The story of our dry-aged rib eye

I first prepared a dry-aged ribeye of beef (or entrecôte) during the Flemish Primitives event in 2011. I was already experimenting a lot at the time. Since then several chefs – including Peter Goossens and Sergio Herman – have put dry-aged ribeye on their menu.

The beef rib – a carefully selected sirloin steak of West Flemish Red beef – is aged for one month. This is done according to a specific cycle, a special traditional process that I developed myself and which is comparable to the process for ripening cheese.

It is based on a continuous interaction of tempera-ture and moisture. After a month, the meat almost starts to ferment. The enzymes give the meat a specific taste. Then the meat is deboned, or ‘trimmed’. We then dry-salt it with herbs and sea salt (half coarse and half fine sea salt) and vacuum-seal it. And then we wait another month. It’s a very slow process.

After four, sometimes even five weeks, we unpack the meat and let it sit for another four to six weeks. This is called dry-ageing. The entire process can last between three and four months, in other words. But the flavours are amazing.A dry-aged ribeye steak tastes very meaty because of the ageing and the maturation, adding a nutty, buttery flavour to the meat. At Carcasse, we combine this complex flavour with some smoky mayonnaise and pickled vegetables. Dry-aged ribeye has become one of Dierendonck’s trademarks. Many Belgian and international chefs are interested in our meat. In addition to dry-aged rib of West Flemish Red beef we now also use Holstein beef.”