If you’re going to spend a large amount of time hunting, shouldn’t you devote just as much time after the hunt is done to preparing your game meats properly so that they taste as good as they can possibly be? At Tioga Boar Hunting, we highly recommend dry-aging as an option, and suggest that you look into dry-aging your game meats to bring out all the delicious flavor and deliver a tasty, tender meal. Whether you prefer hunting deer, boar, buffalo or one of the many other options we have on our ranch, we know that you will love biting into a piece of meat that has been dry-aged over time.
The dry-aging process doesn’t happen overnight, but if you have a little bit of patience, it will most definitely pay off in the end. When you dry-age a piece of game meat, you’re removing moisture from the surface of the meat cut, which will help trap more moisture inside and help create a more tender meal when cooking.
Field & Stream author David Draper suggests that you can dry age a steak at home in your fridge. To start, you’ll want to clean out your refrigerator completely or use a dedicated meat fridge that is free of foreign odors and – more importantly – bacteria. You’ll start by patting down the steak to remove initial moisture on the surface and place it on a rack to expose as much of the surface as possible to the open air. This will help allow the steak to dry evenly. After a day, check the steak and wipe away any moisture still on the surface. This is also a good time to flip to steak to allow more exposure to the underside of the steak. Draper recommends repeating this process for a few days – five being fairly ideal, and a full week being about the limit before you seriously risk contamination of spoilage problems.
While it may seem counterintuitive, a dry-aged cut of game meat will deliver a tenderer and tastier steak – if done properly. But, of course, the first step is to get game meat.
Tioga Boar Hunting provides many different hunting experiences for those who want to spend time on our ranch. No matter what game animal you prefer, you can find it on our Pennsylvania ranch. We also offer excellent butchering services in our butcher shop and can prepare and vacuum seal all of your meat to get it ready for you to take home and enjoy.
Learn more about our wild game hunts online now, or call us at 570-835-5341 to learn more or to schedule your hunt today.