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With February 14th just around the corner, here are some of our favorite options for a romantic dinner, along with some quick cooking tips to keep the lovebirds in the kitchen. 

Porterhouse for Two

Without a doubt the perfect sharing steak, but while bringing some fun to the table as well. Cut from the short loin, it contains both a Filet Mignon and a New York Strip steak, joined by a bone. Hearty, dramatic and versatile, a Porterhouse steak offers an experience in exploration of texture and flavor. 

Cooking Tips: Sear both sides of the steak, then transfer to a preheated 350 degree oven for approx. 20 minutes. Using a cast iron skillet to sear will give a more dramatic crust to the finished product, but a Teflon pan works well too (and if you’re a guy, it’s easy to clean!). A neat trick for serving is to use a thin knife to scribe each side of the bone and cut each piece off, then slice into 1.5” thick portions and reassemble on the bone. 

Filet Mignon

The gold girl standard in tenderness, Filets are a great option for special occasions (and if you put two side by side and squint your eyes it almost looks like a heart… according to Bryan). For those who like to cook, the relatively small portion size of the filet allows room for plenty of other side dishes.

Cooking Tips: Heat a pan to medium-high with a little oil (you want it hot, but not ‘sear’ hot), then cook the filet(s) for 6-8 minutes on the first side, then finish with 2-3 minutes on the second side. If you’re worried about too much smoke in the kitchen, try using grape seed oil instead of olive oil. 

"Jorge" Ribsteak
 For the true ‘steak lovers’ out there, the “Jorge” Ribsteak is the ultimate in great beefy flavor. For anyone who wants to surprise their sweetie with a giant hunk of meat, this is the way to go!

Cooking Tips: The Jorge will have a similar cooking method to the Porterhouse steak – sear first on the stovetop, then finish in a 350 degree oven for roughly 25 minutes. To serve, slice the meat on the bone. Start at the opposite side of the bone, keeping your cuts parallel to the bone. Eventually you’ll have to scribe along the bone, but you’ll have cut the majority of the steak before that. 

Rack of Lamb

Another great option for Valentine’s Day, a classic rack of lamb is a relatively easy dish to prepare that never fails to impress. Throw the rack in the oven, toss together a quick salad along with some crusty bread, and voila! The perfect romantic dinner.

Cooking Tips: Place the rack in a preheated 400 degree oven for 45 minutes, it’s that easy. This cut can also be a great opportunity for experimentation – a mustard/herb coating will give restaurant worthy results at your home dining table. When carving, keep in mind that this is a slight curve to the bones, so you won’t want to slice directly down between the chops. Slice with a small ‘arc’ motion to follow the natural contours of the bone, and make serving a breeze.

For my next trick, we will dry age our prime hanger steaks. As much as I would like to say this came to me in a dream, it actually came to me in an oversight. One whole hanger inadvertently was left out on the aging shelves and was out of sight, which allowed it to work its own little magic behind my back. When discovered, it was a sight for sore eyes. Actually, it was a sight to make your eyes sore. At first I thought we had somehow created a new life form, but upon further investigation and some serious trimming with a 12” knife, found a completely new version of the hanger steak beneath all that camouflage. The flavor actually intensified in a smooth way and the texture changed from merely tender to velvety; and so in the footsteps of the classic deep thinkers, I decided “what the hell!” 

Aging times from left to right: 3 days, 10 days, 17 days

Now, normal hanger steaks will weigh between 1.5-2lbs each when trimmed of facia and center nerve; these dry aged hangers will come in somewhere between 1-1.5lb due to the reduced moisture and additional trim required to find the damn thing under all that age.

Here’s the catch: we’re only doing 100 of these beauties, and they won’t be ready to ship until the week of the 17^th.  Thanks to my big mouth, the list is already starting to fill up, so get your order in before they’re all gone!

Dry Aged Hanger Product Page

In the meat industry, aging is the time lapsed between the processing of the animal and the point at which the meat is consumed. Put quite simply, aging is a controlled decay process. Natural enzymes will break down the bonds within the muscle to create a more tender end product. There are two types of aging, dry aging and wet aging, and both employ very different methods during the aging process.

Wet Aging
This type of aging is a relatively recent development. In modern beef production the items (called “primals”) are sent to the wholesaler, restaurant, or retailer in sealed plastic bags. The process of wet aging is to simply leave the product in the bags for a specified amount of time; proponents of wet aging claim that during this time natural enzymes break down the muscle, resulting in a more tender product.  In our eyes, we see two outcomes of wet aging. Firstly, if the original packaging is damaged and begins to allow air into the bag, the natural gases created by the enzymes that break down the meat will become trapped in the bag and quickly impart a sour odor and taste to the product. These gases are a natural byproduct of the enzymes, but when not allowed to ventilate properly can ruin the meat. The second outcome would be if the packaging retains its tight seal, which would slow down the enzymes because it would limit the air they are able to interact with. Remember these enzymes need air to survive; a complete lack of air is almost like being frozen to a degree. Sure, you’ll get a bit of action, but you’re limiting the full capability of the enzymes to really break down the meat. 

Dry Aging
In dry aging, the traditional method and the only one that we at Flannery Beef believe in, the beef is fully exposed to the air during a predetermined period of time. To achieve this, the primals are removed from their plastic cases upon arrival and placed on aging racks, which allow an almost complete 360 degree airflow around each piece. During the aging process, which can last from as short as 7 days to as long as 60 days (although we’ve had customers request us to go all the way out to 75 days), the ambient air of the aging room acts as an accelerant - the outer edges of the beef will visually darken, and will in effect protect the inner portion of the piece from this rapid decay. This allows enzymes to break down the muscle in the inner part of the piece without giving it the dramatically aged look that the outside of the piece ends up with.

Years ago, beef was aged in whole quarters, which allowed the various cuts to be protected from direct exposure to the air by either the bone or the fat on the external covering. But the industry has changed to the point where the quarters are cut into the primals that end up exposing more of the product to the air. This has changed the way most butchers age meat, because as a result of the higher loss of product weight through shrinkage and trimming, dry aged beef became too cost prohibitive for many butchers to produce.

In order to deliver steaks with a true “melt in your mouth” quality, there is absolutely no substitute for dry aging. Flannery Beef has perfected the aging process over three decades of commitment to this very idea, and is proud to be one of the few establishments still providing top-quality dry aged beef.

1. Wet Aging. A couple of ribs (primals) in the original packaging; this is exactly how they arrive to us. This is an image of what Wet Aging is, simply keeping the product in the cryovac packages.

2. Dry Aged: these are shortloins that been been exposed to the air for about 3 weeks; it’s at about this stage that mold begins to develop on the outer surfaces. This is why there is so much waste with Dry Aging; so much of the outer surfaces must be removed to get the final product. 

3. Dry Aged: same type of primal as #2, but with only 2 weeks of age. 

4. A true 40 Day Dry Aged Striploin. 

5. Prime Ribs at the beginning of the aging process; have just been removed from packaging. 

With the launch of this new site, we decided to expand even further and begin blogging. But we’ve always admitted we’re better at beef than we are at technology, so we had to look up exactly what a blog is. Since we’re late to the game, we skipped the traditional Merriam Webster Dictionary and went straight to Urban Dictionary, where we found the following definition: “a meandering, blatantly uninteresting online diary that gives the author the illusion that people are interested in their stupid, pathetic life.”

Shazam – we were all of the above way before our time!!

Obviously we’re dating ourselves here, so it makes sense that our first post will be about, you guessed it, age. But in the interest of keeping it relevant, we’re only going to post something when the odds are it is meandering, blatantly uninteresting, and borderline stupid. But we need friends. Next we’re going to figure out how to get you to ‘like’ us on Facebook.