Mimic The Flavor Of Dry-Aged Beef With One Easy Trick

It's hard to imagine a more delicious steak than one that has been dry-aged to perfection. The rich, concentrated umami flavor is unparalleled, making for a beef lover's dream. Yet for most of us, that dream is one exclusive to a restaurant visit, since dry aging is one of those culinary practices that not only seems intimidating but takes a lot of time — around a month, to be exact.

As it turns out though, for those of us who want to enjoy that exceptional flavor without the hassle or wait, there's good news — a simple trick to coax out all that goodness in just hours with a handful of readily available ingredients. By combining salt, pepper, and blue cheese, along with mushrooms and garum (a type of fish sauce that provides major flavor) into a marinade and applying it to a quickly salt-cured cut of beef, you can shave your aging time down to about eight hours or so. There may be plenty of reasons why restaurant steaks always taste better than the ones you cook, but with this handy shortcut, you don't have to sacrifice flavor for the convenience of home. 

Dry-aging is how steakhouses transform standard beef, but when attempting to replicate the flavor at home, it helps to consider what makes this protein so delicious. For one thing, as moisture evaporates over time, the natural taste of the beef concentrates and becomes more intense — this is what turns your beef into a massively tasty umami bomb. Additionally, that relative dryness results in a supremely satisfying crust on the meat once cooked.

For this faster at-home technique, the first step is to cure the beef in coarse salt. This helps mimic the aging by allowing some of that moisture to evaporate, accelerating the process of flavor concentration. From there, a marinade made from blue cheese, mushroom, and garum will help mirror the signature funky quality that meat develops over the course of dry aging, and you need only to wrap your beef up with this elixir and allow about eight hours to infuse.

You can also experiment with other additions known for umami boosting, like roasted garlic, MSG, soy or Worcestershire sauce, parmesan cheese, or a combination of anchovy, garlic powder, and herbs. When you've landed on your perfect formula, you'll never again worry whether your steak will live up to the restaurant stuff, and even if your guests are aficionados well-versed in all the ways to tell if you're eating a cheap steak, they may still never detect the difference between a true dry-aged cut and the one you serve.