WHAT HAPPENS AT THE BUTCHER- PART 1

Dry Aging

When a beef arrives at the butcher it is split in half, tagged for traceability, and washed down. It is then hung in a cooler under controlled humidity and air flow to dry age for 14 - 21 days. During this process, enzymes in the meat change the muscle fibers, which makes the meat more tender and increases the quality of taste.

All Midwest Prime Beef is dry aged. After the 14-21 day dry aging process, the butcher starts to break down the beef. Midwest Prime requests that our loin and rib primals be dry aged even longer for a true premium restaurant quality steak. The loin and the rib section are where the T-bone, Porterhouse, Ribeye, Filet or Tenderloin, and Sirloin Steaks all come from. These sections all get aged for 30 days. This is why you can cut our 2” thick cut filet mignon steaks with your fork.

Traceability

Did you know that large meat packers mix the meat for ground beef from hundreds of animals together.? The package of ground beef that you buy at the grocery could have pieces of hundreds of animals from all over the United States in it.

Midwest Prime beef is 100% traceable. As soon as our beef enter our butchers property they are given a code that is in their system and the animal is tagged with it. This is to ensure that we come home with only meat from our animals and that it is completely traceable from start to finish. Each package of our beef also has a code that we can use to trace back to the animal and date of processing. The meat in a package of our ground beef comes from one animal only.

Packaging

When all of the dry aging is complete, the beef is broken down into primals and then cuts according to our requests. Each cut is vacuum sealed for maximum freezer life. This packaging keeps the beef fresh and free from freezer burn for a very long time. After its packaged, its then flash frozen.