If you’re a meat eater, there are few meals as phenomenal as well-raised, well-marbled steak. That is, until you’ve had well-raised, well-marbled, dry-aged steak.

You’ve likely seen dry-aged cuts on steakhouse menus. Maybe you’ve even shelled out the moola to put one on your plate. Is it worth it? Does it matter how long it ages? What the heck happens in an aging room, anyway?

Pat LaFrieda, CEO of Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors in North Bergen, NJ, supplies meat to some of the best chefs in the country. His product line now includes beef that the company ages for 120 days—about four times as long as the average dry-aged steak sits.

To help document, LaFrieda snapped photos of one of his 28-pound NY strip loin cuts at various points along a 120-day aging process. Then, we discussed.

Guy Gourmet: “Why age a piece of beef, period?”

Pat LaFrieda: “In controlling the decomposition of the meat, you’re breaking down the collagen, which is what holds the muscle fibers together. Collagen is what can make a steak tough. After the dry-aging process the collagen is broken down and all you have is that protein sitting there and it’s very tender. So you have a tender steak and it has that dry aged flavor.”

GG: “So for people who’ve never tried a dry-aged steak before, how does it differ in taste from a steak that has not been dry-aged?”

PL: “I can’t say gamey, because that always means something negative. And I hate to use the word “beefy”—but it is a more intense beef flavor. You put the two side-by-side and you can immediately tell what’s dry-aged and what isn’t. Dry aged beef smells like buttered popcorn and tastes like very rare roast beef—that’s the best way I can describe it. You just have to try it to know what I’m talking about.”

GG: “The second photo—the one after the initial shot of strip loin—when was that taken?”

PL: “Three weeks. The collagen is breaking down and the water is starting to come out. The front and the sides are waterproof because of the fat and because of the bone. It’s coming out the front and back. You’re losing about 10 percent of weight in the first three weeks. If you’re not losing that, something is going wrong.”

GG: “So between the second and third photo—about how much time passed?”

PL: “Another week. So now you’re at 30 days, which is the most commonly asked for. At that point, you start to pick up dry-aged flavor. You’re going to lose another 5 percent of weight between the second and third photos, so now you’re losing 15 percent of the total weight.”

GG: “Is this all water weight?”

“It’s all water weight, however, you have to “face,” meaning you have to take a slice off the front and back, because you have to remove all that outer crust in order for the USDA to allow you to sell it. You can’t sell it with that black mold on it.”

GG: “Another big difference I see, too, between the second and third photos, is the color.”

PL: “The meat is getting dry, so it’s getting dark—it’s the same process as beef jerky—the exterior is very leathery. If you were to press on that front part, it would be like pressing into a baseball mitt. It’s starting to firm up."

GG: “In the fourth photo, what’s our time stamp?”

PL: “Now you have 40 days. You have a little bit more funk to the flavor. You're still only losing a few more percentage points of weight, but you’re enhancing the aged flavor a little bit more. Here’s where it becomes preference.”

GG: “I’m also seeing the fat turn a different color.”

PL: “The fat begins to darken. What happens is very interesting. The meat starts to shrink as the water is expelled, but what doesn’t shrink is the fat. You begin to see a concave shape where the meat sinks in, but the bones and the fat don’t.”

GG: “Does the flavor of the fat change in the aging process?”

PL: “It’s the first thing that changes. That’s why it’s important when trimming to leave a good ¼ to 1 inch of fat around the steak because a lot of that is going to cook out anyway. Besides the interior, that exterior fat has got a lot of the flavor.”

“The marbling doesn’t change at all. It’s just that you’re not going to be able to see it as time goes on without 'facing' it. Once you do, and you get to that first red steak, you’ll see that the marbling is right there. Because the diameter of the steak decreases and the fat content of the marbling stays the same, you have even more fat per square inch than you did before aging.”

GG: “I can see that especially well on the fifth photo.”

PL: “That’s 50 days. Now you’re losing a good 23 percent from the original weight. It has an even more intense flavor. This is the point where I tell restaurants that they need to tell the consumer how long the meat has been aged so that if the customer orders it, they won’t say, ‘This isn’t what I’d normally get for a steak.’"

“You’ll start to see some white. The white is a good mold. And, also, salt. As the water is coming out of the meat, some of the natural salt that lies in the muscle tissue is also traveling out with the water.”

“If you were to put that meat on the band saw and make that first cut an inch off what you’d have a donut. There protein has sunken in and all you have is the bone around to the fat around to the bone again. We like to see that.”

GG: “In the last photo you can see white striations.”

PL: “Yes, that’s salt and some mold very similar to what you’d see on blue cheese or other aged cheese. That’s 120 days. We’re at a loss of 35 percent of the original weight. It’s for the beef connoisseur. It’s for somebody who wants that $500 wine—because it’s someone who knows the difference."

GG: “It’s a work of art. The color is amazing. It’s almost as if—if you’ve ever flown over the Grand Canyon—the color, the patterns. Not only has the color changed, but there are many colors going on within the meat itself.”

“There are. And the most nerve-wracking part for me is to put that amount of meat up on a shelf in the hopes that you’re going to sell it when it’s ready. Which, we’ve been very lucky not to have that problem. There are very few people who age that far because of that risk. Now I have it ready, do I have a customer ready?”

Want a taste?

For now, you'll have to visit New York City restaurants such as Osteria Morini and Eleven Madison Park. But you can mail order prime beef aged up to 50 days directly from LaFrieda's website.

Paul Kita Paul Kita is the Food & Nutrition Editor at Men's Health, where he has covered the science of eating healthfully and the art of cooking simply for more than 10 years.

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