. What does that mean for our customers? Read on to find out more.

Imagine a dry-aged filet mignon that you can cut with a plastic fork. Or the juiciest burgers you have ever tasted made of dry-aged ground beef. If you haven’t tried either of these, you are truly missing out on the finer things in life. Imagine grilling a whole tray of dry-aged burgers this summer for your family or friends. Believe us when we say they will be blown away by the rich flavor of dry-aged meat. 

Many ranches don’t offer dry aging for beef, but Designer Beef does! And that’s all thanks to our very own state-of-the-art dry-aging facilities. Our facility is so spacious that it can fit up to 100 beef at a time. Most dry-aging facilities will only dry age the primal cuts (steaks) due to lack of space. But since we have plenty of hanging room, we dry age the whole carcass, providing you with some of the most amazing dry-aged hamburger meat and steaks you will ever taste.

The dry aging units commonly used by restaurants and dry-aged meat suppliers are very compact. So, you can see how space would be an issue. Since we are not pressed for space in our dry-aging facility, we always recommend our customers to dry age their beef for 55 days to develop that rich, deep beef flavor and tender meat. 

What is dry-aged beef? 

Dry aging beef is the process of breaking down the tough tissues in meat’s muscles to produce a flavorful, tender piece of beef. This is done through time and a temperature-controlled environment.

When it comes to dry aging, we’ve perfected the process. To successfully dry age meat, we monitor three elements: the temperature, the humidity, and the airflow. 

The perfect temperature

The temperature must be between 33° and 37°. If it gets below 33°, the good bacteria will freeze and be killed off. If the temperature gets above 37°, the bacteria will quickly grow and eventually become bad bacteria that spoils the meat. 

The right humidity 

The humidity must stay right around 80%. Because of the larger space, our facility has extra airflow that prevents the meat from becoming stagnant and prohibits bad bacteria growth. The temperature in the dry-aging cooler is monitored multiple times throughout the day to maintain the exact temperature required to dry age your beef effectively. In addition to this, we have installed multiple cooling systems. This ensures that your beef will always be protected through the dry-aging process. 

The correct airflow 

To be the best and largest dry-aging facility in Texas,  we doubled the recommended amount of cooling units to maintain the high standards we hold at Designer Beef. For the aging facility, we turned to experts in the cooling industry and had our cooling units installed by D & P Contractors. We worked with them to design two commercial units with added features to give us more control to perfect the dry aging process. 

What also sets our dry-aging facility apart is our custom built rail system to help move the beef with ease. Experts Jerry Stokes and his team at Speedy Welding did a phenomenal job welding our rail system.