This book is the companion guide to a recently developed controlled-environment equipment called Dry Ager which allows restaurants and keenly committed home enthusiasts to age beef, pork, lamb, goat, poultry, game, fish, cheeses, and even wine to enhance their flavor and texture. Dry aging has typically been a technique reserved for high-volume steakhouses and butchers, who have the space, expertise, and budget to set large amounts of meat aside for weeks or months at a time under the very specific humidity and temperatures needed to comply with food safety standards. The Dry Ager uses preset electronic programming to create these conditions; users can also manually program their preferred parameters, as well as choose the length of time the food is aged. The Dry Aging Bible is a guide to the various presets and the types of food they are designed to handle, as well as to different ways of preparing food for the aging process. It distinguishes between different cuts of various meats, and provides guidelines for the intensity of perceptible aging. Among the many foods covered are Beef ribeyes, short ribs, and tongue Pork saddle, head, and tenderloin Venison haunch Whole chicken, duck, and pheasant Additionally, there are recipes for preparing cured meats such as pancetta, lardo, Tyrolean belly bacon, Black Forest ham, biltong, and pastrami. Appendices address selecting meats which are suitable for aging and recognizing when the aging process has gone wrong. The Dry Aging Bible will be most useful to those who are working with the equipment it was designed to accompany. But curious and determined cooks who do not have a Dry Ager will be able to extract useful insights nonetheless. Hardcover. Color photographs throughout. In English (although some sample photos show German text, the copies we have are in English).
