Over at the ZIOH forum a member by the name of Ken, whom I'm lucky enough to have comment here, brought up the idea of dry aging meat for a more robust taste.

From Ken and the other forum members, I learned that when dry aging beef we want to accomplish two things; evaporate the moisture from the muscle (creating a greater concentration of flavor) and instigate enzyme break down, leading to more tender beef.

Things get very interesting several pages in the thread when Delfuego chimes in. Before I start putting words in their mouths, lets read the exchange.

Delfuego To Ken - "Thanks so much for all the info on dry-aging! Tried it with pemmican and have been very impressed with the results! Right after your first few posts on the process I thawed out 3 large primal rounds and set them on racks in our frig. I watched as the outsides of the roasts dried out - so far so good, after all I was going to eventually dry the meat for pemmican!

My main interest was toward the inside of the round - was it breaking down enough? I was hoping for lots of enzyme action and a noticeable effect on the muscle tissue. I wasn't disappointed! After the roasts had sat for three weeks, I sliced up 2 of the rounds and to my utter delight the meat was absolutely breaking down - so much so, that the thinner slices weren't able to hang from the wooden skewers I use in my pemmican light box dehydrator! This once tough, heavily muscled, thickly fibered roast had deteriorated to next to nothing!

I dried the meat and powdered it up. Once added to the rendered fat it has made the most amazing pemmican we've ever tried. The taste was great and noticeably different from our usual pemmican, but what really inspired me was how good we felt eating it. It reminded me of a specific whey protein I used to use years ago - hydrolyzed whey. This was a predigested protein that had tremendous benefits. In all my years of eating meat and fat I always missed the anabolic potential and over all strength that hydrolyzed, predigested protein was able to imbibe. But now, thanks to dry-aging, we've easily matched and bettered this highly thought of protein!

Thanks so much for bringing this art form to us at the forum!"

Ken to Delfuego - "Wow!

This is the great thing about sharing info on this forum. Although it seems like the most obvious of connections, I never thought about using dry-aged meat to make pemmican. But now I can see the eloquent logic that caused you to experiment with this process. It makes perfect sense and, most importantly, it works in reality: an integration of theory and practice. I love it!

My next batch of pemmican will be done exactly as you described above. I can't wait to try it!I almost always make pemmican with eye round, which is not the most flavorful cut. I've tried bottom round, but found that the more fiberous texture makes my meat grinder seize up every now and then. The eye round never causes a seize up. Now, with your successful experience as a guide, I will once again try the tougher cuts.

Thanks for posting that! You have been a great help to me since my early ZC days and I am happy and proud that some of my info has in turn been of assistance for you.

Life just gets better and better!"

Like usual, reading this information produced a title wave of excitement. I ran over to my deep freezer, pulled out three Slanker's roasts, wiped the dust off my muffin rack, and set them in the fridge. 

These pictures are what the Slanker roasts look like after three weeks. Yeah, they have a little fuzz on them, but it's no big deal since I'll be dehydrating them and soaking them in fat. They're currently in the dehydrator, so we'll have to wait a couple more days before I can do the official taste test.

Maybe I should have learned my lesson before I start experimenting with pemmican again, but I just can't help myself. It sounded like fun and I'm always up for something new. Stay tuned for part II!

Here are a couple more useful quotes from Ken about air drying steaks:

"Sure. I've air-dried steaks for a week or even longer. The trick is to prevent them from drying out. For most steaks, a week air-drying is no problem."

"No, two weeks is not too much time. I start slicing off steaks from my ribeye slabs after they have been dry-aging for a minimum of 2 weeks. Once, I didn't get to the last steak until it had been dry-aging for 8 weeks, which was the best of the lot!"

"In all my writing about dry-aging and air-drying, I have always been careful to distinguish between the two. When I put a 19lb ribeye sub-primal in my fridge and let it sit there for, say, 4 weeks, I consider that to be dry-aging. When I cut into the slab and get individual steaks, I usually them sit for another few days in order to dry out the surface area, which in turn allows for a better sear. I call that air-drying. (Note: I also buy individual steaks and let them sit on a rack for days, which is also air-drying.)

My understanding from reading on the subject and from my experience is that it takes about two weeks to get the minimal desired effects of dry-aging. By contrast, in two weeks, most individual air-dried steaks may lose too much moisture.

Whatever it should be called, I do agree that air-drying even a fresh steak does something positive to its taste within three or four days. Maybe it does not get all the "benefits" of proper dry-aging, such as enzyme-induced modification, but an air-dried steak has a more concentrated beefy flavor and, without doubt, its surface sears up magnitudes better than a fresh steak."

All thanks to Ken and Delfuego for tipping me off to the dry aged beef thread!