Aging Meat

[GregLaROCHE]

I was once told by a professional meat processor, that aging only worked on beef. Deer, caribou and moose didn’t profit from aging. This video is interesting, but says the opposite. What do you think?

https://youtu.be/6fxtyqORxN8

[dogrunner]

My take is the exact opposite of your processor. I was near Delta Junct. AK for three seasons....shot a lotta caribou and we'd hang the skinned carcass, wash it down in a salt water solution. Cut it up after about ten days. Easily as tender as the best store bought stuff. Back then the season started in mid august so we'd divvy up one shot early if the wx was inordinately warm. Later stuff was processed as I describe..........Same with Florida deer.........depending again on wx.........difference is a cheese cloth wrap and shorter hang time..........really hot wx and its' cut up shortly after killing.

[HWooldridge]

I think any red meat benefits from aging with regard to cell breakdown (I would not do it with fish unless it was being smoked). On the other hand, aged beef seems too dry to me, and I have always preferred very juicy red meat. I’ve cut back strap off a freshly killed deer carcass that was still warm and gone straight to the frying pan…great flavor.

Aging is supposed to both tenderize and improve the flavor but that’s also a leftover belief from before refrigeration. If I had the means to experiment, I’d probably try it on moose; the big carcass might benefit from a long hang.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

My 2¢
Beef, deer, caribou and moose can benefit from aging, if you have the correct and ideal conditions. Mostly, hanging/aging removes some moisture. If you age these meats in less than ideal conditions, you'll risk some off flavors....or worse.

[Winger Ed.]

If you age these meats in less than ideal conditions, you'll risk some off flavors....or worse.

That's the deal.
It helps the meat, but it has to be done at the right temps.

People that screw up things like this will often tend to blame the process, and not admit or realize they messed it up.

[owejia]

We always age beef for at least two weeks. Was told it needed to be aged for three weeks but the processors here will only let it hang for two weeks. I believe the big slaughter plants use electrical charge to tenderize beef also. Aging helps the muscle fibers start to break down, should work for all red meat animals.

[M-Tecs]

This subject comes up frequently and people tend to have very strong opinions. Like most things it's relatively easy to test yet very few ever do. Split your deer in half and compare. I much prefer my own test results to others' opinions.

When testing it must be from the same animal. I have done the aging verse none aging test several times and for me I find little value in aging venison for tenderness. Aging longer periods does change flavor. Some like the flavor change and some don't. Even with beef I don't care for the flavor change if aged much more than 21 days.

Then some deer defy explanation. My muzzleloading buck from a year ago was about a 150 class buck with a very swollen neck and actively chasing a doe. Due to leaving for a trip the following day it was cut up and in the freezer within 8 hours. I expected tough and strong flavor yet it was mild and very tender???

[MT Gianni]

Temperatures and conditions vary a lot. I like aging when the temps approach or are just at freezing at night and are under 45 for the daytime. I can take that variation. If too warm it spoils and if too cold the process stops. Worst for aging was a moose I cut right away as I didn't have facilities and time but had help for a short time. It had decent flavor but was as tough as shoe leather.

I like a week to ten days for out Montana whitetails. They average 75-100 lbs on the hook. I would adjust times for weight and outside temps. I would not use someones tables from Michigan and 200+ lb deer on a 60 lb doe I shot in the far south.

We had a member who was loudly against it. He shot many of his deer on damage hunts in August. His experiences are different than me shooting in November.

[MT Gianni]

Greg, What are you hunting in France? Boar, birds, Roe Deer? I read Martin Walker's Bruno series with enjoyment but being it is a novel I am not sure how much is relatable to real people and situations.

[M-Tecs]

Temperatures and conditions vary a lot. I like aging when the temps approach or are just at freezing at night and are under 45 for the daytime. I can take that variation. If too warm it spoils and if too cold the process stops. Worst for aging was a moose I cut right away as I didn't have facilities and time but had help for a short time. It had decent flavor but was as tough as shoe leather.

I like a week to ten days for out Montana whitetails. They average 75-100 lbs on the hook. I would adjust times for weight and outside temps. I would not use someones tables from Michigan and 200+ lb deer on a 60 lb doe I shot in the far south.

We had a member who was loudly against it. He shot many of his deer on damage hunts in August. His experiences are different than me shooting in November.

For deer an upright refrigerator only (no freezer) works great for aging is so desired. Mine will fit 2 deer quartered.

[Mk42gunner]

My thoughts on aging meat is that if you can't control the temperature within a pretty narrow window, aging is just a polite term for rotting. Same with "hanging" game birds.

Around here it is not uncommon to have thirty degree temp swings from day to night. Below freezing no aging occurs, and above 40-45 degrees rotting occurs.

I do prefer to let a deer hang overnight, or at least until rigor eases; then get it cut up, wrapped and in the deep freeze.

Robert

[GregLaROCHE]

Greg, What are you hunting in France? Boar, birds, Roe Deer? I read Martin Walker's Bruno series with enjoyment but being it is a novel I am not sure how much is relatable to real people and situations.

Mostly boar. I really enjoy eating it and there are plenty around. I don’t care for the local varieties of small deer here. They can’t compare to white tail that have been helping themselves to farmers corn. Not hunting, but my favorite meat to eat here is lamb. I’m usually a beef lover however, most of the beef here is extremely low in fat content. Not as flavorful as what you can find in the US. Good luck trying to find a well marbled steak here.

[Milky Duck]

two plastic buckets from same mold.....drill a dozen or more finger size holes in base of one bucket,sit it inside the other bucket...stacked together giving an air gap about an inch between the two..place meat in top bucket and store in household refridgerator,stirring meat daily and removing inner bucket to tip any blood out of outer bucket. we keep venison and pork in fridge like this for up to a week...NOT up to two weeks,your nose will tell you if its TIME NOW to hurry up and bag up n freeze,a SLIGHT odour and greasy/slimey feel is ok..but SLIGHT is the operative word...better to do it to soon than too late and have to chuck hard earned meat.
the difference in tenderness is unreal.
a lot of venison goes funky between 12-36hrs after death..its like chewing jandle rubber.

[BLAHUT]

Way I was brought up, Grandpa's way, game was cut up and in freezer ASAP. Same way with farm raised animals.

[elmacgyver0]

I don't know much about aging meat, but I had a Sheppard/Golden Retriever mix dog that believed in it.
He would eat half a rabbit he caught, then stash the rest and in a week or two dig it up and eat the rest.
Didn't seem too appetizing to me, but to each his own.

[KYCaster]

I don't know much about aging meat, but I had a Sheppard/Golden Retriever mix dog that believed in it.
He would eat half a rabbit he caught, then stash the rest and in a week or two dig it up and eat the rest.
Didn't seem too appetizing to me, but to each his own.

According to my little mongrel, Eddie the Wonder Dog, "It's far better to have eaten it, thrown it up and eaten it again than never to have eaten it at all."

[GhostHawk]

Dad always aged his beef for at least 13 days, longer if he could find a butcher that would do it.

Deer always got skinned before they froze, deboned, hauled home from the farm in deboned quarters in large black plastic garbage bags. Final cutting would happen at home in better conditions.

Best deer I ever ate was a forkhorn that we jumped out on the shortgrass prairie next to a cattail patch. 3 of us were walking, the other 2 shot at the 2nd jump. Took me a smidge longer to get ready and I shot at the top of the third jump. Blew a horn off about an inch above the fur. It did a somersault, and piled up. As I walked up I saw the piece of broken horn, saw an ear twitch then an eyelid opened. I put a 20 ga slug into the back of his head and that was that. Skinned some 4 hours later and by 8 that night the cutting was done and I was eating supper.

Those chops on a hot grill for 3.5 minutes, turned and 3.5 minutes more and served immediately were fork tender and awesome flavor.

That is my experience.

Now if I had a moose or elk, the temp was right and I had the time. I might hang it for a week or 10 days. But IMO whitetail deer do not need it.

But if you ran that deer for 2 miles it might help.

[Texas by God]

Way I was brought up, Grandpa's way, game was cut up and in freezer ASAP. Same way with farm raised animals.

This. Not cold enough here for long enough to do it any different. Get it put up quick or it will go gamey. Hunted today in 70 degree weather.


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[HWooldridge]

This. Not cold enough here for long enough to do it any different. Get it put up quick or it will go gamey. Hunted today in 70 degree weather.


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Funny you say that. My sons used to get mad at me when I wouldn’t let them shoot a deer the first week of the season because it was rarely cold enough. I was also taught to kill ‘em, hang ASAP then cut up and refrigerate.

A few years ago, one of my sons and I killed three feral hogs one evening in the spring. We didn’t get the opportunity to clean the carcasses until a couple hours later, but they were already starting to stink. We went ahead and cleaned them, and they were edible, but the smell was pretty bad while we were dressing the meat.

[DougGuy]

I used to wrap a deer ham in a plastic trash bag and put it in the bottom of the fridge until I started to smell it, about 14 days. The smell was not the meat going bad, it was the blood that ran out of it spoiling. That was my alarm clock going off!

It would discolor the outside of the ham a little, but I still had to clean off some fascia so once i got down to the meat it was all good, turned a very dark purple look. I did a few this way but never saw much change in the tenderness, it had a little stronger flavor overall, but not a significant improvement for the time and loss of fridge space required.

[GregLaROCHE]

How many people age meat with the hide left on as in the video?

[Winger Ed.]

How many people age meat with the hide left on as in the video?

I had a Uncle that did.
He said it protected the meat, and was a perfect fit.

Not exactly aging:
When I was still deer hunting, if the weather was cold- I hung them up in a tree inside a cloth bag,
and didn't skin and process them until I got back home and did it the next day.

[10x]

This subject comes up frequently and people tend to have very strong opinions. Like most thing it's relatively easy to test yet very few ever do. Split your deer in half and compare. I much prefer my own test results to others' opinions.

When testing it must be from the same animal. I have done the aging verse none aging test several times and for me I find little value in aging venison for tenderness. Aging longer periods does change flavor. Some like the flavor change and some don't. Even with beef I don't care for the flavor change if aged much more than 21 days.

Then some deer defy explanation. My muzzleloading buck from a year ago was about a 150 class buck with a very swollen neck and actively chasing a doe. Due to leaving for a trip the following day it was cut up and in the freezer within 8 hours. I expected tough and strong flavor yet it was mild and very tender???

I have lost count of the number of deer that I have harvested and butchered over the past 50 years.
It has been my experience with deer and moose that aging does not make a difference in flavour or tenderness.
In my youth we used to slaughter 2 steers a year on the farm. The quarters were aged for 21 days before cutting. The flavour and tenderness was better than any beef can get from the store now.
Aging takes up real estate, real estate costs money per square foot. 21 days of aging costs too much in rent and cooling (electricity) costs for most butchers do do this and still sell the beef at competitive prices.

I have aged deer for 2 days, 10 days and 20 days at 38F - 2 days is enough for the blood to leave the meat. More than 2 days aging deer is wasted time.
Backstraps and tenderloin are as tender on the day the deer died as they are after 2 or 10 days aging. in fact after 10 days aging, the tenderloins seem to be tougher.

The poorest quality meat was a Mule deer buck with about 20 does in his harem mid rut. His meat had a different and not so pleasant flavour - his flavour was much like a deer that was wounded and lived for a couple of hours before the coup d'grace . No amount of aging changes that flavour.

With venison I age until the blood stops dripping from the quarters - usually 24 hours- then I cut and wrap.

[HWooldridge]

A bad taste can sometimes come from what an animal eats. I’ve heard people scoff at that idea but we’ve experienced poor venison which came off an area where the browse was only fit for goats, so they were mostly eating sage and cedar. The meat was very strong tasting, even when ground and mixed with pork.

[MT Gianni]

I age with the hide on but where I can check internals by sight and smell. If it's cold enough to age it's too cold for bugs.

[Winger Ed.]

A bad taste can sometimes come from what an animal eats.

One season, my relatives in the Hill Country told me it had been a real dry year, and there wasn't hardly any acorns.
The deer had been eating a lot of cedar berries and they told me I probably didn't want to kill one that year.

A neighbor up the street did. He hunted in the same general area, and brought one back.
You could tell when they cooked some it. You could smell the funk out in the street.

[MrWolf]

1/2 steer we get is aged about a week or so and is some of the best tasting we have had. My last two deer were processed within hours and were nice and red and tasted great. Just sayin.

[GregLaROCHE]

Now that I’m aging, I think I’ll keep my hide on.

[Winger Ed.]

Now that I’m aging, I think I’ll keep my hide on.

There's where I'm at.
And it fits pretty well too.

[Fishman]

I learned to wet age deer in ice here in Texas. Generally that involves skinning and quartering the deer, but I have had just as good a luck deboning it completely. Put the meat in a large cooler full of ice. Drain the water out every day or so and add ice as needed for up to 7 days. There is a definite improvement in tenderness and the meat is less "gamey" although that isn't a big deal. Maybe this improvement is due to leaching the blood out of the meat, since most deer don't fully bleed out even with a good lung shot. I've eaten plenty of deer that were shot and immediately processed, and my family prefers deer aged at least 5 days using the method described.

In those cases where I have access to a walk-in cooler, I leave the hide on while the deer are in the cooler and wet age after initial processing if more time is needed. Leaving the hide off wastes too much of the already tiny deer we have around here.

[Rapier]

We here in NW Fl use the ice chest method, pretty much everyone has an A frame hanging set, with a rope and pully with a tennis ball. a gut hook, cordless sawsall and 4 wheeler makes short work of skinning and processing a deer. Fill the big fishing cooler 1/2 to 2/3 with broken down deer, be careful not to get hail on the meat, fill rest with ice, pull the drain plug, keep filling it every day with ice for a week, done.
By FL law you must keep proof of sex, a zip lock in the cooler.
A properly hung aged meat must be kept at a controlled constant temperature for around 10 days, so outside does not work at all. Ice in a chest does fairly well when you allow the liquid to drain. In a PU, the chest can be recharged at an ice house by buckets.

[white eagle]

could it be that because wild game does not have the fat that domestic animals do that it just takes longer for this process to be effective?