Steaklocker – I’ll admit, dry aging techniques for steak have always escaped me. To me, it’s a process that’s more or less limited to professional chefs and butchers. Me, I’m usually just content with buying a steak that’s been pre-aged to whatever point I feel is best. Sure, the dry-aged steaks are significantly more expensive, but it’s a price most people are willing to pay for the taste. After all, it’s pretty much impossible for the average consumer to safely dry-age their steaks.
Products do exist to do so – dry age bags and the like – but the vast majority of them are unsafe at best, and completely illegal at worst. Take dry aging in the fridge – due to the high humidity and fluctuating temperature, bacteria can quickly grow on one’s meat, leading to a gamut of dangerous illnesses and ultimately ruining the meat. As such, it’s historically been best to leave dry-aging to the professionals.
That may soon change.
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A project’s just surfaced on Kickstarter called Steaklocker. Billing it as the first commercially available dry-aging steak fridge, the creators of Steaklocker have promised that it’ll allow buyers to save somewhere around 50% on the cost of their meat. Not exactly insignificant savings, are they? Then again, if you’re not the sort who dines on steak often, the project might not really be worth your money – the final product is going to cost somewhere between $500 and $700. It’s up to you whether or not something like this is worth your money.
Those of you who do purchase it will find yourselves equipped with a powerful tool that allows you to adjust exactly how your meat is aged, modifying the environment inside the fridge to vary the flavor and tenderness of your meat. The people behind Steaklocker are even developing their own Android app and SDK for Steaklocker; the app will allow you to track and monitor your dry-aging progress, alerting you when any of the values you’ve selected are exceeded. It also provides provenance information, step-by-step dry aging instruction, nutritional and caloric information, a customer service line, and access to the top 100 beef suppliers and steakhouses in the country.
There was a time when dry aging was the domain of chefs and butchers. That’s no longer the case. With Steaklocker, anyone will be able to tenderize their meat just so. Now, if you don’t mind…I’m getting kind of hungry.
Steaklocker Dry Aging Fridge | Gallery
