Dry Age Bag Test for Moose and Venison 14 days

Some of you are aware that I wrote about dry aging wild game recently in special dry age bags. I used a dry age bag recently for 14 days. I dry aged some moose and venison.

 

I had intended to dry age some moose and venison steaks for 20 days. Well, the meat darkened and shrank, and shrank. Today, I was thinking of a delicious steak and had to open the dry age bags at day 14. What did I find? I found that there was no odor, and that the surfaces had a hardened cover of dried meat.

Day 1

Day 14

The bag was easily removed. The meat was dry on the outside as you see below

and dark in color.

I used a sharp knife to trim the surface. Below looks like a lot of trim but is very thin shavings. Not a lot of waste.

No mold or odd smells just darker in color. I sandwiched two moose steaks and stacked together and that worked out ok for drying the periphery of the moose meat.

 

Now for my wife to try it, I Sous Vide a dry aged moose rump steak  and venison back strap from this process to a 115 degrees with herbs, salt, pepper and a tablespoon of Worcestershire and olive oil for 1.5 hours and then seared on a hot grill. The center was rare to medium rare. I sliced thin slices for her. She said, flavor was good and tender. I liked flavor, but was not as tender as I had hoped after 14 days of dry aging. The best way to age is with much thicker pieces, like a leg roast, but I only have steaks and back strap. Was it worth the effort? The jury is still testing and hopeful.  I did have good luck dry aging without bags for 3 days with moose rump steak. Will try that again! When I use bags again, I will let it age longer.

Good Eating!

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About Ed Hale

I am an avid hunter with rifle and Bow and have been hunting for more than 50 years. I have taken big game such as whitetail deer, red deer, elk, Moose and African Plains game such as Kudu, Gemsbok, Springbok, Blesbok, and Impala and wrote an ebook entitled African Safari -Rifle and Bow and Arrow on how to prepare for a first safari. Ed is a serious cartridge reloader and ballistics student. He has earned two degrees in science and has written hundreds of outdoor article on hunting with both bow and rifle.