how contracted the muscles are amount of binding muscle tissue - collagen fat marbling

Short tenderization time makes different animals (young, old, different species) differ in tenderization. Longer tenderization time reduces or completely removes the difference in tenderization.



A correctly tenderized old buck can be made as tender as a fawn. With aging the flavor of the meat changes - meat that is not aged is lacking flavor compared to aged meat. Meat that is cooked up immediately after the kill is far below the flavor of an aged cut of meat.



For beef the fat marbling helps the tenderization - lean wild game can become just as tender with the right approach even if the fat marbling factor is not there to boost the process. I have no experience with aging beef but my understanding is that for dry aging the fat marbling helps the meat from becoming too dry - for that reason there are rarely advice on dry aging wild game for more than 2 weeks.

Types of Aging

The most common type of aging in the beef industry is wet aging, a.k.a. vacuum aging. It's cheap, dead simple to get it right and generates excellent result.

The most well known method of aging meat among hunters is dry aging. It is well known that the more expensive dry aging method will produce the best quality meat, at least slightly better than the result from wet aging. The main disadvantage with dry aging is that it requires more from the locale in terms of space and controlled temperature and that there will be more waste.

Regardless of wet aging or dry aging, the end result can vary greatly depending on how long the meat is aged. This blog aims to give you knowledge about how long the meat should age and how to get the same, great tenderized meat, every time, in spite of temperature variations.

Aging Advice From The Experts

It turns out that most advice for aging meat is not given in specifics - it's a range of days and temperatures. Unless you know the relationship between tenderization, temperature and time you can easily fail to produce the tender and flavorful meat you are striving for.

What we really want is a system to measure the aging process and to get the same, excellent result, every time. Aging meat should be done in cool temperatures to avoid spoilage by bacteria. With that in mind, the breaking down of collagen - i.e. the tenderization process, will be more rapid in higher temperatures. When we age an animal we would ideally like to get the same great result every time, regardless of temperature variations. It turns out that such a system to measure the aging process already exists and is used by hundreds of thousands of well educated hunters - in Scandinavia. It is time we start using this system also in the USA.

In Enters the °C Day Grade Measurement System

So, what is this Celsius ° day grade measurement system?

How can you know that it makes sense?

Why using a Celsius ° system when Fahrenheit ° exists?

Why haven't I heard about the "Day Grade" system before?



This blog will try to answer these questions and make some comparisons between advice I have found from American experts on hunting and meat processing. This blog will give you knowledge on how long, temperature dependent, aging you should give your next deer or elk.

It is the purpose of this article to give you the information needed to age your meat the manual way, or through the foolproof process using our tenderization timer.

So, what is this Celsius° day grade measurement system?