Dry aging venison

After following wacorusty's post on dry aging rib-eyes in Umai's dry aging bags, I decided to give it a try with venison.
I have dry aged venison in a walk-in cooler with great success. We usually do this for two-three weeks. But the walk-in is at the ranch and going there to check on hanging meat isn't always convenient. So I decided to go with the dry aging bags and do this at home in the garage refrigerator.
My daughter supplied me with two backstraps from a 4 1/2 year old buck. I cut them about 15" long to fit in the 8" x 18" bags that I got from Umai.
After a little reading I decided to stop removing the silver skin from the meat. As the surface dries it will need to be trimmed, the silver skin will be removed then.
I am about a week and a half into the aging and I plan on breaking them out for this weekend.













The backstraps have already turned really dark red.
I weighed them after they were bagged at 2 lbs 5 ozs and 2 lbs 5.6 ozs.
They have already lost a lot of moisture weight, they are now 1 lb 10 ozs, and 1 lb 11 ozs respectfully. I expect that they will still lose a few more ounces before trimming. I was surprised at how small they have gotten, I hope to have enough for a good dinner, we'll see.

I'm surprised they already lost that much moisture.

Looking forward to the results

Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

That's gonna be good. I would like to volunteer myself as an impartial judge.

Do they make one of those bags big enough to stick the whole leg in?

I may be wrong but you have to be careful if leaving the bone in.

They make a 16" x 28", plenty big for a leg.

http://www.drybagsteak.com/shop-all-umai-dry.php

How are these looking a few days in?

we need an update!

It will be interesting to see how much is left after the bad stuff is cut off and moisture removed

I'm wondering the same thing.

Would it better to age the entire carcass or bigger chunks so that more meat gets protected?

Okay, I'm back from a kill and catch (blast and cast, fin and feather) trip and ready to grill the first backstrap, maybe today (I have to check with the wife on dinner plans).

Whiptail, I am also concerned about the major loss of mass. We usually dry age the entire deer (for 2-4 weeks) in the walk-in cooler at the ranch. There we leave the hide on, this keeps it from drying too much and saves the loss of meat due to trimming. It is clear that the straps are going to be much smaller.

redchevy, I like your idea of an entire ham in a bag. This would probably help with the percentage loss too.

Weight is down to:
1 lb 7.4 ozs
1 lb 6.4 ozs

I am beginning to think that I may be making some huge pieces of jerky.

This sounds interesting. How would you describe the results after 2-4 weeks?

The results are excellent, we have guest request it. We generally marinade the backstraps in whatever we find left in the camp house. We then grill them like a filet mignon, wrapped in bacon. We will usually put two pieces of backstrap together before we wrap them, it makes for a bigger piece that way.
When we butcher the deer we remove steaks and grind the rest. We think that the burger is even better.

I just trimmed the first backstrap, here is what I got after 17 days drying in the garage refrigerator:
37 ounces, starting weight
26 ounces, at 11 days
22.4 ounces, dried weight at 17 days
14 ounces, trimmed and ready to marinade (the bag only weighed about .4 ounces)

The side that I left the silver skin on clearly lost less meat than the other side, due to less surface drying. The ones that we do a hide-on aging lose almost nothing due to surface drying, and also less moisture loss. So I have clearly lost more. But the idea here was to see what can be done at home.

Now for the taste test!

After a little time on the grill, everything came out excellent. I grilled the 1"-1 1/2" steaks a little longer than I wanted and they came out about medium-well, I was shooting for medium. Still the flavor was great and very tender. I was really surprised that it wasn't dry at all.
After I added a side of Brussel sprouts and garlic bread, it was an excellent dinner.
I have heard of dry aging in a refrigerator causing meat to smell and taste like a refrigerator. The Umai dry aging bags definitely kept this from happening.
The final product as very similar to the dry aging that we get using a walk in cooler. I will do this again, probably with an entire ham.

Looks great! I think I am also going to try this with a whole hind quarter.

This is excellent, I've always wanted to try dry aged venison but never new how to do it without a walk in cooler. I've got a nice doe hindquarter that I'm gonna try this on.
Thanks for the posts!

Do you know about the Bone in thing? Another poster indicated you may not be able to age it bone in just wanted to see if you had any more info on it.

If you age the whole deer in a walk in cooler, or a frosty barn like up north, it's full of bones. I can't see where leaving the bone in would hurt anything.

Hey Simple, have you ever dry aged any wild hogs? If so, how did it turn out?

We commonly will trap a hog Saturday night and will hang it Sunday morning before we head home. We will finish processing it 6 days later when we return. That is the most aging that we ever do.
We are fortunate that our pigs are feral, they look like farm pigs and they are very good eating, like grocery store pork. We call them "HEB pigs." So we haven't looked into aging any more than a week. I would look into it further but the pigs are already so good.

On curing hams leaving the femur bone in is ok but do not leave the part of the pelvis bone on or it will often spoil. Learned that the hard way one year when fully processing our own hogs as a kid. Would think it would be a good idea to remove that portion and the shank portion before dry aging a deer ham in the bags. Could also just separate the muscles from the ham and dry age in bags individually for smaller portions.

Good idea on removing the shank and taking the meat off of the pelvis. I always cut them up that way anyhow. It would be pretty simple to separate the muscles at natural divide and remove the femur as well. I bet that would pack pretty nicely with no bone in it.
I just might have to try that.

I think you are correct..

Actually I separate the muscles from the hind legs along their natural lines when processing deer myself and freeze them vacuum packed with the silver skin still on which further protects the meat. When removed from the freezer the silver skin is very easily removed from the meat with pliers used for skinning fish. Then those roasts can be used as what you want when thawed: Jerky, roast, stew, steaks, cubed steaks, grinding....

For removal of "blood" from deer meat, I used to keep it on ice for 3 or more days soaking in water, then switched to draining water with open plug while on ice. Figured out that more blood and moisture is removed from the freezing and thawing process than will be removed with soaking.

Glad it turned out good