Holiday FAQ’s

Christmas dinner!

What is dry-aging?  In the past, beef was slaughtered in a central area with good proximity to railway (like Denver or Chicago) and then it was shipped, whole and hanging, around the country to skilled butchers closer to the final point of sale.  Two technologies changed all this: Cryovacing (Cryovac is like Kleenex—a brand name for the process of removing all air from a plastic bag and sealing it) and refrigeration. Centralized slaughter became centralized meat packing.  Now beef is packed in plastic bags and boxed very soon after slaughter (2-4 days) then shipped in trucks and “aged” in the bag, aka “wet-aging”. In the dry-aging process, approximately 20-30% of water weight is lost as the meat hangs in a cold room.  The result of dry aging is a densely flavored (less water to dilute flavor) extremely beefy and tender piece of meat.  This is the meat you will only find at the very best of the very best steak houses and markets. Like Marczyk’s! We get all our Niman Ranch rib roasts in late November, and age them in our cold room. Then our butchers cut them to your specs.