Old Shoe (beef)

[eveheart]

Here is some of my favorite food, "Old Shoe." This eye of round has been hanging in the fridge for about a month. As you can see, it has developed a hard, dry exterior (left) while the interior of the muscle is yummy-tender and perfect. At the right rear of the cutting board are slices of the hard rind - my "jerky" chews. Left front is thinly sliced beef before the rind was cut away, center rear is the rindless meat, and right front is "sashimi" beef strips ready for my lunch box. The back fat on the edge of the beef is especially tasty when in this semi-dry state.

The name for this dish was inspired by Van in this thread about storage of meat by hanging it:

Eventually it will dry out like a shoe, instead of disintegrate due to bacterial digestion.

[Inger]

Nice picture Dorothy! Thank you!
I eat "old shoe" all the time.. I always have a big piece of meat drying out in the fridge. I do not hang mine, it works fine to just let it lay on a wooden plate.
Sometimes I think it gets a nice "salami-taste", very delicious! And easy to cut in thin slices.

Inger

[goodsamaritan]

wooden plate... great idea!

[jessica]

that looks delicious

[intrigued]

Wow, that's interesting to see.  I haven't gone past something in the fridge for more than a few days.  Mine starts to dry out a bit, which I think I prefer for chewing through. 

So does the inside meat start to dry out a little too?  It doesn't actually look "dry", but does the texture change?  What about the outside, how chewy is it?

Do you get different/strong flavors or smells from this, compared to eating fresh or near fresh?

[eveheart]

So does the inside meat start to dry out a little too?  It doesn't actually look "dry", but does the texture change?  What about the outside, how chewy is it?

The outside dries, forming a casing for the inside. The inside gets drier, but not leathery. The outside is like homemade, unmarinated beef jerky (carne seca). If you slice the beef thinly, the rind gets chewed up without effort. If you slice off some of the rind, you have to chew it up like shoe leather - it's  a good snack this way.

Do you get different/strong flavors or smells from this, compared to eating fresh or near fresh?

The flavor is subtle and good, the odor is weak - nothing at all like high meat.

My refrigerator is a regular one, and I hang my meat on hooks. Look here for Iguana's hanging meat picture: http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/keeping-meat-and-fat-in-the-fridge-for-week(s)/msg77510/#msg77510. Van and Sabertooth also have good meat-hanging information on this forum.

[letsdoiteczema]

... it works fine to just let it lay on a wooden plate.

That is very clever. I figured hanging took up way too much space in the fridge.

I use a bamboo strips that are interwoven so there are holes big enough for fingers to poke through. Then I tape wooden chopsticks onto plastic trays and place the interwoven bamboo piece onto the chopsticks on top of the tray. So there is about 1 cm between bamboo piece and bottom of tray for air ventilation. But this is a lot of trouble! Sorry if this is hard to understand - I'm having a hard time describing this setup! 

I will try the wooden plate method.

Hopefully there is enough air ventilation on the bottom of the piece of meat. Or I can just roll the meat over to another side every few days?

[jessica]

i have some old meat on a regular plate i just flop over every time i take a few bites...seems to work well,

i also have been using a colander over a plate for the fresh liver and heart i have.  its plastic as that is what is available to me, but i am sure a nice metal one, maybe even a mesh basket, or if you can find a wooden one that would be a better method to use

[intrigued]

Hey, meant to post this a while ago, but didn't.  Pictures of some "old shoe heart", after a few weeks.  Just like Jessica, I had this on a regular dinner plate and flipped every day or two (and that's how I do pretty much everything).  When I have a piece of meat early on and it's letting out a lot of juice sometimes I clean up the extra before flipping over to the other side, otherwise it takes longer to dry out and I prefer the outside to be dried out a bit.  The heart tasted fine at this point and was a good texture, though a little cold/almost frozen in some parts because my fridge was acting funky.

I notice that the fat tends to get a little hard and pointy as it dries out.  Sometimes I swallow small chunks close to whole, and that doesn't really work with these, you definitely have to chew them up a bit.